Sophie Turner's X-Men: Dark Phoenix Prep Put A Real Strain On Her Mental Health

Once upon a time, in the pre-MCU age, there was an X-Men franchise at 20th Century Fox, and ... it wasn't half-bad! At first!

Bryan Singer's "X-Men" was the first Marvel-derived blockbuster in the history of motion pictures ("Blade" had been a standalone hit before), and the beneficiary of crackerjack casting with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine (sorry, Dougray Scott). Greenlit on a tight budget by a leery studio, the film's massive success meant Singer got close to carte blanche on the sequel "X2," which delivered the kind of mutant mayhem comic book fans had been jonesing to see on the big screen since Chris Claremont and John Byrne's 1970s heyday.

When Warner Bros. lured Singer away to direct the creepy "Superman Returns," Hollywood cockroach Brett Ratner crawled up and onto the director's chair and delivered the execrable "X-Men: The Last Stand."

The franchise didn't die, but it was threatening to become Wolverine-centric. Still, Fox felt there was untapped box-office potential in the other characters, and they were vindicated when Matthew Vaughn's "X-Men: First Class" delighted fans and critics alike in 2011. This unexpected resurgence brought Singer back into the fold, which might've been a mistake. He bungled his adaptation of the Claremont-Byrne classic "Days of Future Past," and knocked out one of the worst superhero movies ever made in "X-Men: Apocalypse."

And yet, like a degenerate gambler so deep in the hole they feel compelled to let what's left of their squandered bank account ride on one roulette bet, Fox spent $200 million on Simon Kinberg's "Dark Phoenix." A forced, uncalled-for, single-serving adaptation of Claremont-Byrne's expansive "Dark Phoenix" saga, the film flopped and kiboshed Fox's X-Men run. It's a terrible movie, but it's not star Sophie Turner's fault. In fact, if everyone had taken the movie as seriously as she did, they might've wound up with something worth watching.

If you've watched the behind-the-scenes documentary on the "Dark Phoenix" Blu-ray (which would've required you to buy "Dark Phoenix" on Blu-ray, so I'm guessing this is all new to you), you know that the creative team behind this misbegotten movie were blown away by the "Game of Thrones" star's commitment to the role.

If properly written, Jean Grey is the most tragic figure in the X-Men universe. She's a telepath whose powers rival those of Professor Xavier's, and when she returned from the grave as Phoenix, those powers exploded beyond her control. She was mentally erratic, which was a problem of galactic proportions given her star-destroying might. Kinberg, who failed the character miserably as a writer and director on "Dark Phoenix," was nevertheless impressed by Turner's immersion in Grey's psychological turmoil.

As he observed in the documentary:

"Sophie did all kinds of research, especially on schizophrenia. She would walk around in preparation for the movie with headphones in her ears with just random voices playing so that she would know what it felt like to have to walk through the world hearing voices you couldn't control, that weren't actually embodied voices of the people who were in the room or the space with you."

After playing the manipulable Sansa Stark over eight seasons of "Game of Thrones," Grey gave Turner the opportunity to play a character imbued with inconceivable power and ungovernable emotions. The scarlet-tressed actor is perfect casting, and, if nothing else, she understood the assignment. Per Turner in the documentary:

"The thing about Jean Grey is that she's not a villain. But she's not, like, a 'Duh duh duh dah!' superhero, gonna save the world everything is fine! She's very tormented and broken and has a real kind of realism to her. I made a conscious decision before I started to lose all my inhibitions and, like, go for it, and not be self-conscious or vain. Because often that happens a lot with actors, and certainly happened with me, and I just wanted to have this be my give-it-all."

When Disney acquired Fox in 2019, they at long last gave Marvel Studios the opportunity to play in the mutant sandbox. At present, it looks like we'll be waiting a while to get a new iteration of the X-Men (especially with Jackman's Wolverine getting inserted into the "Deadpool" series), but when they do get around to resuscitating this franchise, they'd do well to check in with Turner. Because she deserves better than "Dark Phoenix."