Dark phoenix
A comics legend will rise from the ashes…
Simon Kinberg speaks.
Director Simon Kinberg Starring Sophie Turner, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain
Drawing from a fan-favourite storyline,
Dark Phoenix takes the X-Men series into uncharted realms. “What excites me the most about this movie is the combination of intergalactic cosmic storytelling with real grounded emotional drama,” says writerproducer and – for the first time in his career – director, Simon Kinberg. “We’ve expressed [it] differently to what the franchise has ever done and I hope differently to what any movie has ever done.”
Big claims, but then Dark Phoenix is a bold film that Kinberg promises will, in its own way, be just as dark as Wolverine final chapter Logan. “Logan was an R-rated movie that had
tonnes of swear words and more graphic violence than we have. But the violence in this movie is definitely more extreme than we’ve ever done in an X-Men film. There are real consequences to the action, meaning people die in this film. Not just collateral damage. Actual people you care about and love.”
Following on from 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, which introduced Game Of Thrones’ Sophie Turner as telepathic/telekinetic mutant Dr. Jean Grey, Kinberg has grasped the chance to realise a childhood dream. “The ‘Dark Phoenix’ saga was my favourite run in the X-Men [comics],” he tells TF, referring to the 1980 Chris Claremont-penned storyline that saw Grey exposed to a cosmic power that takes over her body.
For Kinberg, who counts Dark Phoenix as the fourth X-Men movie he’s scripted, it’s also the chance to put right a storyline from 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, his first X-Men gig, which featured Famke Janssen as Grey. “There are things I like about that movie, but what I regret is that we didn’t tell the Phoenix story really faithfully,” he says. “The Phoenix story is really the secondary story.”
This time, Jean Grey’s metamorphosis is front and centre. “What the movie is about, in its core essence, is when someone in your family starts to lose control – what do you do when that becomes destructive?” Kinberg reports that he sat down with Turner even before writing the script to talk it over. “I really wanted the feeling of this cosmic force inside of Jean and this Phoenix identity to feel like schizophrenia.”
With Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Tye Sheridan and Nicholas Hoult all returning, Kinberg has made one crucial addition: Jessica Chastain. The identity of her character is remaining under wraps (though some fans have posited that it’s Mastermind from the comics). “What I would say about Jessica’s character is that she is something we’ve never done in these movies before,” says Kinberg. “She is an alien.”
It’s this element that freshens up the franchise, sending the Earth-bound X-Men on a collision course with an extra-terrestrial. “I think, thematically, it’s more adult than we’ve done before,” adds Kinberg, who brought in Chris Nolan’s editor Lee Smith and composer Hans Zimmer to add a touch of class. “The notion of good and evil is blurry in this movie. I think that’s different.” JM X-Men: Dark Phoenix opens on 7 June.
‘There are real consequences to the action. People die, people you care about and love’ Simon Kinberg