Dark Phoenix X-Men: Dark Phoenix News and Speculation Thread - - - - - - Part 15

[Marvel united]

Kinberg: "Early on, I felt like I really wanted to focus the movie on our main characters and I really wanted to focus upon Jean's struggle. I wanted the movie to feel grounded and I wanted it to feel emotional and intimate, and not have too many things that would distract or take away from Jean's evolution, deevolution, struggle, final decision in this film. I wanted that arc to feel like it was a really emotional experience for the audience. And so things like the Hellfire Club [and the] Shi'ar Empire felt as though they were such huge subplots or plots from the original saga that they could potentially take away from the focus on Jean and the X-Men. And so instead of doing Lilandra as a character, which would require the relationship with Charles and all what comes with that, I made Jessica's character sort of an amalgam of different alien characters that are part of, in a way, resembling this Shi'ar storyline but not going all the way there."

Why X-Men: Dark Phoenix Cuts So Much of the Comic Story

Curious how he doesn't mention the story had to squished into one movie and all those things had to be jettisoned.

Suddenly the Hellfire Club and Shi'ar are such terrible things that take away from the focus on Jean and the X-Men, lol...

The spin is strong in this one.

Wow...

"You never learn, do you?"

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Wow...

"You never learn, do you?"

It might still work better than expected this time.

 

[Marvel united]

I really don’t see how or why people can’t comprehend that Kinberg had to condense the storyline to one movie..you can’t have all these characters in one movie..who’s fault is that??? Now that’s the real question...

Huh?


We JUST got a cosmic epic this year with dozens of characters and a huge overarching story. It *is Kinberg's fault, because he has neither the scope nor the vision to do a faithful adaption of the Phoenix saga. It can be done, Kinberg just ain't the man for the job

 

[Charzhin0]

Around 50% isn't a passing grade though. You get a grade of less than 70% in school or a job supervisor/s gave you an approval score of 55%, that wouldn't be okay. Below 60% is given a rotten splat for a reason. A score around 50s also suggests a mixed reaction and seriously who wants a mixed reaction over a positive reaction from critics? Rotten tomatoes is a good site to get a consensus, or for people who are unsure about a film and looking for consensus if something is worth seeing or not. But if I really want to see a film, I would see it regardless of the RT rating but of course I don't ignore that RT can reflect a quality / perception of a film, even if I don't agree with it.

Passing grades should be awarded for absolute scores like marks out of 10. The RT % is an aggregate as you know, so it shouldnt really be used as a pass/fail mark

Superman Returns has 7.0/10 at 75% fresh - That seems well correlated

Aquaman has 6.02/10 at 65% fresh
But Man of Steel is rated higher at 6.25/10 but has a 56% rotten

They should just get rid of the fresh rating and replace it with the traditional average score out of 10 or 5*

 

[X-Maniac]

Sure, he uses the words “early on” but only in the context of Jean and her story, that’s completely true, which is why those elements would have served better justice if they were introduced and spread over two films with the majority focus being on Jean for both.

In a now 4 hour saga, if you dedicate an hour and a half of that to those other elements, you succeed at doing both!



I don’t see his statements as that. He’s talking about the now, not the “then”, bending the truth and omitting the entire topic are two different things.

Like if I said I fell on my way back home and say I fell on my way back home because I got hit by a car, I didn’t lie in the first statement, because I did fall. I just omitted talking about the car.

With his limitations, he did have to get creative and he did have to justify those creations with the reasons he did.

Okay, well that's your way of viewing this... but i do feel many of the creative decisions here are a bit poor. This is why it does feel like 'more of the same' in many respects.

It could have been a chance to give a bit more depth to Storm, maybe bring up her goddess backstory and how she has a view on control and restraint and retaining humanity
and how we are not meant to be gods.

But Mystique has been shoehorned in, we have a Selene and Red Lotus we never wanted (plenty of other choices) and Genosha looks like a junkyard.

