Simon Kinberg Confirms Major Death in Dark Phoenix Trailer (SPOILER)

Simon Kinberg has confirmed that the death we saw in the Dark Phoenix trailer isn’t a fake-out. Speaking with EW after the release of the trailer, the director confirmed that Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) does die at the hands of Jean Grey. The moment was largely revealed in the trailer that dropped last night, but it was just ambiguous enough for fans to question whether it actually happens.

Well, question no more. You can see highlights from the interview below:

On the reason for revealing the death in the trailer: “Well, the thought process behind that was to primarily show that this is a movie that is unlike other X-Men movies. 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.”

On how he felt about killing off one of the movie’s biggest stars: “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.”

On whether it was hard to keep the death a secret: “It was a challenge. One of the things I wanted to do with this movie is get the movie outside and make it feel like you’re on location and put it in real world environments as much as its also in otherworldly environments. But I wanted it to feel like it could take place in your neighborhood. That particular neighborhood we built from the ground up. That entire street was a build on the studio up in Montreal, and it was a massive build. All those houses and the bridge you see in the distance, all of that was built really not for the sake of secrecy, but obviously it helped with that. But more because there’s a lot of action that takes place there. Houses get blown up, and you couldn’t obviously do that in a real environment.”

On whether there are other major deaths in the film: “There are certainly other major casualties in this.”

On Jessica Chastain’s character: “Her character is an alien. She comes from another planet. When you see the entity that enters Jean in space is not a solar flare — it’s a cosmic force. For those that know the comic, they know what the force is. Chastain’s character is drawn and has been seeking out that cosmic force, and it leads her to Earth and to Jean. It’s a force she either wants to control or destroy.”

On the powers of Chastain’s powers: “She definitely is mentally as strong as Jean. Jean cannot read her mind. Like you see in the trailer, she can manipulate others minds so that they see things that she wants them to see. But she has a whole suite of powers that we explore in the movie; some of them are mental and some of them are physical. There’s a whole sequence where she basically takes apart the X-Men.”