Quote Originally Posted by Triniking1234 View Post
X3 killed Scott 10 minutes in while Dark Phoenix focused a lot on the couple.
Phoenix is an actual cosmic entity rather than an emo Jean.
Dark Phoenix has to throw Charles under the bus for it to work but X3 kills him off for their plot so no.
Dark Phoenix had ALIENS!
X3 descends into a Wolverine Saves The World story
Dark Phoenix's ending is more optimistic than X3's (less casualities and it's hinted Jean is still alive)
People liked X3 Beast? Ew. Where's the taste police?
I'm still not sure about the final boss fight of each. X3 has the X-Men consisting of Wolverine, Storm, Beast, Iceman, Colossus and Shadowcat (and Angel?) against Magneto, Jean and the Brotherhood of Fodder. Dark Phoenix has the X-Men versus aliens only they can kill with Super Phoenix God Jean showing off at the end.

I'll give it to Dark Phoenix.
Well said!

I would also add that Dark Phoenix was a lot more concise, plot-wise and with respect to how the characters changed over the course of the story. X3 was just all over the place and that's to be expected. It tried to juggle so many characters, plots, and threats. It just couldn't manage them all without the movie being three hours long. When I watched Dark Phoenix, I was impressed by how tight the whole story was. There was no moments where I felt like the script read "and then this happens." There was a lot of that in X3, much more so than the first two X-Men movies. Again, I think a lot of that had to do with X3 juggling so many plots. I strongly believe that if X3 had just dropped the Phoenix sub-plot altogether and focused on the cure, it would've been a much better movie. Or if it dropped the cure and focused on Phoenix, which was Bryan Singer's original idea, I think it would've been better as well. But by trying to squeeze so much into it at once, everything just didn't fit together. Say what you will about Dark Phoenix, but that movie was laser focused from the beginning. And it stayed focused until the final credits.