There’s not a whole lot of information about the upcoming 2018 release ofX-Men: Dark Phoenix, but we now have our first sneak peek and it looks pretty awesome.Dark Phoenixwill hit theaters on November 2nd, 2018, and will have Simon Kinberg at the helm. This will be his second time writing within the iconic storyline, as his first try was in 2006’sX-Men: The Last Stand. Though he wrote the screenplay forLast Stand, he did not direct it, so this will be the director’s debut in the storyline and it’s something that he holds close to his heart. Sophie Turner is featured on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly and it’s our first look atJean Gray’s turn to the dark side.
The famouscomic book arc of Jean Graygoing dark was dabbled with in 2006’sX-Men: The Last Standwith Famke Janssen as Jean Grey, but the soft reboot ofFirst Classhas allowed theX-Menuniverse to have another go at the acclaimedX-Menstoryline, with the new Jean, played byGame of Thronesstar Sophie Turner who is on fire on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly. It had long been rumored that the movie would have some of its storyline in outer space and that has been proven to be true by the new feature.
Dark Phoenix takes place in 1992, which is 10 years after the events ofX-Men: Apocalypseand sees theX-Menas celebrities.The teamwill consist of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Quicksilver (Evan Peters), with Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) again leading the team. The group finds itself looked upon as heroes for a change, but that is starting to affect Xavier in a negative way. Director Simon Kinberg hints that pride and the pushing of theX-Mento be better are getting the best of Xavier, which prompts him to send the team on a space rescue mission, paving the way for a solar flare to hit the X-Jet and awakening the describedpower-hungry Phoenixwithin Jean when she tries to save the team.
Simon Kinberg notes that the post-production forDark Phoenixhas been quite intense and taken over a year to get right, to properly get the look of Sophie Turner’s Jean Gray. The director/writer had this to say regarding the post-production process.
“I wanted the post time to deliver on the nuance of the visual effects, not just the scale of them. That takes time.”
The first pictures from the movie certainly look like a lot of time and care went into the production process and the crew still has a little less than a year to keep tinkering. In addition to the beauty of the visual effects, James McAvoy has calledDark Phoenix, “the most emotional X-Men we’ve done and the most pathos-driven,” which makes for an interesting balance and may ease the minds of fans who worry about tackling theDark Phoenixon the big screen.
This is prettyexciting news for X-Men fansand should be reassuring on some levels since theX-Men: Apocalypsewas so poorly received. Simon Kinberg was heartbroken with the way the last movie came out and is destined to not have his vision torn from him again. Adding to the exciting prospects is that director Brian Singer is not involved this time around. Singer’s projects have been known to be a bit chaotic, which was definitely not the case this time around. Go check out the first look atX-Men: Dark Phoenixcourtesy of Entertainment Weekly.
