Dark Phoenix went through a significant reshoot process to completely change its ending. The original film may never be seen by any audience not involved with the film. While more details of the original ending will surface in the week following the opening weekend of Dark Phoenix, writer and director Simon Kinberg has likened the original narrative of Dark Phoenix to those of Captain America: Civil War and Captain Marvel movies which came before it.
By the end of Dark Phoenix, Jean Grey has sacrificed herself as a means to save the X-Men and the world she is leaving behind. As the story went, this was not the plan from the start.
“My original ending didn’t have the entire X-Family together the way they are in the film now. More than Captain Marvel, you could see a lot of Civil War in that ending,” Kinberg tells io9. “Usually, these big, huge action movies have the climactic moment in the third act. I loved the way that Civil War had its big action set piece where everyone’s facing off more towards the end of the second act rather than in the third, so that after that huge battle, you’re left with Winter Soldier, Captain America, and Iron Man.”While many of the criticisms of Dark Phoenix seem to claim the film never offered much of an emotional payoff, this is likely due to the fact that the emotional core was ripped out when the film was forced to change its ending. “It’s this telescoped down view of their raw emotions, and I loved how intimate that was,” Kinberg said of the original cut. “That’s what I was going for with Dark Phoenix’s ending even though it then might have looked like Captain Marvel for about two minutes.”
There’s no word on who made the call to have Dark Phoenix reshoot its entire ending.