The first trailer for Dark Phoenix arrived online earlier this year, and it seemed to be advertising a much different sort of X-Men movie than we’ve seen before. With a darker tone and brooding atmosphere, the trailer seemed to be setting up a film more along the lines of Logan than X-Men: Apocalypse.
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Well, according to the Dark Phoenix director, that tonal shift isn’t just a marketing ploy. If all goes according to plan, this movie is going to be much darker and more emotional than any of its predecessors.
While speaking with CinePOP, director Simon Kinberg, who served as a producer on most of the X-Men movies to this point, was asked about the drastic shift in tone for Dark Phoenix. He explained that this is indeed by design, and his goal was to focus on the drama between the characters, rather than their otherworldly abilities.
“Yeah, I think of the mainline X-Men movies, this is the most unique tonally,” Kinberg began. “Like you said, it’s dark, it’s dramatic, it’s intense. It’s more intimate than we’ve ever done in these films, and I say that as someone who’s worked on, I don’t know, six or seven of them now? It is a drama at its core and it’s really about a young woman who’s losing control, and becomes dangerous to herself and to others, and what that does to the family that loves her and to the friends that love her, and how it splits them up. When you add to that the fantastical element that losing control means that she could destroy the entire planet, it becomes an X-Men movie but without all that stuff. And this is the way we talk as collaborators, me and the actors and the actresses. We didn’t really talk about the fantastical stuff. We talked about the drama, and I have the greatest actors in the world playing it.”
At the center of the film is Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) who is struggling with the monster erupting inside of her, the Dark Phoenix. While trying to discover her identity and powers, she will put those she loves in harm’s way. This will be the second time we’ve seen this classic comic book story play out on the big screen, as it was a main storyline in the much-maligned X-Men: The Last Stand.
Are you looking forward to Dark Phoenix? Is this shift in tone a good thing for the X-Men franchise? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Dark Phoenix will arrive in theaters on June 7, 2019.
