Critics tear into Dark Phoenix as a 'lavishly brutal chore' and one of the year's worst films

The X-Men series after nearly 20 years looks to be going out with its worst-reviewed entry yet.

Dark Phoenix, which is expected to be the final entry into the main franchise that began in 2000 with the original X-Men, currently holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 21 percent, indicating this percentage of critics gave it a positive review. That's a new low for X-Men, with the series' previously worst-reviewed film being X-Men Origins: Wolverine at 37 percent, although Dark Phoenix's score will change as more reviews are posted.

Critics have panned Dark Phoenix as a dull and poorly-executed sequel, with the Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips describing it as a "lavishly brutal chore," while CinemaBlend's Eric Eisenberg says it's "jaw-dropping in its incompetence overall." Nerdist's Lindsey Romain says it "feels half-baked and barely alive," also describing it as "one of the worst movies I've seen all year," and IndieWire's David Ehrlich writes that it simply "has no evident reason to exist."

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Numerous reviews mention that everyone involved seems checked out of Dark Phoenix, as the actors "look like they wish they were doing literally anything else," according to Uproxx's Mike Ryan. Although Dark Phoenix currently holds the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the series, some critics have been more generous by arguing it's slightly better than X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, only rating it as among the series' worst entries.

Dark Phoenix, which releases on June 7 after being delayed multiple times, was not originally planned as the final X-Men sequel, but it's expected to be now, as the property was acquired by Disney in its Fox purchase. The X-Men are to be incorporated into Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, which will likely involve a reboot, although this is unlikely to occur for years. The result, as Vanity Fair's RIchard Lawson puts it, is that with Dark Phoenix, the series goes out with a "whimper of a goodbye."