No, it wasn’t a mistake.

That major character death you saw revealed in the latest trailer for the new X-Men film, Dark Phoenix, isn’t the result of someone asleep at the switch.

Writer-director Simon Kinberg, in his directorial debut, says the reveal is meant to show this is a different kind of comic book movie.

“I wanted closure with this movie from start to finish,” says Kinberg, 45. And ignoring a Marvel tradition, there’s no post-credits tease. “There isn’t a post-credits scene for the same reason we didn’t put one in Logan (2017),” he says. “We want to have the feeling of completion and closure.”

Q You’ve been involved as either a writer or producer on the X-Men films and some of the spinoffs since 2006. What made you want to explore the Dark Phoenix storyline?

A I grew up reading X-Men comics and the Dark Phoenix story has always been my favourite. My first foray into working on the X-Men films was co-writing The Last Stand along with Zak Penn, and I always regretted that we didn’t get to tell the full Phoenix story and really focus on Jean (Grey) as the protagonist of that film. So some part of me always dreamt of getting a chance to tell a truer version of Dark Phoenix.

When I wrote the script for 2014’s Days of Future Past, I got to reset the timeline of the franchise and that gave me the opportunity to think about doing a Dark Phoenix story down the line. For so many reasons, this story spoke to me as a kid and continued to speak to me as an adult. That sense of being out of control and people in your life losing control and what do you do when you start to lose them? There are so many complex emotional and psychological and philosophical things that the story and the comic bring up and it was just ripe for a film.

Q How is this different from other superhero movies?

A It’s a much more grounded, real, gritty, emotional, intimate movie than we’ve done in the past. For me, the best X-Men movies are character driven. I wanted to strip the movie down so you were really in it with the characters. So despite having all the spectacle and action that you’d expect from an X-Men movie, it’s much more a dramatic, emotional film than we’ve done in the past.

Q What can you tell us about the mysterious character Jessica Chastain plays?

A Jess plays an alien who is very interested in the Phoenix Force, which has inhabited Jean Grey’s body and is the reason Jean is losing control. This force is giving her this infinite power, a greater power than anything else in the galaxy, but it’s also tearing her apart. So Jessica’s character comes down to Earth looking for this power. She initially tries to control it by manipulating Jean, but when she realizes she can’t do that, she tries to take it from her and that becomes part of the conflict, struggle and jeopardy of the movie.

Q Jennifer Lawrence’s anti-hero Mystique dies in the film, and you revealed that in the trailer. Why did you let the cat out of the bag so early?

A The stakes of the film are very real and very personal. There’s an intensity to this movie that’s different from anything we’ve done in the past. Main characters are at risk in the movie. By revealing that she dies, we’re showing that we’re going in a more grown-up direction. This is more like Logan, in a way. That’s what we were going for.

Q With Endgame earlier this year, we saw a kind of culmination of 11 years of Marvel storytelling. If we include Deadpool and the Wolverine films, Dark Phoenix is the 12th X-Men film. So what does this represent for X-Men fans?

A I really approached this movie as the climax of this cycle of X-Men storytelling that began about 20 years ago with Bryan (Singer’s) first film, and then began again about 10 years ago with X-Men: First Class. The fans of these films have been living with this family now for 20 years now in one form or another. This film is the biggest challenge to that family because they are threatened by someone from within. We watch as the family gets torn apart and ultimately, if they’re going to survive, they’re going to have to come back together in a mature and more complex form.

Q Can you talk about the evolution of this series? The X-Men have appealed to comic book fans, but certainly they’ve resonated with people who never read the comics.

A I think one of the things Bryan Singer did so brilliantly with the first film was he followed the lead of the comic books and made it about the characters. People fell in love with the characters, and they fell in love with these incredible performances from some of the world’s greatest actors. I don’t think that first X-Men movie and Bryan’s subsequent movies get enough credit for creating the rise in popularity of the comic book movie. Certainly Tim Burton had done Batman and Richard Donner had made Superman, but this new cycle that has become the dominant movie genre the last 20 years really started with Bryan taking a comic book a little bit more seriously than anyone else had. Everyone had heard of Batman and Superman, but X-Men featured characters that not everyone knew about . … I think the popularity of the X-Men has grown in sync with the popularity of the genre.

Q Is this the end of the X-Men?

A I’m sure there will be more X-Men movies in the future. I don’t know if they will be with this cast or not, but I just really approached this as the end. Interestingly, long before the Disney-Fox merger, when we were doing the hair and makeup tests on this movie, I wanted to play music over the footage and I cut it together with The Doors’ The End. That’s the way I approached this. It was like the conclusion of this saga and this journey you’ve been on with these characters that we’ve come to love.