Dark Phoenix opens in theaters this weekend and the cast of the X-Men movies franchise surprised fans at a comic book store to celebrate. The Late Late Show with James Corden set up the event at Orbital Comics in London. Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Alexandra Shipp, and Tye Sheridan all showed up to greet fans. You can watch the segment above.
In Dark Phoenix, “The X-Men face their most formidable and powerful foe when one of their own, Jean Grey, starts to spiral out of control. During a rescue mission in outer space, Jean is nearly killed when she’s hit by a mysterious cosmic force. Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable. The X-Men must now band together to save her soul and battle aliens that want to use Grey’s new abilities to rule the galaxy.”
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Dark Phoenix is written and directed by Simon Kinberg and stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Jessica Chastain.
In a previous interview, Turner acknowledged the pressure to get this version of “The Dark Phoenix Saga” right. “Yes a lot of pressure,” she said. “I knew Simon [Kinberg, writer and director] was taking me out to lunch and he sits me down and tells me it’s Dark Phoenix and I’m like ‘f*****k.” I know it’s one of the most loved stories of the X-Men universe and for Simon to trust me enough with this responsibility is a big honor. And I want to do the fans of the original story justice, and of course, there’s a lot of pressure especially having been done before. Simon would tell you that it was a B-plot of the movie and he felt it had to be the main plot of the movie.”
The film has been received poorly by critics. ComicBook.com’s own Brandon Davis gave it a mixed review, saying “In the end, Dark Phoenix is not the conclusion fans of the X-Men franchise might have been hoping for and it doesn’t make much of an effort to tie every narrative thread into a nice bow as the franchise is probably coming to an end here. It’s a bit behind its time. Still, the movie is fun and safe movie for fans of the characters to watch in a theater with a bass-heavy sound system, and leaves the key characters well enough to remember them fondly.”
What did you think of Dark Phoenix? Let us know in the comments. Dark Phoenix is now playing in theaters.
