Fanboys Anonymous

The latest and last of the X-Men films, according to promotional material, which conveniently ignores the whole New Mutants thing that should totally just go to Hulu and not attempt a theatrical run, will be Dark Phoenix, which premieres tomorrow.

I'll be having my Reviewpoint for it as soon as I can after watching it tomorrow night, but by all accounts, it seems like this is going to be a train wreck, and not just in the finale.

I've been wanting to pump out more content here for Fanboys Anonymous, and I figured now is the best time to debut one of the new segments I've been working on, dubbed Predicting the Plot.

How this works is pretty simple: I'll be taking an upcoming film and giving my fan theories on how I think the movie will go down, from start to finish, with as many details as I possibly can give, based entirely on the previews that I've seen and my predictions. I might be dead wrong, but I might get a lot of things correct, and I encourage you all to give your predictions just the same in the comments below.

So without further ado, let's kick things off by trying to figure out what is going to happen in Dark Phoenix.


The movie starts with Professor Xavier giving a monologue about human evolution and mutation, possibly tying it in with the celestial aspect of things. I'm expecting something like "Since the dawn of time, humans have looked to the stars for knowledge of the gods" along with an ominous message foreshadowing how Jean Grey is totally going to be possessed by this godly force of nature. Cut to the opening credits of the bitchin' X-Men theme that is the second best one out there, as the '90s animated theme is still the top dog.

This transitions to either everyone at the X-Mansion receiving word of the mission to save the astronauts, or possibly the problem with the astronauts themselves. The point is, some astronauts get messed up in space and the X-Men step in to help. Maybe there's a scene beforehand or in-between this that deals with the public perception of them as superheroes that explains why they would go on this mission (either to help convince people they're here to help, or because people already like them and they actively reach out to ask for help).

One way or another, within the first 20 minutes of the movie, the X-Men are in space and saving the astronauts. A solar flare puts everyone in danger and Jean absorbs it. Everyone's confused about what happened and how she was able to survive that.

She gets checked out by Hank McCoy and they find out that she's okay, but her power levels are spiking. They're off the charts! Whatever happened up there magnified her mutant abilities and she's in danger of going out of control. But nah, she's cool, she's Jean and she's our family. No need to worry.

Let's spend some time with Magneto on Genosha. He's got a sanctuary for mutants going on. Hopefully, this isn't a total repeat of the last film and we don't just see a bunch of these mutants get killed as a motivator for him to rejoin the action, but I think that will happen later.

Jean starts acting weird and everyone begins to notice and get skeptical about her losing control, as she starts talking to Jessica Chastain, who is this manifestation of the Phoenix Force in her mind that they can't see. Maybe Charles can see it. Maybe he can't connect with her because she's blocking him out.

By the 1/4 mark of the movie or so, Jean is back in her childhood home. That's where we see that she's causing a ruckus and the X-Men step in to try to stop her. POOF! Mystique is killed! Oh no!

Jean runs off and has that scene where she's crying in the alley, asking "Why did you make me do that? She was my friend." Chastain's character keeps feeding her b.s. about how the X-Men fear her power and so on.

Mourning for Mystique. Some are just sad, while some are angry and want to kill Jean in retaliation. Beast is one of the people who is against Jean. Scott is, naturally, on the side of "no, she's still Jean and she can be redeemed, because this wasn't her fault." If Magneto isn't already brought back into the mix yet, this is where he comes in, recruited by Beast and whoever else (Storm?) feels like they need Magneto's help to take her down.

We basically kill time for a while until the end battle. I'd be really surprised if there are any extra elements to this plot, like if Omega Red stops by to say hello, or if Mr. Sinister is part of this. I know that they've already tried to set up Essex, but I feel like that thread will just be ignored.

There must be some sort of grand scheme of Chastain's character. Maybe she just wants to destroy the entirety of Earth. Maybe she has no fight in this whole human/mutant thing. Maybe this ties into the Shi'ar Empire, but I doubt it. (Side note: remember when people thought she would be a Skrull?) Anyway, whatever her plan is, she's using Jean as a conduit and playing puppet-master to control her into doing her bidding.

There needs to be some sort of mooks for the X-Men to fight. I'm assuming an invading species of aliens that Chastain's character controls.

For the life of me, I don't know how this movie went from having an ending that took place in space to something that's now a train derailment. That seems like such a big departure. But I assume whatever the impetus for that is, the end result stays the same, in that Jean sacrifices herself to take out the alien threat (namely Chastain's character) and the movie ends with everyone mourning her and honoring her in some fashion.

If they're particularly ambitious, they'll do something like have Jean's consciousness enter the body of someone named Madelyne Pryor, similar to what they did with Xavier in The Last Stand, and/or they'll tease the Shi'ar Empire and the M'Kraan Crystal.