DARK PHOENIX Producer Reveals How Reshoots Changed The Movie's Final Act - Possible SPOILERS

DARK PHOENIX Producer Reveals How Reshoots Changed The Movie's Final Act - Possible SPOILERS

In a new interview, X-Men producer Hutch Parker reveals how the Dark Phoenix reshoots completely changed the movie's final act and moved the action from outer space to a more mundane setting. Check it out!

By JoshWilding - May 29, 2019 01:05 AM EST
Filed Under: Dark Phoenix
Source: Digital Spy
It's no secret that Dark Phoenix underwent significant (and very expensive) reshoots which delayed it not once, but twice. Now, long-time X-Men producer Hutch Parker has revealed what was changed, and as has been previously rumoured, the final act was indeed moved from outer space...to a train. 

"There was more of a cosmic story...the story ended in space in a much more significant way," he revealed. "We actually shifted that to be back on Earth, most notably, so that we can involve our main characters and see them come together."

It's hard to believe that those working on the film could legitimately believe this is what fans would want from a big screen adaptation of this story. However, that does seem to be the case, and Parker went on to explain why it was important to include more of the movie's characters in the final act.

"We wanted the family to be the thing that motivated Jean to finally embrace her identity, and finally, to allow love to be what allows her to transcend and evolve," he explained, seemingly spoiling how things wrap up for the hero. "But in the first iteration, they weren't present when she's going through a lot of the third act stuff. So we rejigged it so that we could dramatise the degree to which this divided family had come back together for her… that she could witness that, and, and bring [Jessica] Chastain into that sequence."
 
It's strange to see the X-Men franchise handled in this "grounded" way when Marvel Studios has embraced the comic books and delivered a series of billion dollar blockbusters as a result. 

After Dark Phoenix, the characters will be in Kevin Feige's hands, of course, so that means we can look forward to more accurate versions of these beloved heroes and villains on the big screen.

Hit the "View List" button for a recap of Dark Phoenix reveals from Empire Magazine!

Survivor's Simon's Guilt

Last-Stand


"I've lived with the guilt of that for many years," the producer/writer turned director says when asked to reflect on how things played out for the Dark Phoenix Saga when it was adapted in X-Men: The Last Stand. "Somewhere along the way, not because I felt the movie needed it, the A-plot was imposed on the film from the outside."

It sounds like he's passing the buck, but Kinberg went on to talk about how his style of "edgier" filmmaking will change the story. 

"While there are a great many thing in X-Men 3 that I think do work, for me, the tone of that movie wasn't to my taste," he explains. "My taste is an edgier, more intense kind of filmmaking. And I feel we didn't tell an authentic Dark Phoenix story. I'd always, after that film, wanted another chance to tell the story the way I had initially intended."
 

Why Is Simon Kinberg The Right Choice To Helm Dark Phoenix?

Phoenix


Kinberg's fellow producer Hutch Parker seems confident in Dark Phoenix's chances of success with Kinberg at the helm, even if most fans aren't so sure. "I would have encouraged him to pick something smaller. You don't get put under the same microscope. But this was a pretty great fit for a variety of reasons. He knew the cast inside and out. He the the world inside and out."

As for who convinced Kinberg to take the helm, we have Jennifer Lawrence to thank/blame. "She said, 'You should direct the next movie,'" the director reveals. "I hadn't thought about it before then. But when she said it, I felt like, if the next movie is something I fall in love with as a story, I could think of no better first movie to direct."
 

Making Up For Past Mistakes

Jean-1


After acknowledging that bringing Jean Grey back in X-Men: Days of Future Past was "my attempt to reverse [X-Men: The Last Stand] to some degree," Kinberg admitted that "I did feel extra pressure to get it right. The pressure of telling what is, for me, the greatest superhero story in comic book history."

Whether or not he'll succeed in doing it right obviously remains to be seen. 
 

