Entertainment Weekly The Ultimate Guide to X-Men

By The Editors of Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly Magazine presents X-Men Dark Phoenix.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Entertainment Weekly
• Release date: May 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781547846610

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Dark Phoenix

PHOENIX RISING

X-MEN PRODUCER SIMON KINBERG SEIZES THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR TO HELM THE INCENDIARY STORY LINE STARRING SOPHIE TURNER AS THE DARK PHOENIX.

By Kevin P. Sullivan

THE WORLD IS ON FIRE. FOR THE X-MEN, THIS can mean a couple of different things. The team of mutant heroes has faced down catastrophe on a global scale before, but in Dark Phoenix, their main concern is the woman in the center of the flame. Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) has lost control, both of her powers and possibly her mind. Her now-enhanced telekinetic abilities put the world at risk, and her adoptive family faces a choice: snuff her out to save the day or somehow rescue both Jean and the world she’s poised to destroy.

Is there a nagging feeling that you’ve heard this one before? It’s because you have. The Dark Phoenix Saga began as a beloved 10-issue run from 1980 written by legendary scribe Chris Claremont, and a version of that gold standard of X-Men stories appeared as a subplot squeezed into 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. The new film adaptation could not be arriving at a more critical moment for the mutants.

Dark Phoenix is the seventh mainline movie (not counting spinoffs or origins) in a multibillion-dollar series. Beginning with the original X-Men in 2000, the films helped launch the first wave of the modern cinematic superhero boom, but after a decade and a half, the franchise was beginning to show its age. The previous film, X-Men: Apocalypse, earned roughly $200 million less than 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, and the critical reception wasn’t much better. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is the lowest of the central series. There was even more trouble behind the camera. The disappointing returns on Apocalypse came in shortly before its director, Bryan Singer, left the series to make the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody—from which he was later fired—and allegations of sexual misconduct cropped back up in headlines.

But we’re talking about Professor X, Magneto, Mystique, Beast, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm. These are beloved characters. Clearly something had gone wrong. Filmmakers would need to make adjustments to win back fans and keep the flame of the franchise alive.

"After Apocalypse, we felt like we wanted to do a more character-driven, more grounded type of movie, because Apocalypse was so massive in terms of its visual-effects scale," says series producer-writer Simon Kinberg, who makes his directorial debut with Dark Phoenix. We wanted to get back to being really character-focused. [The Dark Phoenix Saga] is the most character-intense, emotional of any of the X-Men comic stories.

The stakes of Dark Phoenix are at once simpler and much more complex: the fate of one person’s soul. In the original comic-book story line, the telepath Jean Grey absorbs a mysterious entity known as the Phoenix Force that unlocks her psychic potential but also causes her to lose control. At one point, Dark Phoenix—as she becomes known—casually destroys an entire planet in order to fuel her abilities. The desolation makes Jean the enemy of powerful forces from across the galaxy, ultimately leading to her own destruction . . . for a few issues, at least.

When planning for the new film version originally started, Kinberg thought the emotional and thrilling Dark Phoenix Saga could be the perfect corrective after Apocalypse. There was just one small problem: He had already made it into a movie. And it didn’t go over too well: X-Men: The Last Stand was considered a misfire by many fans. But due to Days of Future Past’s rewriting the timelines of the previous movies, Kinberg saw an opportunity to attempt the arc again—and get it right.

When it comes to the Dark Phoenix, that has to be the story you’re telling because it’s such a massive story emotionally, Kinberg said. That, for me, left it open in the sense that this was not a perfect telling of the Dark Phoenix story. With the story set, there was just the matter of telling relative-series newbie Sophie Turner that she was being bumped to the lead.

After rising to stardom as Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones, Turner joined the series along with Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the younger versions of core X-Men members Cyclops, Storm and Nightcrawler, respectively. But while she may have had her fair share of big-budget experiences—be it leading an army toward Winterfell or reading minds as Jean—Dark Phoenix would be unlike anything she had done before.

Kinberg broke the news to Turner over lunch. Simon sat me down and told me everything, how much pressure it would be, Turner recalled with a laugh. I didn’t think the next movie was going to be the Dark Phoenix story line. I thought maybe down the line it would eventually manifest into that.

Turner’s director had taken that pressure into consideration. Kinberg gave her a full six months to prepare and get into the mind of a character who was losing it. Turner dove into the role, studying the experiences of people suffering from schizophrenia and listening to simulations of the illness regularly to accustom herself to the sensation. And that was before she got to set. Once in Montreal for filming, the cast veterans were uniformly stunned by Turner’s dedication. She’s got lots of talent, James McAvoy says. Getting to see her bring it every day and just work hard was remarkable.

Much as it plays out in the comic-book story line, Jean encounters the Phoenix Force during a space mission in the film’s opening sequence. Returning to Earth, she displays both new powers and an inability to properly control them, a combination that attracts the attention of a mysterious, otherworldly character played by Jessica Chastain. Without making her true intentions completely clear, the fair-haired