auteur theory

Dark Phoenix Director Is Sorry About … Dark Phoenix

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

Some of the cheeriest press the newest X-Men film, Dark Phoenix, has received since its debut earlier this month has been the following: It’s one of the worst in the franchise, it’s middling at best, and it had the worst box-office opening for any X-Men movie … ever. (We did enjoy one thing about it, though.) Simon Kinberg, who made his directorial debut with Dark Phoenix, has been following your criticisms closely. How could he not? He wants to know everything. And despite the avalanche of hate the film has received, Kinberg won’t try to sway you into a different mindset. “I’m here, I’m saying when a movie doesn’t work, put it on me. I’m the writer-director, the movie didn’t connect with audiences, that’s on me,” he told KCRW’s The Business. “It clearly is a movie that didn’t connect with audiences that didn’t see it, it didn’t connect enough with audiences that did see it.” Kinberg also doesn’t want to dwell on other lingering factors, such as Dark Phoenix getting numerous date delays.

“I mean, honestly, there’s no way to know,” he added. “And that’s the thing that I think can drive people crazy and keep them up and be thinking about a movie’s failure years later. If the lesson you’ve learned is that you had the wrong date or you didn’t have good marketing, that’s not a lesson.” If anything, the cast had a pretty awesome press tour, so that’s a nice thing.

Dark Phoenix Director Is Sorry About … Dark Phoenix