I think I'd have preferred the Genosha of Singer's planned X3, where it was based on the 90s series version as a slave island. Singer proposed Phoenix as a force for good freeing the mutant slaves and thus creating conflict - there was a planned scene with a prison ship dumped ashore by Phoenix. I believe the conflict with government officials triggered her to go all Dark Phoenix.

Chastain's odd alien character could work (similar to the manipulative older Emma Frost that Singer had envisaged) in streamlining the mental manipulations aspect of the story.

Overall, it doesn't feel like a satisfying end to the franchise.

 

[Charzhin0]

If Fox were going to do an epic conclusion with the Dark phoenix saga by 2019, then they needed to have begun in 2011 by keeping the Hellfire club alive in FC, introducing the young X-men cast straight away and slowly integrating cosmic elements in successive years (without the 10 year jumps).

No long term cohesive plan was the problem, not kinberg

 

[SumT]

and Kinberg is the overseer of this franchise since 2011 or sooner, so yes, he is the problem.

 

[x-er]

I hope the MCU skips Dark Phoenix and just keeps the Phoenix Force if they plant to use Jean Grey.

 

[Marvel united]

If they don't want to do the Phoenix and still use Jean, then they should focus on the Summers bloodline stuff with Sinister. But I'd still like to, maybe one day see the Phoenix again in some form. Even If we just have it as a benevolent force for Jean. The door to Dark Phoenix could always be open if Feige wants pull that trigger

 

[Zarex]

Huh?

We JUST got a cosmic epic this year with dozens of characters and a huge overarching story. It *is Kinberg's fault, because he has neither the scope nor the vision to do a faithful adaption of the Phoenix saga. It can be done, Kinberg just ain't the man for the job

To be fair, Fox was never going to give Writer/Director/Producer Simon Kinberg the budget to make a cosmic Dark Phoenix epic after Apocalypse underperformed at the BO.

Now, Writer/Director/Producer Kinberg may have been able to put something resembling the Dark Phoenix story on screen if he didn't put a large chunk of the $200M budget into multi million dollar exit bonuses for his pals Lawrence, Fassbender and McAvoy. That's why you don't put a rookie director who is also a longtime industry insider in charge of your tentpole superhero flick.

 

[X-Maniac]

Producer Hutch Parker: "[We had to figure out] how to marry this cosmic plot, and the notion of bringing in a character from outer space into what is such a grounded, realistic family drama, and not have the cosmic plot sort of overwhelm, or blow out the details of the nuance and the emotion of the core plot of movie

"That's something frankly, that we found ourselves grappling with all the way through. We knew it was an issue going in. We found ourselves trying different things all the way through, both in production, and then again, in post-production, to find the right balance, and found it to be much more delicate than we would have thought.

"But we feel good about where we've landed, and, and hopefully the audience agree that we found the right marriage of the two."

How X-Men Dark Phoenix reshoots completely changed the film's ending

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Huh?
View attachment 25549

We JUST got a cosmic epic this year with dozens of characters and a huge overarching story. It *is Kinberg's fault, because he has neither the scope nor the vision to do a faithful adaption of the Phoenix saga. It can be done, Kinberg just ain't the man for the job

To be fair to Kinberg though, this movie had a long build up for it letting people recognize and be familiar with the characters to make it work. When he and Zak Penn wrote the Last Stand they didn't have much to work with in terms of giving all the other characters screen time to remind people what they knew about these characters beforehand, or introduce them properly in such a crammed movie.

 

[X-Maniac]

To be fair to Kinberg though, this movie had a long build up for it letting people recognize and be familiar with the characters to make it work. When he and Zak Penn wrote the Last Stand they didn't have much to work with in terms of giving all the other characters screen time to remind people what they knew about these characters beforehand, or introduce them properly in such a crammed movie.

