When did Sophie Turner find out this would be the Phoenix story?
"I was told about six months before we started shooting the movie," Turner explains. "Luckily, he gave me enough time to prepare...Fans are so in love with this story line and I really think that we did it justice."
"That's part of what makes these movies so resonant in general," "They deal so directly with alienation and prejudice and issues that certainly seem inescapable in the news these days. It's no accident that Simon wanted to tell this story and has empowered the female characters in this story in the ways that he has. That's not to say politcally. It's just a natural cultural instinct."
How was the experience different with Kinberg directing?
"He's definitely much more engaged and focused all around," Tye Sheridan said. "A lot of times, this story is so grounded in drama that that's what it's about. It's so innate in the script and in the writing. For us, it was nice to have someone guiding us and leading us. It's a big movie. You need someone who can really hone in on a vision and a detail."
How did Sophie Turner prepare for this?
"I prepared with a lot of cosmic rays," Turner joked. "I used to stand by the microwave and let them flow into me, feel that power, and I'd go scream at my mum for a while. 'Sorry, Dark Phoenix!'"
More seriously, she explained the back and forth work to prepare. She studied schitsophrenia and multiple personality disorder. For two days, she listened to a YouTube channel revealing what sounds like to be schizophrenic. "I got nothing done," she said. "Before we even started the movie, we had two weeks of just rehearsals for hours and hours and hour a day."
Which cast member was particularly excited and engaged?
"In these big movies, you get the least rehearsal time," Kinberg said. "I would say the person I might have collaborated with in a similar way was Jessica Chastain." This was Chastain's first movie of the type. "She had a lot of thoughts and we crafted the look together, her voicing, and even the way that we approached her character. She's many things in this movie in the roles her character plays but she is ultimately the villain of the film.
Why is now the time for a Phoenix story?
Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg and producer Hutch Parker took the stage. "The climate for these kinds of movies allows for the drama, the intensity, the character-driven nature of what a Dark Phoenix story needs to be," Kinberg said. "We felt like after the last X-Men that we made, Apocalyps,...the Dark Phoenix story is this intimate story about a central character in Jean who starts to lose control. That's all it is, really. It happens to manifest as super powers in huge destructive ways...It fractures this family around her as she, herself, is fracturing."
How is this movie different? Is anything similar?
"I don't know that I would liken it to any other movie," Parker said. "I guess, it'd be a weird mix between a family drama and, to some degree, a science fiction story. You've got elements of both. As you point out, it's very clear to us, the underlying material to all the X-Men universe is pretty incredible...With that, you feel an obligation to try to reach deeper into the material and as Simon alluded to, there's a lot of great work being done in this arena and the table felt like it had been well set to do what Simon has long wanted to do, which is to do a deep dive on Dark Phoenix."
Did Apocalypse pave the way?
"They like when we zig after we've zagged," Kinberg said. "Logan helped pave the way, actually...What Marvel Studios has done, in terms of making these movies extraterrestrial, taking them into space...allowed for us to tell the Dark Phoenix story, not just in the dramatic grounded ways that Logan does, but to also go to outer space, to also have alien characters.. He calls the film "cosmic" for lack of a better description. "It is a larger canvas than something like Logan.