X-Men: ‘Dark Phoenix’ Image Shows Team With Bloody and Battered Magneto

A new photo from Dark Phoenix reveals the X-Men with Magneto, who seems like he’s been throughout a lot.

The photo shows Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Red Lotus (Andrew Stehlin), and Selene (Kota Eberhardt) standing behind Magneto.

Magneto himself seems like he’s been badly beaten. Take a look below.

Fans will likely wonder who can do so much damage to the mutant master of magnetism. Then again, the Dark Phoenix is incredibly powerful, on a scale greater than almost any single mutant.

It should also be noted that Beast appears to be pushing Magneto in a wheelchair. That’s an interesting turn considering Magneto’s frenemy, Professor X, was paralyzed by a stray bullet deflected by Magneto in X-Men: First Class. Is Magneto just too weak to walk, or has he suffered a fate similar to Xavier? There is precedent in the comics, as the Magneto of Earth-811, the “Days of Future Past” timeline, was wheelchair-bound.

Dark Phoenix star Michael Fassbender spoke recently about Magneto’s role in the film as leader of Genosha.

“Well I think, you know, Genosha’s a pretty cool idea and always it’s that thing with Magneto, you can’t really argue with his philosophies in some ways, but his methods, of course, are very extreme,” Fassbender says. “But what he’s done in Genosha is kind of cool because he’s sort of stepped out of the conflict, if you will, and said, ‘Okay, you know, just give us this place that’s our own and just leave us be and we’ll be self-sufficient and anybody who’s willing to sort of not bring violence to the area and sort of pitch in and do their part, then they have a home there and they’re welcome there.’ And I think, you know, it’s a pretty cool philosophy. And there’s only something that happens outside of Genosha that sort of drags him away from this place that he’s set up. But it was cool when [director] Simon Kinberg was developing Genosha and we were walking around it and it’s like, it’s sort of off-the-grid, self-sustained community. It’s pretty beautiful. But then of course, then you see the other side of him once he makes the decision to do something it’s go big or go home.”

Dark Phoenix opens in theaters on June 7th.

Upcoming X-Men movies include The New Mutants on August 2nd, and Gambit on March 13, 2020.