The next installment in the 19-year-old X-Men film universe is coming to theaters this summer, Dark Phoenix. Since the film will be out before San Diego Comic-Con, the cast and creators brought some action-packed footage to show at their WonderCon panel.
It has been a somewhat bumpy road leading up to the release of Dark Phoenix, rife with delays, postponements, and several reshoots. After the mixed reviews of 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, fans have been hesitant to get overly excited about the upcoming film. However, the cast and crew came to WonderCon with every intent to blow the audience away. And that’s just what they did.
In attendance were cast members Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Nicholas Hoult, Alexandra Shipp, Evan Peters and Kodi Smit-McPhee, as well as director and long-time X-Men producer Simon Kinberg and producer Hutch Parker. Prior to the footage being unveiled, the panelists shared a few behind-the-scenes stories. Although certain sequences like the outer space scenes and the “Phoenix Force” moments were obviously rendered in CGI, many of the grandiose fight scenes involved real props like cars and helicopters. This is a good sign for fans concerned that the film might depend too much on CGI effects.
Another concern that fans have is the fact that this movie essentially retells the Jean Grey/Phoenix story already depicted in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, a film that most fans prefer to forget. Kinberg and Parker were both very vocal about the many differences between Dark Phoenix and its 2006 predecessor. “This is the first X-Men movie that goes out into outer space. It’s the first X-Men that has an alien in it, that does a lot of things that we weren’t able to do with X3,” Kinberg said.
Hutch also stated their goal was to keep Dark Phoenix much closer to the comicbook story than before. He said the following:
“Candidly, in the early days, even back in X3, there was still a little bit of caution about how willing the audience would be to embrace what I would call a more authentic approach to the comicbooks. And it’s something I struggle with as an executive at Fox trying to get certain movies made, and I think in the last couple of years, for me, Logan and this film did something different, which is dig into these characters and issues in ways we hadn’t before. That’s something I love about the comics in general, is the degree in which they promise such incredible stories, and the underlying material is just so good, and frankly I think it’s better than we have been as storytellers in some cases. This is a film that aspires to tackle all of the potential of that while honoring the legacy and the characters.”
This will give many fans of the comicbook saga some hope that the new movies will do justice to the original story, which they didn’t see in The Last Stand.
The two long clips shown at WonderCon presented some great displays of power by the mutants. These exclusive scenes aren’t yet available to the public, but if you’d like to read the full spoiler-filled summaries, visit HERE.
Shortly before the panel began, the first featurette for the film appeared on Twitter with more behind-the-scenes reveals, like who was the grumpiest on set. This footage included Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, and Jessica Chastain. You can see the full video below:
X-Men: Dark Phoenix hits theaters on June 7, 2019.