'Dark Phoenix' Star Tye Sheridan Reveals Jean's Loss Divides the X-Men

This summer, the X-Men franchise will once again tackle one of the most iconic storylines in comic book history as Jean Grey loses control in Dark Phoenix.

The film will force the X-Men to confront one of their own, and Cyclops actor Tye Sheridan teased that the challenge will divide the team up mutants. While speaking at ACE Comic Con in Phoenix, Sheridan offered some new details about the film.

"Everybody's much older, [Cyclops] is a professor at the School for the Gifted," said Sheridan. "He and Jean have been in a relationship now and they have a strong connection with each other. Over the course of the movie, something happens and she kind of goes crazy. And so he's really dealing with the loss of that person– everybody is dealing with the loss of this person and it kinda divides up the X-Men.

"So, some really really interesting character dynamics happening in the movie, and it's real exciting because I think he's a much more mature version than he was in the last one, and I think the relationship with Jean is something we got to explore a lot."

When asked if the film will show any romance between Jean and Scott Summers, Sheridan confirmed their connection was necessary to establish before breaking everyone apart.

"We gotta start with the happy moments and we'll see what happens after that. I think you get a real sense of some routine. The X-Men have become this well-oiled machine that people depend on in need of crisis. And then things just spiral in the wrong direction, everything goes nuts," Sheridan added.

While Dark Phoenix might seem like the end of an era with Disney's purchase of Fox nearing completion, it might serve as a new beginning. Writer and director Simon Kinberg previously spoke at CCXP in Brazil and echoed sentiments expressed by the Phoenix Force itself: for life to flourish, there must be death.

"I see it as a new chapter," said Kinberg. "I see it as taking the franchise in a different direction tonally. And that doesn't mean that the next one will have the same tone, it just means that the next one can have a different tone. I think for many years, the X-Men, Bryan [Singer] really transformed the superhero genre in 2000 or 2001 when the first one came out. That's almost 20 years ago. It is a long time ago. And at that time, superhero movies were not wildly popular, actually. There had been a few failures in the mid-90s, and there hadn't been a lot of superhero movies, if any, around that time and X-Men sort of was revolutionary in its moment.

"But that was 20 years ago and I think, I really felt like it time to really change the look, the feel, the tone, the vibe of these movies. And that doesn't mean this is the one going forward, it just means that if it's me or whoever directs the next one, you can make it different, and you have to make it different."

Dark Phoenix premieres in theaters on June 7th.