A long build-up? Who are you kidding. We only met Jean, Storm and Nightcrawler in the previous movie and the X-Men weren't really formed until the final scene in the Danger Room. And now Jean is already Dark Phoenix.

X3 had the benefit of us knowing the characters (except Beast) from the two prior movies.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

A long build-up? Who are you kidding. We only met Jean, Storm and Nightcrawler in the previous movie and the X-Men weren't really formed until the final scene in the Danger Room. And now Jean is already Dark Phoenix.

X3 had the benefit of us knowing the characters (except Beast) from the two prior movies.

I meant Infinity War is the one that had a long build up. I wasn't kidding anyone when I said the writers of X-Men 3 didn't have that luxury.

 

[psylockolussus]

To be fair to Kinberg though, this movie had a long build up for it letting people recognize and be familiar with the characters to make it work. When he and Zak Penn wrote the Last Stand they didn't have much to work with in terms of giving all the other characters screen time to remind people what they knew about these characters beforehand, or introduce them properly in such a crammed movie.

But Kinberg and Zak Penn didnt need to cram so many characters in the movie. Psylocke, Kitty, Angel, Arclight, Omega Kid, Spyke, Multiple Man, some of those could have been easily cut in the scripting stage and just gave the role to the other eXisting characters. I felt like some of them were just added for power display. They had Stacy X at one point since a concept art leaked, while they didn't know what to do with Nightcrawler other than a small role which led to someone from foX cutting Alan Cumming out of the script, iirc.

 

[psylockolussus]

A long build-up? Who are you kidding. We only met Jean, Storm and Nightcrawler in the previous movie and the X-Men weren't really formed until the final scene in the Danger Room. And now Jean is already Dark Phoenix.

X3 had the benefit of us knowing the characters (except Beast) from the two prior movies.

I think its also a big part of the problem, its the 2nd movie of Sophie as Jean and they are already introducing Dark PhoeniX. As if Dark Phoenix wasn't portrayed (badly) in a previous film set in the 2000s and now they retreading and setting it in an earlier decade/time. Doing Dark Phoenix was not a good idea. Kinberg could have easily looked for another storyline from the comics to adapt.

And as a X-Men fan, who really wants an unnamed character that is an amalgamation of Hellfire Club/Shiar? I can't believe after 12 films in the series, we have a lead villain that has no name.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

But Kinberg and Zak Penn didnt need to cram so many characters in the movie. Psylocke, Kitty, Angel, Arclight, Omega Kid, Spyke, Multiple Man, some of those could have been easily cut in the scripting stage and just gave the role to the other eXisting characters. I felt like some of them were just added for power display. They had Stacy X at one point since a concept art leaked, while they didn't know what to do with Nightcrawler other than a small role which led to someone from foX cutting Alan Cumming out of the script, iirc.

Perhaps, but I thought it was done better than people think for a war movie that gave us throwaway not developed characters.

 

[X-Maniac]

Indications that the film's original ending was stolen by Marvel Studios - must be referring to Captain Marvel. However, as it didn't include most of the actual X-Men, we're probably getting something better....

'X-Men: Dark Phoenix' ending completely reshot due to 'parallels' with another superhero movie (exclusive)

James McAvoy, who plays a conflicted Charles Xavier in Dark Phoenix, says there’s more to it than that. Talking about the reshoots, McAvoy admits to Yahoo Movies UK: “The end [of Dark Phoenix] changed a hell of a lot.” McAvoy admits to Yahoo Movies UK: “The end [of Dark Phoenix] changed a hell of a lot.”

“The finale HAD to change. There was a lot of overlap and parallels with another superhero movie that came out... a while ago. And we had no idea that we were...”

“They had spies on set,” interjects co-star Michael Fassbender, returning for a fourth time as Erik “Magneto” Lensherr, “and [they] basically stole our ideas.”

“We were basically trawling through the source material it seems,” finishes McAvoy.

