X-Men: Dark Phoenix - 6 Reasons To Be Excited

6. It's Got A New Director

Let's face it: given the current situation, Bryan Singer's absence behind the camera can only be a good thing. No one can deny that the director played a vital role in shaping modern superhero cinema with his entries in the X-Men series: X2 and Days of Future Past in particular rank among the best comic book films ever made.

However, even if we can excuse the misfire that was 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse, recent news has made it apparent that Singer - recently fired from Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody - may be yet another prominent Hollywood figure with some very big, very ugly skeletons in his closet, and as such any project with his name attached will invariably carry some stigma.

Admittedly, Simon Kinberg taking Singer's place as director is quite a risk. Though Kinberg has been a writer and producer on the X-Men franchise for over a decade, this will be his very first directorial credit. Clearly this cause for some apprehension; even seasoned writer-producer Alex Kurtzman had directed once before he took on The Mummy, and we all know how that turned out.

Still, Apocalypse notwithstanding the X-movies have barely put a foot wrong since 2011's First Class, so if Kinberg's peers have faith in him, surely we can too. Jennifer Lawrence, for one, has spoken favourably of Kinberg's efforts on the film, telling EW, "Everything was on time. Everything was organized. These movies have always been fun amidst chaos, and now they were fun with no chaos.”