It's Not A Faithful Adaptation Of The Comics

Phoenix-Comics


"There are a lot of things in the comics that aren't in the movie, and things in the movie that aren't in the comics," Kinberg admits after revealing that he took a "lot of license" with the source material for Dark Phoenix

He also reveals that we shouldn't expect to see the likes of Lilandra, Queen of the Shi'ar Empire. "I pared it down to make this a more character based, emotional, hopefully relatable story. That's something I feel like we didn't get right in X3, the emotion of being inside Jean's experience. It wasn't really Jean's story. She was the object of that story, not the subject."
 

This Is Jean Grey's Movie

Jean-G


Kinberg makes it clear that Dark Phoenix is indeed Jean Grey's movie and that put the pressure on Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner. "Sophie is not the biggest movie star in our case, but it is entirely her movie," he confirms. "She's in the most scenes, she has the most lines, she has the most emotional colours to play." That definitely seems like the right approach to telling this story.
 

Why Michael Fassbender And James McAvoy Returned

Magneto


"I guess it wasn't a very good movie," Michael Fassbender says when asked to reflect on the failings of X-Men: Apocalypse. "It's hard to make these movies. Sometimes it misfires. That's just the way it goes." As a result, that movie's failings didn't stop him from returning as Magneto. 

As for James McAvoy, he says: "It would have been very hard to turn this film down with Simon directing it. I think we all felt like that, it felt like the right thing to do. The franchise has been very, very, very good to all of us. And there's a little bit of a sense of responsibility to the material and the studio and also to Simon."
 

Is Professor X The Movie's Villain?

Charles


"I always thought there was something interesting about Charles trying to control something that becomes uncontrollable," Kinberg says when asked why he's revisiting the idea of Professor X using his powers to cover up some big moments in Jean's past.

"And given that this movie is intended to be a modern film about an empowered female character, I felt I had to do that and not just touch on what Charles does to her but expose that and even vilify it." That won't go down well with some X-Men fans...
 

Mystique's Death

Mystique


Fox spoiled Mystique's demise in the trailer for Dark Phoenix ,and Kinberg has now offered an explanation for why he decided to kill Jennifer Lawrence's character off (but not why it was spoiled so soon).

"I wanted their presence in the movie to have dramatic weight and consequence, which didn't necessarily mean that they died. I started thinking about what the movie is about, which is Jean losing control and, as a result, the X-Men being ripped apart. And killing this character turns people against each other in interesting new ways. Also, if you kill someone that the audience expects is unkillable, they don't know who's going to go next."

So, X-Men: Civil War?
 

Jessica Chastain's Mystery Villain

Smith


There's still no word on who Jessica Chastain is playing in Dark Phoenix, but the actress has shed some confusing light on who - or what - she is. "At first there was this idea that she would be ethereal...like an angel. And open. I'm not wearing make-up, which opens the face, opens my eyes. She has to look otherworldly, yet human."

Here's where things get really weird, though. "You know that stereotype of what happens when you're so afraid that your hair turns white? Something happens to her and it's just a bigger emotion than any of us have felt in our lives. It's a primal fear." In other words, it sounds like she comes face to face with the Phoenix Force at some point.
 

X-Men: The End

Charles-1


Disney and Marvel Studios will reboot the X-Men franchise after Dark Phoenix, but how does Simon Kinberg feel about that? "I think we've all made our peace with the idea that we may have had our time with these characters," he reveals. "If this is our last, make it count."

It sounds like Kinberg saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, as he went on to talk about bringing this particular chapter to a close. "I approached this in a way as the culmination of this cycle. It's the ultimate X-Men story. I didn't approach it the way I approached some of the other X-Men movies, thinking, 'What's left to tell after this?' I left it all on the field."
 
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Storm unleashes her powers here and, well, it's not a particularly impressive visual is it? This battle pits the X-Men against Jean Grey and we know from the trailers that her abilities don't have any sort of real impact on the hero's Dark Phoenix persona. Perhaps that's why Cyclops looks so shocked!
 
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It's not a spoiler to say that Mystique dies in Dark Phoenix because Fox decided to reveal that in one of the earliest trailers. As a result, don't expect the hero (remember, she's not a villain in this rebooted X-Men Universe) to have a lot of screentime here. 
 
