FINAL MUTATION
IF YOU’VE SEEN X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, THEN YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO COMPENSATION.
Only kidding. But it’s fair to say that the third in the X-Men series is considered to be one of the weakest entries in Fox’s long-running adaptation of the Marvel comic books. One person, in particular, has been haunted by it ever since. “I’ve lived with the guilt of that for many years,” says Simon Kinberg.
Back in 2006, Kinberg, who had just broken through as a screenwriter with Mr. & Mrs. Smith, had been appointed as the co-writer, along with Zak Penn, on The Last Stand. “My intention on X-Men 3 was to tell the Dark Phoenix story,” says Kinberg. A run of X-Men stories written by Chris Claremont and drawn by John Byrne, The Dark Phoenix Saga tells the story of how the X-Men’s Jean Grey, already a powerful telekinetic and telepath, fuses with a cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force, which turns her powers all the way up to 11, and begins to lose control of herself on a galactic scale. It does not end well.
It’s one of the most famous and beloved arcs in comic book history, and entranced Kinberg as a boy. “It’s my favourite of the X-Men stories,” he explains. “Because of the moral and emotional complexity.”
was a troubled production. Its original director, Matthew Vaughn, walked away just a few weeks before shooting began, to be replaced by Brett Ratner. Amidst that swirling maelstrom, the story of the resurrection, possession and implosion of Famke) got lost in the shuffle. “Somewhere along the way, not because I felt the movie needed it, the A-plot was imposed on the film from outside,” says Kinberg. That ‘A-plot’ was some gubbins about a cure for mutants, while the bigger names in the cast, the likes of Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, also had to be serviced as well. All to the detriment of Janssen and Jean, who rapidly becomes a boilerplate baddie. She doesn’t even speak for the last 30 minutes of the film. “While there are a great many things in that I think do work,” says Kinberg, “for me, the tone of that movie wasn’t to my taste. My taste is an edgier, more intense kind of filmmaking. And I feel we didn’t tell an authentic Dark Phoenix story. I’d always, after that film, wanted another chance to tell the story the way I had initially intended.”
