By You know what to expect from an X-Men film now, don't you? Charles Xavier and Magneto call each other "old friend" with varying degrees of sarcasm, Michael Fassbender being furious, and loads of people shouting "JEEEEAAAAAN" at Jean Grey.
Now we know what to expect from the upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix, because almost the entire film's plotted out in the new trailer that dropped yesterday. It kicks off with the Thunderbirds X-Men going into space to sort out a stricken space shuttle. It sounds like this is a new venture, as Quicksilver notes: "We're doing space missions now. Cool."
However it all kicks off in space when Jean has a meltdown in the shuttle. Explosions, loads of wibbly-wobbly goo floats about in the vacuum, etc.
That might mean the Dark Phoenix power/life-force/what-have-you comes to Jean in the same way it does in the comic books' Dark Phoenix Saga, via a solar flare she absorbs which turns her into a being of pure thought. Don't think too hard about the science of that.
That's is slightly confusing, because the Phoenix powers turned up at the end of the last X-Men film and saved everyone, so presumably Jean can't pick them up for the first time here. Anyway, distraught at what she's becoming, she starts chatting to a mysterious woman in a bar. "Who are you?" she eventually asks. "The better question is, who are you?" the stranger replies.
Apparently that line of dialogue didn't clunk hard enough for Jean/Phoenix to point out that it's just the same question again and walk off, because this figure - who's apparently a mixture of comic book characters including Mastermind - ends up becoming her right-hand woman and manipulating her.
Magneto goes to talk things out, but Jean/Phoenix - actually that's getting a bit annoying, let's call her Jeanix - splits Magneto's helmet...
...before chucking him backwards through a window.
Meanwhile, the X-Men are having a Captain America: Civil War moment, splitting between those who reckon Jeanix needs a helping hand to sort herself out (Prof Xavier, Mystique, Cyclops) and those who reckon she needs to be destroyed before she does anything daft (Magneto, Beast). It all ends up in a big showdown with the whole gang and some fluoro effects...
...after which somebody gets their brain squeezed.
So there we are. We basically know where this is headed, especially as the time-looping mechanic of the post-Last Stand films means Jeanix is going to have to make it through for X-Men and X-Men 2 to make any sense. Can't wait to find out what the remaining 15 percent of the film and turns out to be though!
