‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ Trailer Reveals Jean Grey As The Villain
The highly anticipated release of X-Men: Dark Phoenix is coming in February 2019, and Fox has just released the trailer for the latest film, showing Jean Grey as the villain the X-Men will have to battle against.
As reported by Vox, this will be the fourth film in the rebooted X-Men franchise, after 2011’s X-Men: First Class, 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, and 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse.
The film will see the group of mutants battling a villain much closer to home, with Sophie Turner playing the role of Jean Grey this time around. According to the publication, this adaptation will see a story much more in line with the original comics, showing Jean’s relationship with and battle against the Phoenix, a dark and powerful entity.
This plot line first came to the fore in the Uncanny X-Men‘s late-’70s Phoenix Saga arc and again in 1980 in the Dark Phoenix Saga Arc.
In the trailer, audiences will for the first time see the trauma of Jean’s childhood, including the accident that killed both her parents. But it’s not as simple as just an accident, and highlights that Jean is “capable of hurting her loved ones with her powers,” as well as her struggle to prevent that from happening.
Tonight. #DarkPhoenix pic.twitter.com/7SoRtBFIXS
— 20th Century Studios (@20thcentury) September 26, 2018
According to the comic books, the Phoenix has bonded itself to Jean, which both gives her immense power and makes her extraordinarily dangerous. In the comics, the story ended “with the death and sacrifice of Jean.”
Other actors who also make appearances in the trailer include Jennifer Lawrence (returning as Mystique), Michael Fassbender (returning as Magneto), and James McAvoy (returning as Professor X). At the end of Apocalypse, audiences saw a newly formed group of X-Men that included Jean, Storm, Cyclops, and Quicksilver. The trailer ends with a funeral scene, and a “conspicuously absent Mystique,” leaving the fate of the mutants in question during Dark Phoenix.
Previous adaptations of the X-Men stories have seen Jean played by Famke Janssen in the questionable original films, but it seems that Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg will be staying truer to the comic stories, even down to the detail of the X-Men wearing blue spacesuits in the new trailer.
On that same note, fans can likely expect to see Jean imbued by the cosmic force of the Phoenix and struggling to control the massive power she is given as a result.
