Who here remembers X-Men: The Last Stand? What a gargantuan mess of a film that was — and that’s not even from the perspective from a diehard comic book fan. That’s simply from a narrative standpoint. Somehow, one key plotline built up in that last film was relegated to one-third of the film (Dark Phoenix), and the rest of the movie saw other characters act completely out of…well, character.

It was a huge disappointment after two solid films, and Kinberg is more than aware of that fact. During a recent roundtable with many other sci-fi filmmakers, Kinberg admitted that X-Men: Days of Future Past, the follow-up to X-Men: First Class, was a direct response to that reaction from fans:

“I co-wrote X-Men 3, the “Dark Phoenix” story, which is probably the most sacred of the X-Men storylines in the comics. Fanboys and girls did not love the movie [X-Men: The Last Stand]. When I wrote X-Men: Days of Future Past years later — it was a time travel story — I thought, ‘Well, here’s an opportunity to rewrite this mistake — bring Jean Grey back to life.’ I got to go back and essentially erase a $200 million movie.”

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On the whole, I think that’s turned out well for him. X-Men: Days of Future Past was a great movie, and while X-Men: Apocalypse didn’t live up to expectations, there is still a chance for them to stick the landing in X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Though this isn’t the first time Kinberg has expressed regret for the film. Last year, Kinberg said as much to us, saying:

“My regrets about X3—and there are things that I think are really great in that movie and for a lot of people they like that movie—but my regret about the movie is that the Dark Phoenix story was sort of the subplot and the main plot was the cure story, if you remember. I think the main mistake (among others) we made in that movie was taking something that is as profound, dramatic and epic, potentially, as the Dark Phoenix story, and pushing it down to be the B-plot of a movie when it really should be the A-plot of maybe one or more movies. That’s I guess what I would say about is that I felt as though we—for whatever reason, and it was a combination of different impulses and different input—we made a movie that wasn’t truly a Dark Phoenix story, it was a continuation of the X-Men saga and Dark Phoenix was one of the stories within it instead of focusing on Dark Phoenix as the story.”

What do you think of Kinberg’s comments? Let us know down below!

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SOURCE: THR