X-Men: Dark Phoenix/Trivia

Trivia for X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

• This is the second film of the series to be based on the Dark Phoenix Saga, the first being X-Men: The Last Stand.
• X-Men: Dark Phoenix was originally planned to be two films. However, late into pre-production, 20th Century Fox mandated that it be one movie instead. Chris Claremont, the writer of the Dark Phoenix Saga, confirmed that Simon Kinberg wanted Dark Phoenix to be two films. “One to make the audience fall in love with Jean and the other to break their hearts. But to do it in an hour and 50 minutes is a challenge. To his credit, despite a lot of outside interference from companies that will remain nameless, he pretty much got away with it.”
• This is the second X-Men film not to feature Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, the first being Deadpool and the third being The New Mutants. This is also the sole film in the main series to lack any appearance from the character, as both Deadpool and The New Mutants are spinoffs.
• This is Jessica Chastain's first Marvel film. She previously turned down the roles of Maya Hansen in Iron Man 3 and Hope van Dyne/Wasp in Ant-Man.
• This is the only film in the main series to not have "X-Men" in the title, although only in its domestic market (US). Internationally, the film retains the "X-Men" portion of the title.
• The reason why Dark Phoenix dropped X-Men from the title was to mirror what Logan did: to showcase that it's a different kind of film and character-driven. Expanding on this, Simon King said: "[...] we really wanted to indicate that this is the Dark Phoenix story and that she's at the center of this story, she's the A-plot of this story, everything around this story revolves really centrally around Jean/Dark Phoenix as really the subject of the movie, not the object of the movie."
• Dark Phoenix takes place in 1992, the same year that X-Men: The Animated Series first debuted.
• The concept of Jean directly merging with the Phoenix Force was adapted from X-Men: The Animated Series. The comic storyline originally depicted Phoenix as being Jean's new codename after a solar flare amplified her powers to god-like levels. This was later retconned to establish Phoenix as a separate cosmic entity that assumed Jean's appearance and memories.
• Phoenix was originally conceptualized with a "fiery" look for the film. It was revamped in post-production to look more "cosmic".
• The third act was originally going to take place in space. After reshoots were completed, it was changed to a sequence where the X-Men are kidnapped and taken aboard a military train.
• Sophie Turner studied schizophrenia and disassociative identity disorder to ground her performance. She found a YouTube video that simulated what it would feel like to have auditory hallucinations. Turner would listen to it while walking around New York City, but found it hard to function while doing mundane tasks such as shopping or talking to people.
• Due to the film's limited runtime, director Simon Kinberg felt that adapting the Hellfire Club and Lilandra from the comic book storyline would have taken the focus away from Jean's character and the break-up of the X-Men family.
• Concept artist Phil Boutte shared unused character designs for members of the Hellfire Club, revealing that there were plans to include them in the film in some capacity. Boutte worked with costume designer Daniel Orlandi to create the concept art depicting Emma Frost, Harry Leland, Freidrich Von Roehm, Andrea von Strucker and Andreas von Strucker (aka The Twins), Shinobi Shaw, and the Red Lotus Gang.
• Logan and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy were superhero films that Simon Kinberg drew influence from when he made Dark Phoenix.
• Simon Kinberg admitted that he ignored the Phoenix foreshadowing in X-Men: Apocalypse because he felt that the Phoenix Force should be depicted as "otherwordly" and not something inherent within Jean.
• X-Men: Dark Phoenix was dedicated to the memory of Stan Lee, who passed away on November 12, 2018. Lee was a prominent comic book writer at Marvel Comics, responsible for co-creating the X-Men with artist Jack Kirby.
• In the movie's final scene, Charles and Erik are playing a game of chess at "Café Les Vieux Copains", translated from French meaning "Old Friends Cafe".