Admit it, we’re all at least a little bit jaded when it comes to the upcoming Dark Phoenix. These films have, by and large, been pretty good (though it does seem like every fan has a completely different opinion about every single movie), but with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, fans have a tendency to assume Disney will ultimately Thanos the existing XCU (if you can call it that) in favor of their own deal.

With that in mind, many fans are heading into Fox’s latest X-Men film, Dark Phoenix, with the assumption that this will be the last film before it is completely rebooted. But will that actually be the case? Here’s what the film’s director, Simon Kinberg, had to say.

“I see it as a new chapter. I see it as taking the franchise in a different direction tonally. And that doesn’t mean that the next one will have the same tone, it just means that the next one can have a different tone. I think for many years, the X-Men, Bryan [Singer] really transformed the superhero genre in 2000 or 2001 when the first one came out. That’s almost 20 years ago. It is a long time ago. And at that time, superhero movies were not wildly popular, actually. There had been a few failures in the mid-90s, and there hadn’t been a lot of superhero movies, if any, around that time and X-Men sort of was revolutionary in its moment.

“But that was 20 years ago and I think, I really felt like it time to really change the look, the feel, the tone, the vibe of these movies. And that doesn’t mean this is the one going forward, it just means that if it’s me or whoever directs the next one, you can make it different, and you have to make it different.”

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Obviously, it’s a bit too early to tell what the actual concrete future for the franchise is, but it sounds an awful lot like this film will leave things open to go in any direction — as in they can abandon it and go off in any new territory, including a reboot, if needed. Kinberg is indeed right. A lot has changed in the two decades since the franchise kicked off, and even now, they seem to be retaining vestiges of that former era.

Hopefully, that means — no matter if it’s in the MCU or not — that they can go full teen superhero soap opera in the future, allowing itself to indulge in those elements without fear of not being embraced by the mainstream. But we’ll have to wait and see.

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SOURCE: CinePop