Kinberg Reveals DARK PHOENIX Was Always Seen as The End

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All good things must come to an end. Despite earlier comments suggesting Dark Phoenix was the beginning of a “new era” of X-Men films, director Simon Kinberg revealed to comicbook.com that the film was always conceived as the final film of the series. This comes at an awkward time where fans view Dark Phoenix as a bit of a “lame duck” entry in the X-Men franchise, since it seems inevitable that this continuity and these versions of these characters will get tossed out and rebooted by Marvel Studios in the years to come- following the merger of Fox and Disney.

Kinberg is quick to note, though, that the project actually began its life with the knowledge that it was would the closing chapter of a nearly two decade long X-Men saga that began in 2000:

“From the beginning of conceiving what we were going to do with this film and writing it, which was three plus years ago, so long before there was a Disney merger, I felt like this was the natural culmination for this cycle of X-Men movies. Because it is seeing this family that you’ve come to love and know for how ever many films, and if you count the originals almost 20 years now, you see that family tested in a whole new way. You see that family start to fall apart in a real way for the first time, ultimately come back together.”

Kinberg then acknowledged Dark Phoenix is the end of the mainline X-Men series from Fox:

“That felt like the culmination of a storyline or a cycle of these films. And for me, and for most of the fans … Dark Phoenix is the ultimate and most iconic storyline in the X-Men universe. And so I didn’t know how we would top Dark Phoenix within this cycle. This felt like we had to earn our way back to Dark Phoenix. And I feel like we did hopefully, and beyond that felt like we’d want to sort of create an ending and the possibility of a new beginning. And that’s what we do on this film.”

Earlier this month, THR reported that the X-Men franchise will receive a reboot with Marvel Studios, save for Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool. Deadline reported over the weekend that Fox screened the first 10 minutes from the film at WonderCon in Anaheim, and the preview earned praise and raves from those in attendance.

Maybe we should take our own Katie Gilstrap’s advice to focus on the positive things we’re hearing about this film, sit back, and enjoy it when it’s released on June 7. What do you think?

SOURCE: ComicBook.com