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Magneto's new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is once again made up of C-List characters from the comics, but the most surprising addition is Beast. He's always hated Magneto, but it appears as if Jean Grey killing Mystique has brought them together as they look to put the Phoenix down once and for all.
 
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Is the X-Mansion in ruins here? 

The franchise has often destroyed the team's home, but this could be anywhere. Still, seeing Scott Summers and Professor X together like this is a really cool visual for fans of the comics. 
 
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Magneto has been the lead villain in pretty much every single X-Men movie, so we can probably expect Marvel Studios to give him a break when they reboot the franchise. With any luck, this movie is going to send him out on a high rather than casually killing the sometime hero/sometime villain off. 
 
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Beast is still a werewolf-type character in Dark Phoenix, but Fox has still done a pretty solid job of bringing the character's beastly appearance to life on the big screen. In fact, he looks a lot like the Kelsey Grammer version we saw in X-Men: The Last Stand here.
 
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Based on what we've seen in the trailers, it seems as if this shot of Jean Grey is her mourning her actions after she killed Mystique in the heat of battle due to her Dark Phoenix persona taking over.
 
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Director Simon Kinberg can be seen on set here alongside Sophie Turner's Jean Grey, and while he's been involved with this franchise for a while now, it appears as if his days working on the X-Men are numbered and nearing their end thanks to the Disney/Fox merger.
 
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Are you guys excited for Dark Phoenix? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. 
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Knightrider
Knightrider - 5/29/2019, 1:21 AM
#ReleaseTheHutchParkerCut
Kumkani
Kumkani - 5/29/2019, 1:25 AM
Can this thing just come out and be dkne with it already?
tmp3
tmp3 - 5/29/2019, 1:30 AM
What a bad summer for movies
GeneralZod
GeneralZod - 5/29/2019, 4:54 AM
@tmp3 - Yup. What a shame WB put Shazam in April in between 2 mega Marvel Studios films. It would have done significantly better as a Summer film.
Kevwebsz
Kevwebsz - 5/29/2019, 1:33 AM
"family" lol
icekid
icekid - 5/29/2019, 1:36 AM
There was ONE sequence that took place in the original third act and there is ONE sequence that takes place in the he new one. There is ONE major character that went to space in the old third act and that SAME character goes to space in the new one.

Stop literally pulling out words from the producers mouth that he never said. It’s just looking like shameless clickbait at this point.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 5/29/2019, 4:06 AM
@icekid - I went back and read the original article from Digital Spy.

All the quotes here were in that article too.

What is he pulling out that the producer never said?

You mention that in the original ending only one character goes into space, and that same character goes into space in the new ending. The producer never said that here. Do you have a link of anyone saying that?
icekid
icekid - 5/29/2019, 3:49 PM
@CorndogBurglar - I’ve seen the current movie, and that old leaked Reddit summary is in fact true. Based on that, it’s easy to see that only one scene took place in space, at the end, with the title character. You even see said scene in the leaked trailer. Where did he say the act took our characters to space. It was on earth through and through. There was a more cosmic element, that’s what he said. What’s more cosmic than a fleet of ships?
WeaponXCII
WeaponXCII - 5/29/2019, 4:24 AM
If Fox cared about “the main characters coming together”, they would have done that from the start- and not always have the same four or five characters in the spotlight.
IronGenesis
IronGenesis - 5/29/2019, 5:18 AM
Yeah the Xmen were ALways trying to bridge the divide between Comic and grounded.
Tonic24k
Tonic24k - 5/29/2019, 5:42 AM
Ready for this franchise to be left in the archives. Has mediocrity ever lasted so long?...

Lock it away never to be rediscovered.

