After 20 years, seven films, and half a dozen spin-offs, the X-Men series is coming to an end when Dark Phoenix. The latest in the mutant saga has powerful psychic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) giving in to an incredible power dwelling within her. The newly born “Dark Phoenix” threatens humans and mutants alike, along with the planet itself.
Whether you’ve been with the series since its beginning or you’re a newly minted X-Fan, here is what you need to know about Dark Phoenix.
The Premise and Source Material
Dark Phoenix is based on the 1980 comic book arc “The Dark Phoenix Saga” by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. The movie shares the premise: accidental exposure to a solar flare awakens the ultrapowerful Phoenix Force that resides within the X-Men’s already formidable telepath, Jean Grey.
In the comics, the Phoenix Force was a cosmic entity that originally came to Earth during the Stone Age and eventually bonded itself to Jean when she was a child. Whether this is the case in the movie isn’t clear. But we’ve already seen Jean manifest the Phoenix at the end of X-Men: Apocalypse to defeat that movie’s villain.
That wasn’t even the first time this series has used the character. 2006’s The Last Stand loosely adapted the Dark Phoenix story. But this redo aims to be closer to the comics story than the first version.
The State of the X-Men
Like the last few movies in the main series that started with X-Men: First Class, Dark Phoenix takes place about 10 years after the preceding film. It moves the action up to the early ’90s. At this point, the X-Men have established themselves as a proper crimefighting team and offer their services (and invisible space jet) to the government. That’s what puts them in the path of a solar flare during a rescue mission in orbit.
But those are the “good” mutants. The historically human-hating Magneto has taken a much lower profile. He’s established a mutants-only country called Genosha as a haven from the persecution mutants face from the rest of the world. But the new threat from the Phoenix Force draws him back to his former friends/enemies in the X-Men.
What’s So Bad About the Phoenix?
The last time we saw Jean Grey unleash the Phoenix Force, it wasn’t all bad. She used it to destroy Apocalypse and save the world from having to build a bunch more pyramids or something. So what’s the big deal?
The problem is that the Phoenix Force is, in fact, a malevolent second identity that is separate from Jean. Professor Xavier has had to place blocks into her mind to keep it at bay, but in Dark Phoenix, it’s starting to take over. The Phoenix Force has almost unlimited power. In the comics, it eats a star and creates a supernova that destroys an entire, populated solar system.
With it overcoming Jean for control of her body, it falls to her former teammates to figure out how to stop her. Xavier wants to lock it away again to save his student, but Magneto thinks the safest option is to kill her, leaving the Force without a host. So odds are pretty good that they’re going to fight yet again.
Is This the End of the X-Men?
It is, kind of. This will be the last X-Men movie that Fox will release, so it will end the current series. Future films will go through Fox’s new owner, Disney, and the mutants will likely fold into the Marvel Cinematic Universe . Nobody has released any details on how that will work or whether Disney/Marvel will recast everyone (again).
Regardless of how the mutants end up in the MCU, however, Dark Phoenix is wrapping up a 20-year series that gave us Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, the better film version of Quicksilver, and blue Kelsey Grammer. It’s truly the end of an era.
Some things are truly worth not holding back – order the KFC Saucy Wings now! And see Dark Phoenix in theaters soon.
