The X-Men franchise has always featured a lot of Wolverine. In fact, since 2000, the Clawed Canuck has appeared in every single X-Men movie, to varying degrees of importance. Dark Phoenix, however, is the exception, and director Simon Kinberg has finally explained why.
The original X-Men film to tackle "The Dark Phoenix Saga," The Last Stand, focused more on Logan's pain than Jean herself, and according to Kinberg, this was a mistake he didn't want to replicate. “There was an element of this being Jean’s story,” he told Rolling Stone. “And I was committing so fully to it that I didn’t want to run the risk of pulling away from Jean by going to the well of a fan-favorite character in these movies. I wanted this to be a very different experience of seeing an X-Men movie.”
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Kinberg claimed that although Hugh Jackman's Wolverine would have fit into the timeline established by X-Men: Apocalypse's Weapon X cameo, it was something he didn't want to explore. “If you know the Dark Phoenix story, you’d want to really service the love story between Logan and Jean,” he continued. “And I think the notion of Hugh Jackman, as great as he looks for his age, and Sophie Turner — it didn’t sit well with me. Or anyone else!”
Of course, in the original storyline, Jean and Logan were never actually a romantic item --it was Scott and Jean who were the central pairing of the 1980 comic book, which makes Kinberg's comments all the more puzzling for longtime X-Men comic fans.
Directed and written by Simon Kinberg, Dark Phoenix stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Holt, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters and Jessica Chastain. The film arrives June 7.