 

[X-Maniac]

Goodzila is not being well received by critics
hope this helps DP mainly in china

I'd be very surprised if a monster movie does not do well in the Asian market.

 

[EnDz0n3]

Sounds a lot like FC and Vaughn saying they had to reshoot Emma and Xavier's astral plane battle from FC because it was too reminiscent of Inception.

But not really. How can Kinberg look at the movie, say let's reshoot the ending because it's too much like Captain Marvel, but then not say "You know what? We should ALSO change Dark Phoenix's costume...it looks too much like Famke's."

If you're a Fox Exec and you're faced with your movie's 2nd delay, and you have a director that would rather remind people of X3 (the movie that nearly derailed your franchise) than a Billion $ movie (a movie I'm not even that big a fan of) that has a fairly healthy word-of-mouth amongst fandom, you must really be kicking yourselves and start quoting Sir Ian from Kinberg's X3: "What have I done?"

 

[x-er]

There kinda were constant parallels with the MCU throughout the x-men prequels. Quicksilver first appeared in X-Men after the MCU had announced their Quicksilver. Psylocke joined X-Men with Gamora's same hairstyle after Gamora had already been on the big screen. I think Apocalypse was their way to compete with Thanos as well.

The standout for me was really Fan Binbing's Blink. Believing in your own unique vision when you know you're good can really pay off sometimes.

 

[hurrikane2]

It's nothing to do with whether 'people' can 'comprehend' it.

Kinberg himself doesn't admit that's what went on. So either it was never a two-parter and people are lying to make Kinberg the victim if this film flops, or Kinberg is lying and doesn't want to mention he was forced to trim stuff. Either way, we are not getting the truth from one direction or another...

But even if this had been a two-parter, i have no confidence that they could pull off Shi'ar and cosmic stuff properly. Not to the standards we expect from CBMs these days.

Hey

Huh?
View attachment 25549

We JUST got a cosmic epic this year with dozens of characters and a huge overarching story. It *is Kinberg's fault, because he has neither the scope nor the vision to do a faithful adaption of the Phoenix saga. It can be done, Kinberg just ain't the man for the job

umm dude that movie had like 20 movies leading up to that movie ..you can’t compare the two

 

[2kt09]

Indications that the film's original ending was stolen by Marvel Studios - must be referring to Captain Marvel. However, as it didn't include most of the actual X-Men, we're probably getting something better....

'X-Men: Dark Phoenix' ending completely reshot due to 'parallels' with another superhero movie (exclusive)

James McAvoy, who plays a conflicted Charles Xavier in Dark Phoenix, says there’s more to it than that. Talking about the reshoots, McAvoy admits to Yahoo Movies UK: “The end [of Dark Phoenix] changed a hell of a lot.” McAvoy admits to Yahoo Movies UK: “The end [of Dark Phoenix] changed a hell of a lot.”

“The finale HAD to change. There was a lot of overlap and parallels with another superhero movie that came out... a while ago. And we had no idea that we were...”

“They had spies on set,” interjects co-star Michael Fassbender, returning for a fourth time as Erik “Magneto” Lensherr, “and [they] basically stole our ideas.”

“We were basically trawling through the source material it seems,” finishes McAvoy.

lmfao, not the first & most definitely not the last for the House of Mouse

 

[Web-Head]

8 more days. Do we know when the review embargo lifts? I'm assuming the day after the premiere.

 

[EnDz0n3]

I think you can always trust on McAvoy to be fairly candid about these movies. Remember McAvoy's fairly innocuous (at the time) comments about these movies' casting couch, joking about being on his knees...during the DOFP presentation at SDCC, sitting right next to Bryan Singer? Or making fun of Louis' weird choice of "a lot of browns" when it came to the wardrobe for that movie? Or saying he had to stop himself from laughing when trying to say dialogue from Kinberg's script?

JLaw’s the same way but at least McAvoy, even with his jabs and jokes about random things, seems like he actually wants to be there as a part of this franchise.