'Dark Phoenix' Director Hints at Ending and Compares Film to 'The Dark Knight' and 'Logan'
By Ryan Carroll
With the upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Fox’s X-Men franchise will finally reach its conclusion. The franchise’s first outing in 2000, X-Men, was among the first and most successful Marvel superhero blockbusters, and now, at the franchise’s conclusion, the series stands in a crowd of Marvel films that are eccentric and fun, such as Guardians of the Galaxy, and gritty, such as The Dark Knight and Logan. According to Simon Kinberg, a longtime writer in the franchise and director of Dark Phoenix, the film will be more in line with the latter films than any previous entry.
According to Kinberg, the film will feature a more intense and dark storyline than in past X-Men films. As reported by We Got This Covered, the director explained:
"My vision for the film was a more intense, a more raw X-Men film than we’d done before…. I said [to Fox Executives,] ‘Listen, this is going to push the envelope of the PG-13 X-Men movies that we’ve seen before. It’s gonna be much more like the Dark Knight movies, or like Logan than it is gonna be like the previous X-Men films.'"
These comments follow a flurry of commentary about corporate influence in the production of the film. After Disney’s recent purchase of 20th Century Fox, extensive discussions have dwelt on how the X-Men will be incorporated into the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kinberg, however, strived to emphasize the thematic impetus of the film.
Kinberg added that Dark Phoenix will serve to tie together the past eleven films in Fox’s franchise, saying:
“I approach this movie as the culmination of 20 years of storytelling, of living with the X-Men for all this time and watching this family come together, and this movie is the movie that challenged that family and tears them apart in a new way.”
We’re curious to see just how Dark Phoenix plays out--whether it’ll be a hurried attempt to finish the franchise before its transfer, an earnest conclusion to the series, or both, we’re excited to see it when it hits theaters on June 7.