X-Men: Dark Phoenix will be trying to, once again, tackle the story of the Dark Phoenix Saga. As such, there has been a lot of buzz as to who will direct it and who will be returning to the screen. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Sophie Turner, and Jennifer Lawrence will return to play Professor X, Magneto, Jean Grey, and Mystique, respectively. Rumors are also swirling that Jessica Chastain is in talks to play villain Shi’ar Empress Lilandra, but nothing has been confirmed. Jubilee si reportedly not making an appearance in this upcoming film.
Simon Kinberg was confirmed as the director, making the feature his directorial debut. Kinberg wrote a few bombs, like This Means War, Fantastic Four (2015), and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but also has worked on X-Men films before. Unfortunately, that list includes two of the franchise’s worst films: X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Apocalypse. Hopefully, he won’t make the same mistakes twice. Bryan Singer will stay on as a producer.
For those who do not remember (or have made the effort to forget), X-Men: The Last Stand tackles the Dark Phoenix plot line so haphazardly, that one of the comic’s biggest event was relegated to little more than a poorly executed B-plot. We saw a lot of plot build-up for Phoenix in X-Men: Apocalypse with Jean Grey being plagued by nightmares and using the Phoenix Force at the end of the film. How close the film will stick to the comics is currently unknown.
Seeing Jennifer Lawrence back on the cast is pretty interesting, given how much she appears to hate playing Mystique, most likely due to have to spend hours in the make-up chair to get to that signature blue hue. It doesn’t seem that Wolverine will be making an appearance, true to the statement that Logan was the last appearance, so at least there’s one thing to look forward to.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is set to debut in theaters on November 2, 2018.
