Entertainment Weekly’s December 2017 issue has offered an exclusive first look at Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner as the fiery Jean Grey, a/k/a Phoenix. The new X-Men film, entitled Dark Phoenix, has been in post-production for nearly a year. Director Simon Kinberg spoke on the longer period, saying “I wanted the post time to deliver on the nuance of the visual effects, not just the scale of them. That takes time.”
This new film, as revealed by the concept art, will see the X-Men boldly going where they never have before – space. While on a rescue mission, a solar flare hits the X-Jet leaving the team in jeopardy. In order to save the team, Jean taps into an extreme surge of energy and ends up unlocking the Phoenix.
Jessica Chastain (Molly's Game) stars alongside Turner as a brutal shapeshifter who intends on manipulating Phoenix for her own means. “Simon and I were talking about the character and I said, ‘I keep thinking of the vet who tells you you need to put your dog down. There’s something very clinical about it,’” says the actress of her inspiration.
Jean isn’t the only mutant getting a makeover in this new film, as a photo of Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique sees her with a new bob and new attitude. “She’s grown up a lot,” Lawrence said. “She’s more maternal which surprised me. She starts to get more protective of the [school] children and Charles wants to push them to prove to the world that mutants can be good for humanity and I just see them as small children.”
Lawrence also commented on the darker feel of the new film, saying, “I would call Dark Phoenix a drama. We have really great action scenes and we go to space like within the first five minutes of the movie. So it’s definitely exciting but emotionally all these characters are taking the biggest, most extreme dives than they have in the whole series.”
Turner committed herself to her role as Jean, even studying multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia. “So many scenes I have to go from broken-down Jean – that’s when she’s most subsceptible to Phoenix infiltrating her – to this confident, arrogant, judgmental character within milliseconds,” said Turner.
Dark Phoenix is set in 1992, about 10 years after the events of X-Men: Apocalypse. The team will consist of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Quicksilver (Evan Peters), with Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) again leading the team. The film is scheldued to hit theaters on November 2, 2018.