Sophie Turner is on fire in Dark Phoenix first look; story details emerge

The X-Men have had a pretty great run of it in at the movies for the past 17 years, as audiences have stuck by them through all the ups and downs of the series. X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX will perhaps throw them for the biggest loop yet, as Simon Kinberg discusses in a new interview how this new film is the most emotional X-MEN movie yet.

Kinberg spoke with EW for their latest first look issue, and on the cover of the said issue features Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey, who will go through quite the transformation in the film. The movie will draw from Chris Claremont’s “Dark Phoenix Saga” comic book storyline, one of the most popular X-Men runs in their history, and something within it spoke to Kinberg, telling him this was a movie only he could do. “[The film] was so clear in my head, emotionally and visually, that it would have killed me to hand this to somebody else to direct,” he said.

Check out Turner and all the new images from the movie below (click to embiggen the second image) and try to play Alicia Keys' “Girl on Fire” in the background.

The movie will be set in 1992, and will find the X-Men team – Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) – as popular heroes, which lands Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) on the cover of Time magazine. All this notoriety goes to his shiny, smooth head and Kinberg says he’s “pushing the X-Men to more extreme missions.” This includes sending them into space for a mission, where a solar flare strikes, unleashing something dark in Grey.

This sends the X-MEN into perilous territory as they try to fight for the soul of Grey, who also comes into contact with Jessica Chastain’s character (which may or not be Lilandra, as reported in the past). The movie is said to have some of the biggest set pieces yet, and will have a major tragedy halfway through that will apparently rock the foundations of the franchise. McAvoy spoke to the emotion of the movie saying, “This is probably the most emotional X-Men we’ve done and the most pathos-driven. There’s a lot of sacrifice and a lot of suffering.”

The last time we saw an iteration of Dark Phoenix on screen was in X-MEN: THE LAST STAND with Famke Jenssen as Jean Grey, but she was sorely underused and was made part of an uninteresting, larger plot. Kinberg is really tested as a director as much as he is a producer, but he seems to have found the emotional core of the story and doesn't seem shy of getting into the nitty-gritty of it, even if it means the death of a beloved character. Comic book fans sure love their death, so this could be another huge hit for the franchise. 

X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX arrives November 2, 2018.