Why Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey Is The Complicated Heroine 2019 Deserves

It’s a common criticism of superhero movies: where are the women? And if they are present, are they the drivers of narrative? Are they the heroes alongside their male counterparts? Do they even get to be villains? With the 12th X-Men film – X-Men: Dark Phoenix — about to hit cinemas, many of those questions are tackled head-on with a cast featuring some of Hollywood’s most famous female A-Listers.

Whether that’s Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence reprising her role as the blue-skinned Mystique or Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain as a mysterious shape-shifting alien from outer space, women are positioned at both ends of the superhero spectrum: from hero right through to villain, and all the complicated shades of grey in between.

Right there among them is Sophie Turner, famous for playing Sansa Stark on Game Of Thrones, but also part of the younger generation of actors – such as Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Aussie Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, and Evan Peters as Quicksilver – recruited into the mutli-billion dollar franchise in recent years. The British actor plays Jean Grey, AKA Phoenix, who is a telepathic and telekinetic mutant with extraordinary powers. Although we got snippets of her and the other young mutants in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, Grey is firmly at the centre of the story in X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

She told CinemaBlend, that was one of her favourite things about the film’s script. “I think what I loved was the fact that, from a female standpoint, some of the most powerful characters in this movie are women,” she says. “The lead of the movie is a female and she’s not only the protagonist but also the antagonist. I loved the concept of that, so that really excited me.”

The movie is set in 1992 – a decade after the events of Apocalypse – where, as in the comic book series, the X-Men have become pseudo celebrities as they perform regular missions to the benefit of human and mutant-kind. It’s on one of these missions to save astronauts in outer space that something goes terribly wrong, with Jean Grey encountering an immense power. Instead of dying, as logic dictates, she survives. Yet something about the Jean Grey they once knew is different and her abilities start to manifest into something more dangerous, something more deadly, and something utterly destructive. This is the evolution of Dark Phoenix.

Tying in some of the stalwarts of the current X-Men franchise, like James McAvoy as Professor X, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, and Nicholas Hoult as Beast, with the younger generation, the movie is a fresh spin on one of the most beloved runs from the popular Marvel comic book series. The Dark Phoenix Saga, kicking off in 1980, is widely considered a classic of the medium and was written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. The first cinematic adaptation of it came in 2006, with X-Men: The Last Stand, in which Famke Janssen played the titular role of Jean Grey. However, after the events of X-Men: Days Of Future Past in 2014, the timeline was reset and those events erased, leaving the door wide-open for another attempt.

It’s a story of a woman carrying deep pain and seeking resolution, a woman torn between the desire to be free, to realise her potential, to explore who she is, and her responsibilities to friends, spouse, community, society, and even the planet. It’s a struggle relatable to generations of audiences, as we’re all at war with our best and worse selves.

The brilliance of the main story also evolves from Jean Grey’s dual identities as both a heroine and antiheroine as the Dark Phoenix persona rises within her. Straddling those two lines was a big draw for Turner, who also points to the critical (it was nominated for an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay) and commercial success (a global box-office haul of over $600M) as an example of what they were trying to do with Dark Phoenix.

“I think one of the things that Simon (Kinberg) has done with this movie is he has made it a far more character-driven movie and far more emotional,” she told Collider. “You know, like how Logan was very different in style to the other Wolverine/X-Men movies. Logan was kind of a Western and this is more of a family drama rather than a superhero movie.”

Coming off almost a decade of playing a complicated leading lady in fantasy epic Game Of Thrones, it’s something Turner is more than qualified to tackle. This epic conclusion to the current saga will surprise audiences and call into question everything we thought we knew about the X-Men.

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Don’t miss X-Men: Dark Phoenix in cinemas on June 6.