'Dark Phoenix' Clip And Featurette: Cranking Up The Tension, Leaning On Nostalgia

This week, the X-Men franchise as we know it is coming to an end. Dark Phoenix will be the final installment of the comic book movie series that started all the way back in 2000. While the franchise was essentially rebooted in 2011 with X-Men: First Class, it ended up getting a deeper connection to the original trilogy of movies thanks to X-Men: Days of Future Past, making the original X-Men and the new, younger mutants intertwined in a confusing timeline of superhero spectacle.

With one last push to get audiences to witness the end of the X-Men on the big screen, a new Dark Phoenix clip gives us ample tension between Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his surrogate sister Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) after their space mission to help NASA astronauts almost took a deadly turn. Plus, a new featurette leans heavy on nostalgia by having the cast of the movie reflect on their experience with the original X-Men movies and their work on the more recent films.

When the stakes are this high, you must ask if the risks are worth the reward.
Check out an exclusive first look at #DarkPhoenix and see it in theaters next weekend. pic.twitter.com/TTaePKA4Rg

— Apple TV (@AppleTV) June 2, 2019

Mystique is pretty pissed off at Professor X after having the X-Men risk their necks on a dangerous mission that they maybe should have never been on to begin with. Since we know what's coming, it's easy to be mad at Charles, who has always been a little reckless with how he handles mutant lives while also trying to keep them protected from outside forces. But leadership is hard.

One thing that stuck out to me in this clip is giving Mystique the line, "By the way, the women are always saving the men around here. You might want to think about changing the name to X-Women." While that's a clever, woke crack at the expense of the comic title, it might have worked better coming out of another character's mouth, especially since Mystique has been responsible for a lot of the chaos that has ensued in the X-Men universe, especially in Days of Future Past.

If the excitement about Dark Phoenix is low, it might not be best to remind people of the original X-Men movies that fans seem to have more reverence for these days. But here we are, with James McAvoy, Michael Fassbener, Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Alexendra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Evan Peters recounting what the X-Men movies have meant to them.

One can help but notice another awkward moment from Jennifer Lawrence in this featurette when she says, "The X-Men universe isn't going to be the same after this." Yeah, we know. Because it's over.

This is the story of one of the X-Men's most beloved characters, Jean Grey, as she evolves into the iconic DARK PHOENIX. During a life-threatening rescue mission in space, Jean is hit by a cosmic force that transforms her into one of the most powerful mutants of all. Wrestling with this increasingly unstable power as well as her own personal demons, Jean spirals out of control, tearing the X-Men family apart and threatening to destroy the very fabric of our planet. The film is the most intense and emotional X-Men movie ever made. It is the culmination of 20 years of X-Men movies, as the family of mutants that we've come to know and love must face their most devastating enemy yet — one of their own.

Dark Phoenix hits theaters on June 7, 2019.