Alexandra Shipp Reveals What Makes ‘Dark Phoenix’ Beautiful

Dark Phoenix is the end of the X-Men franchise in its current iteration, prior to the characters officially being absorbed by Marvel Studios and its Marvel Cinematic Universe. When it comes to being the end cap to a franchise that’s spanned over 15 years, one Dark Phoenix actor says it’s a beautiful ending to the franchise as we know it. Speaking with ComicBook.com at WonderCon, Alexandra Shipp explains that Dark Phoenix is “beautiful” because it allowed her character to deal with Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) in the most poignant of ways.

“I think what was beautiful about Dark Phoenix was, I got to have an opinion about the X-Men,” Shipp says of the upcoming film. “It wasn’t a biased opinion, Apocalypse told me that you guys were jerks. It’s an actually educated opinion, and she was not only able to have an opinion, but she has a lot of sway in Dark Phoenix because she is more of a matriarch than she was, say, when she was in Apocalypse.”

“It’s 10 years later, and so she’s able to be a part of that conversation in a really valid and beautiful way,” she continues. “I loved that. When Jean starts to lose her mind and go into that Dark Phoenix dark hole, it’s really beautiful to see how Storm reacts, and how she tries to pull her from it or protect her from it.”

Dark Phoenix producer and director Simon Kinberg told ComicBook.com that the film was meant to be an end to the franchise long before Disney even came into the picture.

“From the beginning of conceiving what we were going to do with this film and writing it, which was three plus years ago, so long before there was a Disney merger, I felt like this was the natural culmination for this cycle of X-Men movies,” Kinberg explained. “Because it is seeing this family that you’ve come to love and know for how ever many films, and if you count the originals almost 20 years now, you see that family tested in a whole new way. You see that family start to fall apart in a real way for the first time, ultimately come back together.

Dark Phoenix zooms into theaters June 7th.

What have you thought of the movie’s trailers so far? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Additional reporting by Scott Huver.

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