The Morning After is a recurring column in which our intrepid commentator, Lars Pearson, wakes up, makes the coffee and looks at recent geekery in the harsh light of day. Sometimes by donning an Xavier-style bald cap, sometimes by putting on a Magneto helmet; they’re just two sides of the same coin, really.

[Spoilers for X-Men: Dark Phoenix follow.]

As I write this, it’s been all of three days since X-Men: Dark Phoenix saw release in the US – but that’s long enough. Fandom, the media, and humanity as a whole has held court and rendered its judgment!

And… the film sucks! Worst opening for an X-Men film, worst reviews of an X-Men film. In fact, this movie doesn’t just suck, it ssssuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkkkkssssss.

… but does it really? Does it?

For my money, Dark Phoenix – the final (for now) instalment of the X-Men movie franchise that’s been running since 2000 – has become the new poster child of our collective habit of taking films that objectively rate a strong B, but nothing more, and rounding them up to levels of out-and-out “it got me up in the morning, made me breakfast and serviced me sexually” greatness or down to the Ninth Circle of Hell (usually the latter).

By which I mean: too often, the value of a middle-ground film that could have – sure, of course – used some refinement, but overall proves entertaining, is thrown under a bus. Any high-profile geek film that stumbles a few times, but overall does more good than harm, can’t be regarded as “decent enough,” goodness no.

It must suck. It will suck. You get that, right? It must either ascend to Nirvana or suck wild hog testicles. Brace yourself for hog-testicles level of suckitude.

None of this is anything new, of course – I vividly remember a convention panel where writer Mark Waid held his head in his hands, lamenting readers’ non-discerning habit of declaring “It sucks!”, and that was 20 years ago – but it’s cropped up a fair amount of late. You can defend some elements of Game of Thrones Season 8, but kinda-sorta can’t others, so naturally the internet treated it like the Spawn of Satan – and will continue to do so, without pity, in your face, for years to come. Open wide! There will be no end of opportunity to have hot, scathing Game of Thrones anguish poured down your gullet.

Along those lines, Suicide Squad (2016) is a hot mess, absolutely… but it’s watchable at least once, and doesn’t deserve its 27% critic’s score on Rotten Tomatoes (besides, sometimes you’re in the mood for an entertaining hot mess). Then there’s the somewhat baffling schism of opinion exists between the reasonably beloved Thor (2011) and its black sheep sequel, Thor: The Dark World (2013) – even though, to my eyes, they’re give-or-take the same film. I’ve seen The Dark World five times, and have yet to fathom why people regard it within spitting distance of the genuinely terrible Iron Man 2 (2010). Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) has its strengths and weaknesses, which of course meant Fandom went into meltdown.

There’s also, funnily enough, the matter of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), which as “everyone knows” is an abomination, save that it isn’t really. Oscar Isaac was tragically miscast as the villain, and frankly I think Apocalypse isn’t a great X-Men baddie anyway – but it’s got its moments (such as Xavier impishly lamenting, “that was probably my favourite tree” after Cyclops has blasted it in half), the cast ranks among the best in Hollywood, and surely the price of admission was worth the super-frikken I could watch it 20 times montage where Quicksilver saves everyone super-fast while the mansion explodes, to the tune of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”? It has its downsides, yeah granted, but we’re not talking Star Trek V levels of wretchedness.

Part of this You Must and Shall Suck attitude, I know, is simply the challenge of producing electrifying commentary.

Reviews of the truly great or the truly eye-watering variety usually write themselves, but it’s harder to make reviews of B-level or C-level films sing. I tend to just up and admit some variant of, “I enjoyed this film, and you can too, but your budding development as a human being won’t be lacking if you skip it” – but of course fewer people want to read that. As viewers, we’re drawn toward a Schindler’s List-level masterpiece or a train wreck with severed hands and bowels strewn about the place, but can’t muster as much enthusiasm for anything in-between. For that reason, I remain traumatized by the aftermath of my review of Warmonger (2002) by Terrance Dicks, which I suggested was “possibly the worst Doctor Who novel ever written.” I wrote that to ward people off, to tell them Never, Ever Read This Heretical Text, but of course it did the opposite, drawing people to mmmmmnnnnnnn savor the horror – including the bit where a character outwits a strategic mastermind by scraping her skin with a comb and fooling him into thinking that she’s got leprosy.

It’s also the case that defending a B-level or C-level movie takes more energy, because you have to unpack your opinion. I suspect we’ve all had this conversation:

They: “That film sucked, Dude! It sucked!”

You: “Actually, I liked it.”

[Stunned silence as They internally call your sanity into question. Clearly, by saying anything the least bit nice about such an obvious turd, you are tacitly endorsing all of it, including its absolute lowest point. You have the judgment of a kumquat, you like bad things, and you should not be allowed to breed.]

… whereupon you could lay out your position, detailing where the movie in question excelled or didn’t work, but that takes time and patience. “That sucked!” takes almost no energy at all. It’s tremendously efficient. If you’re tired, you could even go the extra step, and express disdain for something with an succinct “Pah!” Any effort beyond that is for wimps.

So back to Dark Phoenix. Nobody would accuse this of being a flawless film. Jennifer Lawrence – and I would not have expected this from someone of her calibre – seems asleep at the switch as Mystique, first-time director Simon Kinberg makes some rookie mistakes (the IN YOUR FACE close-ups of anyone grieving, for instance) and much of the dialogue is workmanlike or repetitive. Magneto comments on the blood on Jean Gray’s shirt so many times, you want to sing-song back to him WHOSE BLOOD IS IT???

But against that, X-Men often excels when it functions in a moral grey zone, and here we’re given the competing views of Charles Xavier (general summation: “The world peace we’ve achieved is fragile”), Mystique (“Stop playing God, Charles”) and Magneto (“Jean Gray must die”) – none of them are 100% correct, but they each have a point. Lawrence aside, the cast is reliably terrific, saving lines just as the original Star Wars cast resuscitated so much of George Lucas’s dialogue. In fact, Michael Fassbender isn’t just good, he’s great. He’s a knock-out.

And I’m struggling for a response to critics who thought everything went downhill in the second half, since that’s where the movie sheds much of Kinberg’s awkwardness and flat-out works. Much of the charm of any X-Men flick is to know Character A can do this, Character B can do that, etc, and then they go at each other in a sprawling human-sized chess match, hopefully with some twists (such as Magneto waving his hands at the ground, and bursting a subway car through the street – God, that was delightful). For anyone who didn’t like the action scenes… well, it’s an opinion, sure, but I’d have to question what exactly you expect or want from an X-Men movie.

I know I’m slashing my sword into a veritable tidal wave with this one. The “It Sucked!” conclusion has won out, and will taint Dark Phoenix for years to come. Still, as I write this, I’ve already seen it three times, and didn’t squirm in my seat or feel the urge to leave once. It needs some polish, but I’d rather rewatch thoughtful fare such as this than something like the Aquaman movie, which was perfectly charming but disposable.

And hey, if you’re into portraying movies as saints or worthy of a hanging, good news! Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker is just around the corner.

A few regenerations back, Lars Pearson was a department head at Wizard: The Guide to Comics. With Lance Parkin, he just won an Independent Publisher Book Award for Ahistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe.