X-Men Dark Phoenix Trailer 2

The Following trailer and article contains possible spoilers for X-Men Dark Phoenix.

Before nearly two decades of X-Men movies from 20th Century Fox is wiped away by the Disney/Fox merger, the prequel saga concludes with Dark Phoenix. Fox is having one final stab at one of the most iconic comic book stories after butchering it in The Last Stand, the long-delayed sequel finally arrives this summer.

The new trailer seemingly kills off Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique at the hands of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) as she struggles to control her darker side. Naturally, trailers frequently misdirect audiences with clever editing, so we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. That said, killing off one of the franchises main stars is a bold move that would raise the stakes for the X-Men. We all mourned Han when Kylo murdered him, but it made us take him seriously as a villain.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about putting a potential spoiler in the trailer, director Simon Kinberg didn’t shy away from confirming that the death of Mystique is for real.

“It’s a movie where shocking things happen, where intense, dramatic things happen. People don’t just fall off buildings and dust themselves off and walk away.

There’s a reality to this movie and a consequence to this movie. Even more than that, it was to show that Jean/Dark Phoenix is genuinely a threat to everyone, including the X-Men.

Jean is cracking up, losing control because she’s more powerful than anyone else in the world. To dramatise that properly, you have to show real loss, you have to show real pain and show real threat and menace.

I didn’t want to do that by her blowing up a building with anonymous people in it. It had to feel really personal for the X-Men, and I wanted it to be something that would fracture the X-Men as well.”

Multiple release date changes, extensive reshoots, and damming test screenings haven’t done Dark Pheonix any favours. The previous instalment (Apocalypse) was a massive back-step after Days of Future Past, and I’m just confused why nobody has aged much considering First Class was set in the 60s. Dark Phoenix unfolds in the 90s yet nobody has aged significantly. Sure, mutants might age slower, but we’re less than a decade away from Professor X being Patrick Stewart.

Starring  James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Jessica Chastain, X-Men Dark Phoenix is released on June 7.

In Dark Phoenix, the X-Men face their most formidable and powerful foe: one of their own, Jean Grey. During a rescue mission in space, Jean is nearly killed when she is hit by a mysterious cosmic force. Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable. Wrestling with this entity inside her, Jean unleashes her powers in ways she can neither comprehend nor contain. With Jean spiralling out of control, and hurting the ones she loves most, she begins to unravel the very fabric that holds the X-Men together. Now, with this family falling apart, they must find a way to unite – not only to save Jean’s soul, but to save our very planet from aliens who wish to weaponize this force and rule the galaxy.