New ‘Dark Phoenix’ trailer offers more footage as Simon Kinberg talks spoilers, deaths

The most recent trailer for 20th Century Fox’s new X-Men movie, Dark Phoenix, shocked fans with the apparent confirmation that Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique dies in the film. Now an international trailer offers up more footage from the film as writer-director Simon Kinberg sat down for a chat with the folks at EW and he didn’t just confirm the massive spoiler, he did a full-on deep dive into the thought process behind the shocking death.

Check out the new trailer below.

“Well, the thought process behind that was to primarily show that this is a movie that is unlike other X-Men movies,” Kinberg says, addressing the shocking reveal. “It’s a movie where shocking things happen, where intense, dramatic things happen. People don’t just fall off buildings and dust themselves off and walk away. There’s a reality to this movie and a consequence to this movie. Even more than that, it was to show that Jean/Dark Phoenix is genuinely a threat to everyone, including the X-Men.”

Kinberg explains why he decided Mystique would make for the perfect character death to advance the plot.

“I had a lot of emotions about it. I was obviously sad about it, as Jen’s friend, and also as a fan of Jen as an actress. But I felt it was the strongest, most dramatic thing for the movie, and sometimes you have to make those kinds of hard decisions to service the larger story. And the larger story really is Jean cracking up, losing control because she’s more powerful than anyone else in the world. To dramatize that properly, you have to show real loss, you have to show real pain and show real threat and menace. I didn’t want to do that by her blowing up a building with anonymous people in it. It had to feel really personal for the X-Men, and I wanted it to be something that would fracture the X-Men as well. Mystique is someone who in our universe has been part of the X-Men and has been part of Magneto’s world. Her death impacts literally everybody.”

“There are certainly other major casualties in this,” Kinberg said, alluding to the danger coming the X-Men’s way with the arrival of Jessica Chastain‘s mysterious alien character, who’s on the hunt for the Phoenix Force and who Kinberg says is mentally as strong as Jean Grey. The character gets a “sequence where she basically takes apart the X-Men.”

Dark Phoenix also stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Alexandra Shipp, and Evan Peters, arriving in theaters on June 7.

Here is the official synopsis for Dark Phoenix:

In DARK PHOENIX, the X-MEN face their most formidable and powerful foe: one of their own, Jean Grey. During a rescue mission in space, Jean is nearly killed when she is hit by a mysterious cosmic force. Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable. Wrestling with this entity inside her, Jean unleashes her powers in ways she can neither comprehend nor contain. With Jean spiraling out of control, and hurting the ones she loves most, she begins to unravel the very fabric that holds the X-Men together. Now, with this family falling apart, they must find a way to unite — not only to save Jean’s soul, but to save our very planet from aliens who wish to weaponize this force and rule the galaxy.