The general reaction to X-Men: Dark Phoenix certainly wasn't positive for several reasons but many would agree that the special effects in the film were quite stunning. Interestingly, there were several interesting plans about how Jean Grey would be depicted in the movie and a scrapped idea actually involved a 'demolecularization' scene.
MPC VFX Supervisor Greg Butler led the team that worked on Dark Phoenix and he has revealed that there were different plans in tackling the reveal of Jean's full power. Butler revealed to io9 that while Jean's hair was digitally altered, it was supposed to be a part of a bigger overall effect.
"The hair effect is actually a leftover from a whole package of things Jean was going to do. Her cross was going to be disintegrating and reforming, she was going to have fire coming off of her, her hair was even more active than it is," Butler said. "So, in some of our early tests, her hair was doing a lot of that same stuff, and as we turned off a bunch of things, the hair [is] one of the few things that remain. I'm glad you brought it up because it's one of the things we hit upon the earliest."
Butler continued by sharing how Jean's face was almost supposed to fall apart as she uses her powers.
"The other effect we ultimately landed on came from something way more intensive: demolecularization. Originally, her face was going to begin to do that in a lot of scenes: coming off and revealing all of the energy within her before reforming. But as we started doing the early tests, it was like 'Whoah, ok no. Put her face back together. We needed to be able to see her act,'" he said.
That would have been a cool effect but Butler certainly made the right call by keeping Jean's face intact. If only it was so easy to fix the film.
Dark Phoenix will be available on digital on September 3. The DVD is scheduled for release on September 17.
Related: X-Men: Dark Phoenix Gets Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital Release Date