Dark Phoenix Director Says The Film’s Way More Realistic Than Previous X-Men Movies

Expect a much more realistic X-Men movie when Dark Phoenix checks into theaters early next year. Or so says Simon Kinberg.

The filmmaker and all-around series veteran sat down with Empire to run the rule over Dark Phoenix‘s debut trailer, in which the world’s most famous mutants come together to confront one of their own. Jean Grey has gone rogue, you see, and it’s up to Professor X and his gifted allies to avert widespread catastrophe.

It’s a plot that will surely evoke memories of The Last Stand, another big-screen adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga that succumbed to script issues and a bloated runtime. Dark Phoenix heralds an opportunity to set things right, though, and as Kinberg tells Empire, the film itself is also inspired by James Mangold’s Logan in that it serves up a much more mature and realistic X-Men movie than the ones we’ve seen before.

The way I wanted to make the movie was very different than the aesthetic of previous X-Men movies, which I’ve been very involved in and proud of. But I wanted it to feel more naturalistic, I wanted it to feel edgier, more handmade, more real. I was very inspired by what James Mangold did with Logan, and I felt like if I could bring a measure of that aesthetic in the film that all of the intergalactic and larger-scale things that happen in the movie would feel more shocking, more realistic, more emotional. They’d be grounded in some reality.

That’s not to say that Dark Phoenix will totally ignore the fundamentals of the X-Men franchise, including the classic costumes and the overall set design that have helped inform the tone and style of Fox’s prequel saga.

Kinberg continued:

And so, all of the movie – from the costumes, to the title card, to the set design, to the way the X-jet looks – all of that stuff is just more analog in a way. More like, let’s say, the original Star Wars movie. Not that analog, but the movies I grew up loving had this very gritty, edgy, cool, human feeling to them.

Featuring a who’s who of Hollywood talent and more expectations than we can count, X-Men: Dark Phoenix descends into theaters on February 14th.