X-Men: Days of Future past had given writer and now director Simon Kinberg and 20th Century Fox the opportunity to give the X-Men  a soft reboot and be able to tell the Dark Phoenix story in a way that is more faithful to the iconic comic book arc from Marvel Comics by Chris Claremont in 1980. With that said it looks like we are reaching the end of this X-Men run of films, but is this by choice or something that has been forced by the recent Disney acquisition of 20th Century Fox? This past weekend LRM Online had the opportunity to be part of a round table discussion with Kinberg as well as producer Hutch Parker, who clarified their intentions with Dark Phoenix.

Films do not happen overnight, sometimes it takes years for a film to be developed, filmed and edited. During the discussion Kinberg said that Dark Phoenix was, “the culmination of this cycle of X-Men movies, not necessarily the end but the culmination.” The writing process for the film had started over three years ago, a long time before Disney had the idea to by 20th Century Fox. As a matter a fact the film had already finished shooting when the merger happened.

Kinberg also calls the Dark Phoenix Saga “the ultimate and most iconic X-Men story” that was going to allow him to take an X-Men franchise or family that has been around for twenty years in one way or another and “test this family like they have never been tested before. Break that family apart like they have never been broken apart before. Bring them back apart ultimately in a new configuration. They will feel as though you had culminated where those characters could go within this cycle and started really quite new by the end of this movie.”

Another reason is that you can only keep the cast together for so long, Kinberg had a feeling that this may be the last time the he would be able to keep a good portion of the cast onboard for another X-Men film. He says that, “honestly also I felt that this was the last time we were going to get Michael and James and Jennifer and Nic Holt maybe for these films. So there was this feeling that if, if in fact this is the last story of this cycle, then this was the right story to tell to do that.” A Dark Phoenix film is definitely not the story anyone wants to start their X-Men franchise with, so I would agree that if your going to go out and it might as well go out guns blazing, not to say that he wouldn’t want to come back and do another film.

RELATED: WONDERCON 2019 – X-MEN: SIMON KINBERG WOULD LOVE TO CONTINUE WORKING ON THE MOVIES

Parker talked about how many franchises “hold back and play it safe” because they hold on to ideas for future films, instead being aggressive in their storytelling. But he believes that this hurts films in the long run especially with how much competition there is out there with other studios. “I don’t think these movies can afford that. I think you have to kind of go into movies now given how competitive the landscape is and play everything you got. That is part of what was behind certain decisions, maybe shocking dramatic ones of killing of characters or seeing some of the philosophies run their course right or emotional ideas be completed,” continued Parker, “for me there is a lot closure just in that. Just in feeling that there is not lots of dangling potential winks. Its really taking ideas and playing them through and that is a bitter sweet quality but I also think it’s part of what makes the movie feel more emotional.”

At the end of most superhero films these days we are always left with the feeling of “What’s next”, spending a lot of time looking for clues as far as to what next film the franchise would be looking to make. Both Kinberg and Parker referenced Logan as a film that provided some sort of closure and how they were looking for Dark Phoenix to do the same. With so many unknowns which include not knowing if you can keep the cast as well having new Disney bosses, it would seem like this would be a very appropriate time to wrap up this version of the X-Men.

But we are curious, would you like to seem these X-Men characters, including the actors, in the MCU? Let us know in the comment section below!

20th Century Fox’s Dark Phoenix hits the web June 7th, 2019.

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Source: LRM Online