Why The Cast Of Dark Phoenix Looks So Familiar

Somehow, the world is not yet sick of superheroes. We've been through over a decade of Marvel mania, three reboots of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and a movie in which Harley Quinn and Killer Croc team up to take down DC D-Lister Enchantress — and still, the public clamors for more. And so comes Dark Phoenix, the fourth in the current slate of X-Men films, adapting Chris Claremont's iconic "Dark Phoenix Saga" for the screen for the second time. Trailers feature Jean Grey, psychic powerhouse, embracing the true, galaxy-spanning potential of her powers — and the world around her cowering in fear of it.

But before we watch her unleash madness, let's catch up with the stars of this movie. It is, frankly, a cast absolutely jam-packed with talent, with experience in everything from the most obscure arthouse work to the biggest theatrical success stories of the past decade. We've got people who've played vampires, soldiers, hardcore nerds, and old-school hip hop figures in this movie, to say nothing of the fact that some of them double as stuntmen, models, and stage performers. Take a moment to enjoy them, before Jean Grey reduces them to cosmic ash.

Michael Fassbender is a true performer, as comfortable in an anti-psychic supervillain helmet as he is in a searing psychodrama. With his expressive face and quietly powerful presence, he can command attention as hero and villain alike — which is lucky, because Magneto loves to play jump rope with the line between the two. Will he be okay with Jean Grey accessing the most frightening parts of her godlike psyche in Dark Phoenix? Will he and Mystique end up in the midst of another fling? Will he just get fed up with the whole thing and move back to that forest in Poland we saw in X-Men: Apocalypse? Fassbender's versatility makes it all seem possible.

His work shows off this level of skill massively, sustained through years of acting. Many viewers were first introduced to him through Band of Brothers, where he played a minor role as Burton P. Christenson, or his star turn as the stormy, secret-keeping Rochester in 2011's Jane Eyre. Since he began playing Magneto in X-Men: First Class, he has portrayed everything from a chilly artificial intelligence in Prometheus, Macbeth in the 2015 film adaptation, and Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave. There's a chance you might also recognize him from a very different medium as well — he played Aguilar in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed.

Playing a role like Beast is no easy thing. You have to emote effectively enough that the audience sees past the blue fur and prosthetics, but not so broadly that you end up cartoonish. You have to generate pathos from an origin story originally aimed at midcentury children. You have to make people take an overgrown Muppet seriously as both a threat and a dramatic presence. It's a lot to ask of anyone, even the most veteran actor around. It is a positively huge amount to ask of a guy like Nicholas Hoult, who isn't yet 30 years old.

Luckily, he's up to the job. Hoult distinguished himself early as antihero Tony Stonem on British TV drama Skins, establishing both the character's charisma and his adolescent cruelty with finesse. Since then, Hoult's gone on to everything from absurdist costume pieces in The Favourite (in which he played Robert Harley) to bleak, animated rabbit psychodrama in Watership Down. But if there's one thing you probably know him best for, it's his role as Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road. Nux is a chrome-huffing maniac who names his tumors, but because he's played by Hoult, he's also a soft-hearted dreamer who goes out in a blaze of optimistic glory. From the wasteland to Xavier's School, Hoult will make you believe in his characters.

James McAvoy is a true star and an actor's actor — two things that often do not coexist... but in him, they do. The British performer is as game to appear in Oscar-winning period pieces as he is in Professor X's wheelchair. If you're like many, your introduction to him was as Mr. Tumnus in Disney's adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia, in which he managed to pull off the hitherto undreamt-of shirtless-with-a-scarf look. He then distinguished himself as Robbie Turner, the tragic male lead in 2007's Atonement, who loves a highborn girl despite his lowly station, family politics, and the advent of World War II. 

Recently, when he's not busy molding young mutant minds, McAvoy has been exploring everything from animation — Gnomeo & Juliet and its sequel, Sherlock Gnomes — to playing a villain with 23 personalities in Split. The next year will add two huge new roles to his already bursting filmography, when he will play Bill in It: Chapter Two and Lord Asriel in HBO's adaptation of the celebrated His Dark Materials series.

Why does Jennifer Lawrence look so familiar? Take your pick. It'd be more surprising, really, if you didn't recognize this superstar's famous face. Lawrence has been all over the silver screen in a variety of roles, ultimately establishing herself as one of the premiere stars of the 2010s and likely for years to come. Most prominently, she played Katniss Everdeen in the blockbuster Hunger Games series. As Katniss, Lawrence brought a taciturn, hardship-honed heroine to life — and still managed to find the tenderness at the heart of her. 

Beyond that juggernaut of a franchise, she brought wickedly black humor to Silver Linings Playbook as Tiffany, a young widow trying to handle her grief in all the wrong ways, and a zestful unpredictability to American Hustle's Rosalyn. Most recently, apart from her role as Mystique, audiences watched her play a Russian ballet dancer-turned-spy in the thriller Red Sparrow. With headlining roles in two of the modern era's most successful action franchises, Lawrence didn't just hit the ground of her career running — she started, and has continued, in an all-out sprint.

No one's quite sure who Jessica Chastain will be playing in Dark Phoenix, beyond the facts made obvious by the promotional material. She'll be an alien shapeshifter of some sort, an agent of someone or something that wants Jean Grey to embrace her enormous powers, and she'll sport dazzlingly white hair. Only one thing is ironclad: the character will be played well, because Chastain knows what she's doing.

Though an enormous portion of Chastain's filmography has become critically and commercially acclaimed, there are a few films in particular that you're likely to know her from. Many were introduced to her work by 2011's The Help, in which she played the kindhearted Celia Foote. She followed this up in 2012 with Zero Dark Thirty, which saw her become Maya, a CIA operative tasked with tracking down Osama bin Laden. The hits go on, from Molly's Game to Crimson Peak (no one has ever looked better in a bloodstained 19th-century nightgown), but she's likely to have one of her biggest hits ever in 2019 as she takes the role of Beverly Marsh in It: Chapter Two, the sequel to the 2017 box office smash. Between then and now, we'll learn who she's playing in Dark Phoenix — but we already know she'll do a great job.