Wait, Joaquin Phoenix was in an ABC Afterschool Special?

With its release date pushed back twice, fans have had plenty of time to speculate about Dark Phoenix. Fans thought about which theories they did or didn't want to happen, and later on which theories were confirmed by trailers and other promotional material. Some of these theories focused purely on the plot and characters of Dark Phoenix. Other theories considered the movie's position as the end of this iteration of X-Men and the impending incorporation of mutants into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the movie finally released, audiences can now dissect which theories didn't pan out and which ones did.

Unlike X-Men: The Last Stand, the new Dark Phoenix movie features a little more of the source material from The Dark Phoenix Saga. It's always tough to decide what makes the cut and what doesn't in the limited time frame of a movie, but you've got to make sure the essentials are there. Following a failed mission in space, Jean Grey is exposed to a living mass of energy known as the Phoenix Force. The power eventually corrupts her, turning her into the fearsome Dark Phoenix.

There are a lot of exciting superhero movies on the way in 2019, like Avengers: Endgame and The New Mutants and Shazam! and Spider-Man: Far From Home. But there’s another one coming that isn’t getting as much press or hype as those movies, perhaps for good reason, and that’s the latest X-Men movie, Dark Phoenix. The trailers for the movie have had a mixed reception from fans and critics, while the disappointment of Apocalypse doesn’t have people’s hopes very high. Still, it can’t be all bad.