Director Simon Kinberg, producer Hutch Parker, and the cast of the upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix have revealed the “emotional” Charles Xavier and “creepy” Jean Grey scenes they filmed that were cut from the movie.
Speaking to GamesRadar about his favourite scene that didn’t make the theatrical cut of the film, Simon Kinberg revealed that James McAvoy, who stars as Professor Charles Xavier, filmed a deeply affecting funeral moment which you won’t see in cinemas:
“My favourite scene that was lost was a little scene in terms of its scale and length. It was a scene at the very end of the movie, with James McAvoy, and he’s at the graveside of someone who’s died, and its just a monologue that he gives to himself,” says Kinberg.
“It didn’t fit into the storytelling of the movie timeline-wise,” he explains, on why it was cut, “but his performance is so good, it’s extraordinary. It’ll be on the home entertainment version of the film… James is such an extraordinary actor and he really inhabits every moment, and I could feel the emotion - he’s crying in the scene - I went home that day feeling like that was really an extraordinary scene.”
It wasn’t the only Charles Xavier moment to get cut from the film. Long-time producer of the X-Men movies, Hutch Parker, revealed to GamesRadar that two of his favourite scenes got deleted, revealing, “there were two scenes that were pretty similar that I really loved."
"One of the things I liked the best in the film was that we saw Charles starting to fray and we begin to see some of his flaws, and there was a scene in Cerebro between Charles and Scott, where Scott is looking eagerly to Charles for answers and Charles kind of explodes, like, ‘I don’t know what to do!’ His getting emotional and being out of control was really great.”
Another Professor X scene was also cut from the movie, reveals Parker, “It was followed later in the movie by a scene of Charles and Scott, and they’re watching news footage of all the ways in which the world has started to go wrong, and it’s the realisation of a nightmare for Charles. For all his efforts he managed to get to the point where mutants had been accepted, and over the course of the film, largely due to his actions, things have gone in such a way that would put mutants back in harm’s way.”
“Both the scenes were really good dramatic scenes,” explained Parker, “but we cut them because, at the end of the day, we felt like we’d covered the material in other ways.”
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is well known to have gone through extensive reshoots during its production, which completely changed the third act of the film and pushed its original release back from November 2018 to June 2019 - although cutting scenes from a film is standard practice with any big blockbuster.
Charles Xavier wasn’t the only character to see his scenes deleted over the course of the movie. Sophie Turner, who stars as Jean Grey, and Jessica Chastain, who stars as a villainous alien intent on using Jean’s heightened powers for her own purposes, revealed to GamesRadar that they shot a scene together which was also cut from the final film.
“Sophie likes to sleep. I remember in one of our scenes, my character was making up the bed for her,” revealed Jessica Chastain.
“That was actually a really funny scene because Jess and I kept asking Simon [Kinberg] about it,” confirmed Sophie Turner, “We were like, ‘This is kind of creepy!’
“We meet, and I’m like, ‘Come follow me, I’ll teach you how to rule the universe,’ and then I take her into a bedroom,” explained Chastain.
“She tucks me in and puts me to bed. It was really creepy. Didn’t you, like, kiss me on the forehead too?” asked Turner of her co-star.
“In a motherly way!” Chastain was quick to point out.
Audiences will get to see the full, final edit of the film – minus the scenes above – when X-Men: Dark Phoenix hits cinemas on June 5, 2019. And if you can't wait until then, why not watch our interview with Turner and Chastain in video form below:
