“There’s a Lot of Sacrifice and a Lot of Suffering”: First Look at Sophie Turner as The Phoenix

While rumors have been swirling that Disney is still working towards a deal to buy Fox’s entertainment properties, that doesn’t stop the X-Men franchise from moving forward with its next film, X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Entertainment Weekly released this fiery cover and some exclusive first looks at the latest attempt to adapt the classic Chris Claremont story.

Simon Kinberg, who previously wrote the screenplay for the last Dark Phoenix adaptation in X-Men: The Last Stand, is in the director’s chair this time, and without studio meddling to reduce the script, he’s glad to have the emotional story he wanted to tell originally finally taking form. “[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,” Kinberg told EW.

After the events of X-Men: Apocalypse, the X-Men are national heroes in 1992 (best year ever), with Professor Xavier giving in to his more egotistical nature. What a shock? “Pride is starting to get the better of him, and he is pushing the X-Men to more extreme missions,” Kinberg says. That new extreme mission is dispatching the team into to space for a rescue mission, during which a solar flare hits the X-Jet, and “the surge of energy ignites a malevolent, power-hungry new force within Jean (Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner)— the Phoenix.” Unlike the comics, where the Phoenix is a cosmic force that fused with Jean, it will instead be framed as something that always lived inside of Jean, which is probably an easier narrative decision than going into the complexity of space creatures and other cosmic life—not to mention potential emotional drama.

Sophie Turner (aka Sansa Stark, Queen in the North) spent time researching multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia in order to better play Jean’s duality. “So many scenes I have to go from broken-down Jean—that’s when she’s most susceptible to Phoenix infiltrating her—to this confident, arrogant, judgmental character within milliseconds.”

It’s promising to be the most emotional X-Men movie yet for the current cast. “This is probably the most emotional X-Men we’ve done and the most pathos-driven,” McAvoy says. “There’s a lot of sacrifice and a lot of suffering.” As someone who has loved the X-Men comics and has dealt with seeing some of my favorite characters being muted into shells of their comic counterpart (ahemStormahem) I always come into an X-Men movie with some trepidation, but I do love the Phenoix saga and I love Sophie Turner so I am hoping it will do justice to that amazing storyline. Or at the very least that year of post-production will give us better special effects than The Last Stand.

Which is your favorite adaptation of X-Men? Mine is X-Men Evolution feel free to @ me, I can take it.

(via Entertainment Weekly, image: EW/Fox)

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