X-Men: Dark Phoenix has a major timeline plot hole

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is out now, yay! However, we only gave it three stars, booooo. But it's still better than we were expecting, yay!

But here comes the real bad news. If, like us, you enjoy watching these kinds of movies in chronological order, Dark Phoenix will be absolutely baffling.

Not because it jumps around different decades (though it does), but because watching it in order will create a fairly massive plot hole across the entire series. Considering this is intended as the conclusion of Fox's 20-year X-endeavour, that’s disappointing.

We already had two alternate universes to deal with, but Dark Phoenix manages to mess with both of them. Allow us to explain.

Oh, we're about to SPOIL EVERYTHING by the way, which will include MAJOR DARK PHOENIX SPOILERS. Just so you know.

So, First Class takes place in 1962 – so far, so good. Everyone's young and groovy, and it's a fun film. We see the origin of a new version of the X-Men, which doesn't include Jean Grey.

Days of Future Past jumps to 1973, and there's still no Jean Grey – until we jump forward to the future. We see her as an adult, and she's happy. Yay! We want you to remember that information. Dark Phoenix makes it annoyingly relevant.

There's a sort of limbo period in the middle-act of Days of Future Past, before the apocalypse gets averted, and that's where the original films fit into the timeline.

So, X-Men, X-Men 2, The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and The Wolverine all fit into this version of reality. They all either feature Jean Grey, or refer to her – because Logan’s constantly mooning over her. The big romantic razor-clawed lug.

However, because more than half of those films are rubbish, 20th Century Fox cleverly erased them from existence with Days of Future Past, setting the table for a fresh take on all of the characters.

Those characters were all given a happy ending by Days of Future Past’s final sequence, set in 2023, which saw all of our favourites not obliterated by a sentinel-based apocalypse, but happily teaching in Charles' school. Remember, this ending includes Jean Grey.

In many ways, Days of Future Past is the X-Men's Endgame. If it had been allowed to be the final instalment, it would have worked in a similar way – tying together all the plot strands into a satisfying conclusion with the bonus side effect of erasing all the rubbish instalments from history. Add in Logan as a final coda, and you've got cinematic perfection.

Unfortunately, the 1983-set X-Men: Apocalypse came next, and it might be the worst film in the series.

It's a toss-up between this and The Last Stand, but it's kind of amazing how quickly Fox tarnished Days of Future Past's elegant clean slate with this boring and bombastic sequel. Anyway, this film introduces Jean Grey, which makes sense as she's in that Days of Future Past sequence that concludes the reboot timeline.

Well, it made sense until Dark Phoenix, anyway.

Dark Phoenix starts in 1975, with a fairly harrowing Shazam-style opening car crash, in which Jean's powers cause the death of her mum (and seemingly her dad).

We then jump ahead to 1992 and ignore the fact the actors don't seem to have aged in the decade between the last film's setting and this one. (Nicholas Hoult is THIRTY YEARS older than in First Class. Lookin' good!)

At the end of the movie, Jean sacrifices herself to protect "her family". She grabs Jessica Chastain's villain and propels both of them into the upper atmosphere. It's a nice circular narrative: in the beginning, her powers kill one of her parents, in the end, she uses her powers to save her family. Lovely stuff.

But wait.

If she dies in Dark Phoenix, how the Dazzler is she still alive for Days of Future Past's epilogue?

Not only that but going by this timeline, Jean dies before she's met Wolverine, which means one of the key elements of his character is now completely missing from the series. That's ignoring the fact it's suggested Logan killed Jean in a deleted scene from Logan (we're not petty enough to suggest that deleted scenes need to be canon, but still).

Originally, Matthew Vaughn wanted to make a second film between First Class and Future Past, which would have introduced Wolverine to the reboot timeline.

"My plan was First Class," Vaughn said, "then a second film was new young Wolverine in the '70s to continue those characters, my version of the X-Men. So you'd really get to know all of them, and my finale was gonna be Days of Future Past.

"That was gonna be my number three where you bring them all… because what's bigger than bringing in McKellen and Michael and Stewart and James and bringing them all together?

"When I finished the Days of Future Past script with it ready to go I looked at it and said, 'I really think it would be fun to cast Tom Hardy or someone as the young Wolverine and then bring it all together at the end'."

That would have potentially solved part of the problem, but it wasn't to be. So our only question now is, what was Simon Kinberg thinking?

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Well, it sounds like he was hoping Dark Phoenix wouldn't count as being part of the main series, despite the fact it's intended as the conclusion to it.

"I wanted to call it Dark Phoenix in very much the way we wanted to call Logan 'Logan' as opposed to 'X-Men: Logan' to indicate that it's a different kind of film and to indicate that it's a more character-driven movie," Kinberg said.

Okaaaaay, sure. Sadly, it's called X-Men: Dark Phoenix in the UK. Sorry about that, Simon.

Look, who knows, maybe this won't actually be the final film in the Fox universe and The New Mutants will contain a scene where Jean's resurrected (seriously, has everyone forgotten about New Mutants?). Dark Phoenix does end with a sort-of tease that could suggest this.

But going by the current marketing that this is the end of an era, and the fact that the next X-Men movie will be in the MCU after Disney's purchase of 20th Century Fox, Dark Phoenix will probably be the last film to feature this version of Jean Grey.

So, what we're saying is, maybe watch these films in the order they were released, as opposed to trying to work out how they fit together chronologically. Because the sad thing is, for all the potential of Future Past's good work, they simply don't.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is in cinemas now.

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20th Century Fox/Marvel X-Men Collection [Blu-ray]

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Disney Marvel's The New Mutants DVD [2020]

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Sam Ashurst

Freelancer writer

Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist. 

Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets. 

He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more. 

Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions. 

Sam is the co-host, producer and editor of the Arrow Video podcast, which has seen year-on-year growth since its creation in 2017, gaining over half a million listens in that time. 

His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others. 

In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them. 

Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best. 

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