Jennifer Lawrence, who played Raven Darkhölme/Mystique in Fox's X-Men franchise, has taken some of the responsibility for Dark Phoenix's failure critically and commercially.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the subject of Lawrence's recent critical and commercial movie failures came up, which include 2017's mother!, 2018's Red Sparrow, 2016's Passengers and 2019's Dark Phoenix. Lawrence addressed those films, which are her four most recent releases, saying, "I was not pumping out the quality that I should have. I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I'd gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn't do anything right. If I walked a red carpet, it was, 'Why didn’t she run?'… I think that I was people-pleasing for the majority of my life. Working made me feel like nobody could be mad at me: 'Okay, I said yes, we're doing it. Nobody's mad.' And then I felt like I reached a point where people were not pleased just by my existence. So that kind of shook me out of thinking that work or your career can bring any kind of peace to your soul."
Mother!, Red Sparrow, Passengers and Dark Phoenix hold a 68 percent, 45 percent, 30 percent and 22 percent, respectively. At the box office, mother!earned $45.5 million against a budget of $30 million, Red Sparrow took in $151.6 million against a $69 million budget, Passengers earned $303.1 million against a budget of between $110 and $150 million and Dark Phoenix took in $252.4 million against a budget of $200 million. Generally, a film needs to earn at least twice its budget in order to be considered profitable due to the combination of marketing and production costs.
Lawrence first played Mystique in 2011's X-Men: First Class, which rebooted Fox's mutant franchise. She went on to star in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past and 2016's X-Men Apocalypse. While Lawrence appeared as Mystique in Dark Phoenix, her character was killed off relatively early into the film.
Dark Phoenix was the second of Fox's X-Men films to explore powerful psychic Jean Grey becoming the titular cosmic entity. The movie was also the last in Fox's X-Men franchise, which began in 2000, as Disney acquired 21st Century Fox around the time of the project's release. That sale means Marvel Studios will now be able to use characters formerly belonging to Fox, including the X-Men and Fantastic Four. However, at this time, there's no indication of just when the X-Men will debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Lawrence will next appear in Don't Look Up. Directed and written by Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy's Adam McKay, the black comedy is set for a wide release on Dec. 24. The film stars Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio as scientists attempting to warn humanity of an incoming comet that will destroy the planet.
Dark Phoenix is available now on Disney+. Directed and written by Simon Kinberg, the movie also stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nichoulas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp and Jessica Chastain.
Source: Vanity Fair
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