10 Movies That WASTED Villains From Their Source Material

10. Phoenix - X-Men: The Last Stand

There are seemingly endless lists of things wrong with the third entry in the perpetually disappointing X-Men franchise, but one of the biggest was its throwaway use and offensive over-simplification of the Dark Phoenix saga, possibly the X-Men's finest story arc in all of their long history.

We'd spent two movies watching Jean Grey slowly unlock the depths of her power, only to have her sacrifice herself at the end of X2.

When she reappeared in The Last Stand, it wasn't as the living embodiment of the comic entity that Phoenix was in the comics, but instead as her callous and homicidal alter-ego, also called Phoenix.

It felt like the cheapest possible way to throw in some semblance of the truly epic character arc, and it was barely recognisable as the story it deserved to be.

Add to that the fact that it essentially took a back seat to the other inspiration for the movie's story, the 'Gifted' story arc in which a mutant "cure" is developed, and it made for an insulting mess that did little but upset fans of the comics.