CaptainAmerica
CaptainAmerica - 5/29/2019, 8:37 AM
@Tonic24k - lmfao spoken like a true 10 year old
Tonic24k
Tonic24k - 5/29/2019, 3:18 PM
@CaptainAmerica - Aw sounds like you're a Fox-Men fan. I'm sorry...
CaptainAmerica
CaptainAmerica - 5/29/2019, 6:50 PM
@Tonic24k - fan of all good comic book movies tbh. I don’t let the studio that made it cloud my judgement unlike mindless fan girls like you.
Tonic24k
Tonic24k - 5/29/2019, 8:19 PM
@CaptainAmerica - Well that's obviously not true then. Did you like F4ntastic, too? Lol

Fox NEVER gave us definitive cinematic versions of the X-Men characters. Not only that but they made them look generic as fvck all franchise long. Hell, it took the Deadpool movies to make a proper Colossus. Let's toss in a completely fvcked timeline continuity, inconsistent character portrayal, and attempting a rewrite of Dark Phoenix within its own universe and there's your recipe for a bland and forgettable franchise. The writing was just simply lazy.

Looks to me I'm not the mindless one. Just someone who appreciates quality. Has nothing to do with some loyalty to a single studio. Fox had the chance to deliver but perpetually failed with few exceptions. I mean Fox had the X-MEN and FANTASTIC 4!! Aside from Spider-Man they were the most popular Marvel properties in the world. Marvel Studios created a legacy with the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy! Properties considered B and C list. And shit, Ant-Man not only reviewed MILES better than X-Men: Apocalypse but it out performed in the box office, too. Case in point, Fox put out subpar movies that fell short despite having the A-List properties at their disposal. It's honestly embarrassing.

So yes. Good riddance to the Fox-Men.
CaptainAmerica
CaptainAmerica - 5/30/2019, 6:07 AM
@Tonic24k - lol you wrote all that as a response because you don’t know how to read. I like good films no matter who made them, I don’t think Fantastic 4 was good so I don’t like it. Origins was trash so I don’t like it. See how that works? I don’t let the studio influence whether or not I’ll enjoy it. Thor Dark World = trash, X-Men 3 = trash, Spider-Man 3 = trash. End Game = epic, Logan = epic. I don’t care which studio makes the film as long as it’s good I’ll love it.
Tonic24k
Tonic24k - 5/30/2019, 1:56 PM
@CaptainAmerica - And I think you're missing my point, too. I mentioned "few exceptions" with regard to the Fox-Men franchise. I enjoyed Deadpool; I enjoyed Logan. But those film experiences don't lend to the other films. Much like if only 2 or 3 episodes of a tv show's full season were good...that show would be summed up as a bust.

The universe as a whole is what is so compelling. And so because Fox sucked at long term storytelling and continuity (timelines, time periods, character adaptations, character portrayals) the overall experience suffered. Which results in the franchise's reputation being net negative. Therefore, fvck Fox and their stubborn attempts at a Marvel universe. I LOVE the damn X-Men. So naturally I'm going to resent the studio that handled them so poorly. And yes I'm eager for Marvel Studios to finally write them into the MCU. Not because I have an arbitrary allegiance to Marvel Studios and only Marvel Studios. But because Marvel Studios has given me a reason to trust them with Marvel properties and other studios have been unreliable. See how that works? Success is all about consistency.

On another note, yes Thor 2 was subpar. But major elements of that movie lend to the entire cinematic universe as a whole. Is anyone dying to go back and watch it? No. But we can still point back to it in reference to the Reality Stone and Thor's character development.
hainesy
hainesy - 5/29/2019, 7:51 AM
The difference between MCU and Fox's X-Men movies is so apparent. Simply embracing the comics makes for such better stories. If Fox made Infinity War, Thanos would be a leader of a right wing, white nationalist militia and the Infinity Gauntlet would be a nuclear bomb. It would be grounded and all take place on Earth. And it would suck.
Ryguy88
Ryguy88 - 5/29/2019, 10:08 AM
The movie is coming out regardless of what people claim to care about so let's see what they put together here.
Hawknaba
Hawknaba - 5/29/2019, 12:38 PM
THe only characters left that anyone really wants to say goodbye to are Magneto and Professor X, everyone else either sucks or we met 1 movie ago. (i will miss this quicksilver tho)

Just give us 2 hours of Fassbender and McAvoy having a snog, costumed, in Cerebro and call it a day
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