I’m the writer and director of “Dark Phoenix.”

This is a scene where Sophie Turner’s character Jean

Grey has gone to Michael Fassbender’s character

Magneto because she’s lost control of herself, become

destructive, even deadly to the people around her.

And she goes to the person who she

thinks can help her because he himself

was dangerous and deadly and has essentially

reformed his ways.

And she finds he can’t help her.

And in this scene he sees just how dangerous and destructive

she is.

And he has to figure out if he’s going to try to stop her

or he’s going to try to help her.

And in fact, what it becomes is a face-off, a battle

between these two people.”

“We have a legal right to be here.”

“This land was given to us by the US government.

We have no intention of taking it back.

We’re not here for you.

We’re looking for one of the X-Men, Jean Grey.”

“And really what I wanted to do

with this scene was create a tension-filled thriller

scene.

I wanted to create the tension you see bubbling up

inside of Jean and then create the tension between her

and Michael.

It’s an action scene, ultimately,

where you have two people who are flat-footed

just raising their hands.

Nobody’s fighting.

Nobody’s shooting guns.

Nobody’s flying through the air.

You have your two characters fighting each other

without ever touching each other or touching anyone

or anything else.

And I just thought that was a unique way

to approach an action sequence between a character who

has magnetic powers, in the case of Michael Fassbender’s

character, and a character who is extraordinarily

powerful in her telekinesis, in the case of Jean.

And if you’re going to have somebody

who has magnetic powers and someone

who has telekinetic powers face off

with each other, what better sort of weapon

to be fighting over than a helicopter?”

“Stop that.

I said stop that right now!”

“It’s not me.”

“It’s me.”

“We’ve seen in many movies, going back

to “Indiana Jones” and one of the “Jurassic Park” movies

and so many sort of classic action movies have used

the propellers of a chopper to create jeopardy in a scene.

And I just — I felt like having two choppers

and really —

ultimately, them facing off over one of them

would create this real tension, this real danger,

where you would just have two —

like you see, two people standing there

with huge fans that are blowing wind on them.

But in fact, when we shot it, I really wanted everything

in this movie to feel as real and raw as humanly possible,

and so we shot this with real helicopters.

Both those helicopters in this sequence — the first one that

spins on the ground was on a rig that spun on the ground.

And the second one, this one in the air,

is actually an extraordinary feat by our special effects

team.

They created two crane arms they could hold on a crane

line a 4,000-pound chopper, which is what this is,

with the men in it —

obviously, without the propeller

spinning close to our actors.

One thing that doesn’t happen to Magneto a lot

in these movies is he doesn’t get pushed around.

And I wanted the end of the sequence,

even though he wins it, so to speak,

I wanted Jean to be able to hurl him away.

And so we put Michael on a wire and had a bunch of guys

ratchet him back through the air.

And then we obviously erased that wire in post.”