In one pivotal scene near the beginning of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, members of the X-Men fight each other with lethal force for no truly discernable reason. So, when one of them accidentally kills another, why is everyone so surprised? I mean, you don't shoot lightning bolts at people or collapse ceilings on their heads without expecting maybe, just maybe, someone could get hurt.

It's just one of the many problems that this, the last in a series of promising mutant adventures outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe curated by Disney, faced. And, while there are certainly some strong points worth noting, Dark Phoenix is a sad end to the franchise.

Loosely based on one of the strongest X-Men stories from the comics (like 2006's X-Men: Last Stand, the flawed finale of the original X trilogy), Dark Phoenix never gets around to telling its story very well. Simon Kinberg, who co-wrote Last Stand, tries his hand at telling the story better this time around but, as writer and director, Kinberg's end result is, in many ways, even worse.

The movie drifts from action scene to action scene with pockets of exposition in between, but you come away from the film without a clear grasp of who the villains are, what motivates them or what, truly, the glowing space cloud that imparts Dark Phoenix energy to X-Man Jean Grey even is. Why Jean does what she does, once she returns from space with all that cloud energy inside her, doesn't make much sense, either.

Jennifer Lawrence, as the X-Man Mystique, was one of the brightest aspects of the last few X movies, but she has so little to do here, I'm not sure why she bothered showing up. (And Lawrence, a talented actress, seems to know it because she doesn't put much effort into the role this time around.)

Sophie Turner, as Grey, is wooden and uninteresting for much of the film, although it's not clear if that was Turner's choice or Kinberg's direction. On the other hand, Jessica Chastain, as the alien antagonist Vuk, makes Turner seem positively luminous.

Mainstays of the series from previous films -- James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto and Nicholas Hoult as the Beast -- seem mostly eager to conclude their contract with the franchise and move on. Meanwhile, other heroes -- including Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Alexandra Shipp as Storm and Evan Peters as Quicksilver -- have so little to do, it's a wonder they were included at all.

Rumors abound about the manner in which Disney plans to bring the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now that Marvel has reclaimed the rights. Given the successes of other characters in the MCU, we can only hope they figure out how to make better use of the mutant line.