The Original Ending For X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX Included The Skrulls and a Big Battle in New York
As you know, the third act of X-Men: Dark Phoenix went through some big changes with some extensive reshoots. Director Simon Kinberg already said that the original ending was compared to Captain America: Civil War and Captain Marvel, but now we have more details on the original ending thanks to Ty Sheridan, who played Cyclops.
During an interview on the ReelBlend podcast, he revealed that the final battle was supposed to take place in New York City at the United Nations and the X-Men find themselves battling Skrulls! Here’s the actor’s description of how it all goes down:
“It's really hard for me to remember what the ending of this movie is. [laughs] Originally, it was scripted that Charles and Scott go to the U.N. because -- man, I'm totally going to mess this up -- they go to the U.N. because they're going to try to tell the President that, ‘Hey, we're under attack by aliens and, they’ve now captured Jean Grey.’ Or, you know, whatever it is that we're going to tell him.
“And then Jean comes down in the front of the U.N., and causes… there is this huge battle between the guards at the U.N. and Jean Grey, and all the guards turn out to be Skrulls. And then Jean and Scott are -- Scott is fighting Skrulls in the fountain. He gets thrown into the fountain in front of the U.N. And then Jean comes down and basically fights all of the Skrulls off, and then blasts back off into space. [She] basically says goodbye to Scott and Charles. And then it's all over, I guess.”
Yeah, I can totally see those alien villains being Skrulls. The aliens in this film were identified as D’Bari, but with their ability to shapeshift in the film, I can see how they could be Skrulls. It would makes sense to introduce the Skrulls because the X-Men clashed with them a lot in the comics.
But, since Marvel Studios featured the Skrulls heavily in Captain Marvel, I can see why they changed the main villains from Skrulls to D’Bari. Kevin Feige was brought in to consult with the filmmakers on the film, and I imagine he suggested they don’t use Skrulls to avoid any confusion.
When asked if we might ever see this original ending on a home entertainment release, Sheridan said:
“Oh man, good question. We shot that [sequence] like two or three times, actually. … But I mean, it's part of the process, man. You never know. Something could read so great on the page, and then the second you put it on a screen in front of someone, it becomes something else. It's really hard to figure out, you know, what the best version of a movie is. And also, specifically, the ending of a film. The ending of a film is really hard to nail. And obviously these films set up a formula where you kind of want to see, you know, there's always a big battle at the end. For the X-Men, you kind of want to see them united together at the end. So that was, I think that was what led to the reshoots, and I could be totally wrong. … But yeah, that's my 2 cents there.”
X-Men: Dark Phoenix hasn’t done very well at the box office or with critics. With the rights reverting back to Marvel Studios, I imagine most fans and audiences don’t really care about this last movie. It found itself in a tough spot, and it ended up being a disappointment, which I think almost everyone expected.
Will there be a Kinberg cut of the film released in the future? Probably not, and I doubt anyone cares.