X-Men: Dark Phoenix is already being trashed in reviews but fans will probably still see it just so that they can say goodbye to the franchise before Marvel Studios gets their hands on it. Funnily enough, one character who has been the face of this film franchise won't be making any kind of appearance in this movie. That's right, like the title of this article suggests, Wolverine will not be appearing in Dark Phoenix and there is a very good reason for that.
During an interview with Rolling Stone, director and longtime X-Men movie writer Simon Kinberg revealed that they didn't include Wolverine because anything involving the character and Jean has to be romantic and Hugh Jackman is much older than Sophie Turner. Simply put, Kinberg felt very uncomfortable writing and directing any kind of romance between the two characters.
"If you know the Dark Phoenix story, you'd want to really service the love story between Logan and Jean. And I think the notion of Hugh Jackman, as great as he looks for his age, and Sophie Turner — it didn't sit well with me. Or anyone else!
There was an element of this being Jean's story. And I was committing so fully to it that I didn't want to run the risk of pulling away from Jean by going to the well of a fan-favorite character in these movies. I wanted this to be a very different experience of seeing an X-Men movie."
Considering how Turner has played a character who has had way too many interactions with older men, a lot of which led to uncomfortable scenarios, this was probably the best thing to do. To be fair, Wolverine is no Ramsay Bolton and wouldn't have raped Jean but seeing him control himself over a woman much younger than him would have been odd.
So yeah, Dark Phoenix might be garbage but this was a very good decision.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix comes out on June 6.
Read:X-Men: Dark Phoenix Burned to the Ground by Terrible Rotten Tomatoes Score