One of the most famous story arcs in Marvel Comics’ X-Men lore will be brought to the screen in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the upcoming sequel to 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse.
20th Century Fox, which is still distributing the film despite Disney’s acquisition of X-Men and many of the studio’s other assets, released what is labeled the “final” trailer for Dark Phoenix, and it offers a preview of what’s likely to be the final adventure for this iteration of Marvel’s mutants.
Directed by longtime X-Men franchise screenwriter and producer Simon Kinberg, X-Men: Dark Phoenix pits Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his team of young mutants against threats both extraterrestrial and within their own ranks as Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) becomes the host of a powerful cosmic entity. With her telepathic abilities wreaking havoc on the world around her and her fellow X-Men, Jean must find a way to deal with her evolving power, while the team simultaneously confronts danger from one of their own, as well as an alien race trying to weaponize the power Jean wields.
In a trailer for Dark Phoenix released in late February, at least one tragic outcome of Jean’s struggle to control her powers appears to have been revealed.
(Warning: Potential spoiler follows.)
Early in the trailer, Jean Grey is shown struggling to reconcile something she’s done to one of her friends, and a subsequent scene shows her out-of-control abilities violently throwing Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) away from her. Several scenes in the trailer then show the characters attending a funeral, with the blue-furred Beast (Nicholas Hoult) — whose romantic feelings toward Mystique date back to 2011’s X-Men: First Class — appearing particularly distraught in several scenes.
The death of a major character in Dark Phoenix has been rumored since the film’s early days, with initial reports suggesting that the movie might follow the Marvel Comics story arc that inspired it and kill off Jean Grey — but the trailer seems to suggest that Mystique could be the unlucky mutant.
The first trailer for X-Men: Dark Phoenix was released in September 2018 by 20th Century Fox, and it offered a preview of the cataclysmic events on the horizon for the series’ mutant heroes.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix brings back a large portion of the featured cast of the rebooted X-Men franchise that began with 2011’s X-Men: First Class — particularly the young mutants introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse as the latest class of students at Xavier’s school for mutants. Among the returning cast members are Lawrence, Hoult, Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler, Evan Peters as Quicksilver, and Michael Fassbender as Magneto.
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The mutant Dazzler — a popular character among Marvel Comics fans — will reportedly make her debut in the film.
Dark Phoenix will be the directorial debut for Kinberg, and the fourth film since the series’ timeline was rebooted in First Class. As revealed in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, the previous, live-action X-Men films exist in an alternate timeline, meaning that the studio can indeed revisit those events and cast of characters when necessary (as it did in Days of Future Past).
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is scheduled to hit theaters June 7, 2019.
Updated on April 17, 2019: Added a new trailer for the film.
