Nathan Rabin's Happy Cast #42: X-Mendgame

Suit up, mutants — we’re breaking the X-Jet out of mothballs for a postmortem on Fox’s X-Men franchise! This week, Nathan and Clint look back at the haphazard production cycles and messy storytelling of both retellings of the Dark Phoenix Saga: Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand and Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix!

One’s a big, campy mess that throws in a million other subplots about mutant cures and Frasier as a big blue ape; the other is a dour, funereal mess that’s cut to pieces and doesn’t even give its main character sufficient focus.

That being said, there’s flecks of gold in this river of crap, so listen to us pan for it!

(Also, we want to hear what your Happy Places are — send them to our Twitter at @RabinsCast, and we’ll read them on the show!)

5:47 - Scalding Hot Takes/My World of Flops: Dark Phoenix
39:24 - X-Men III: The Last Stand
56:21 - Mailbag
1:01:44 - Happy Places

Follow us on Twitter at @RabinsCast (Nathan: @nathanrabin, Clint: @clintworthing)!

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Ask us questions at asknathanrabinshappycast@gmail.com!

Theme Song by Jon Biegen