Simon Kinberg explains why the Dark Phoenix trailer spoiled a major death

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Normally, I would consider these pretty major spoilers, but as the trailer has basically spelled it out for us already, it seems that it's something Simon Kinberg wants us to know going in. A fresh new trailer for the upcoming DARK PHOENIX was released last night, and as you can probably guess from the headline, it spoiled the death of a major character in the X-MEN franchise.

It's something which had been rumoured leading up to the film, but it seems that Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) will meet her end in DARK PHOENIX at the hands of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner). While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, DARK PHOENIX writer/director Simon Kinberg explained why he chose to reveal this in the trailer.

Well, the thought process behind that was to primarily show that this is a movie that is unlike other X-Men movies. 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.

As Jennifer Lawrence has become one of the franchise's biggest stars, Simon Kinberg had a lot of emotions about killing off her character, but at the end of the day, he realized that sometimes you have to make hard decisions to service the larger story. "I felt it was the strongest, most dramatic thing for the movie… And the larger story really is Jean cracking up, losing control because she’s more powerful than anyone else in the world. To dramatize that properly, you have to show real loss, you have to show real pain and show real threat and menac," Kinberg said. "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. Mystique is someone who in our universe has been part of the X-Men and has been part of Magneto’s world. Her death impacts literally everybody." Kinberg added that Mystique's death is what fractures the X-Men family, including Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and sets people who were once friends on opposite sides. Before you start thinking that Mystique will be the only death in DARK PHOENIX, Simon Kinberg ominously teased that there will certainly be other "major casualties" in the film.

The official synopsis for DARK PHOENIX:

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 spiraling 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.

DARK PHOENIX will hit theaters on June 7, 2019.