The Original 'Dark Phoenix' Ending Involved The Skrulls And A Big Battle In New York

The Dark Phoenix apology tour continues as the cast of the abysmally-performing film try to pique our interests with a hypothetical "what could've been's."

Director Simon Kinberg got the ball rolling last week by teasing details of the original ending, which apparently shared more similarities with the plot of Captain America: Civil War than the Captain Marvel-esque ending that ultimately made it to the big screen. Now star Tye Sheridan, who plays Cyclops in the film, revealed some of the details of that original climax, which involved, among other things, the shape-shifting Skrull aliens and a big battle in New York. Hmm, sounds a bit familiar...

In an interview on the ReelBlend podcast (via Geek Tyrant), Tye Sheridan revealed the details of the final battle of Dark Phoenix, which would have resulted in the X-Men getting dissolved in the vein of Captain America: Civil War and have taken place in New York at the United Nations. But here's the surprising twist: they would have found themselves battling Skrulls, the shape-shifting aliens who debuted in the MCU in this year's Captain Marvel. Sheridan said:

"It's really hard for me to remember what the ending of this movie is. [laughs] Originally, it was scripted that Charles and Scott go to the U.N. because — man, I'm totally going to mess this up — they go to the U.N. because they're going to try to tell the President that, 'Hey, we're under attack by aliens and, they've now captured Jean Grey.' Or, you know, whatever it is that we're going to tell him. And then Jean comes down in the front of the U.N., and causes... there is this huge battle between the guards at the U.N. and Jean Grey, and all the guards turn out to be Skrulls. And then Jean and Scott are — Scott is fighting Skrulls in the fountain. He gets thrown into the fountain in front of the U.N. And then Jean comes down and basically fights all of the Skrulls off, and then blasts back off into space. [She] basically says goodbye to Scott and Charles. And then it's all over, I guess."

In a way, the Skrull twist would have made sense — the villains in the final version of Dark Phoenix are shapeshifting aliens not unlike the Skrulls, though they're identified as the D'Bari. But it wouldn't be surprising if they were inserted in the film as a replacement for the Skrulls, a race of aliens that the X-Men have clashed with frequently in the comics. But as Sheridan describes it, lumping a Skrull invasion in with a philosophical clash like that of Civil War — always involving the U.N., of course — might have been too ambitious for a movie like Dark Phoenix, which already suffers from taking the focus away from its titular character. This ending would have buried the movie under even more needlessly complicated plot. Plus audiences might have been confused to see the Skrulls as they're depicted in Captain Marvel versus the more villainous version in Dark Phoenix.