6 WTF Comic Book Movies That Almost Got Made

By Percival Constantine / May 8, 2013

Comic book adaptations are a pretty mixed bag. Were talking decades of continuity, sometimes contradictory, that somehow has to be distilled into a pure form. It has to be something that will a) respect the source material and b) appeal to a mass audience. Oh, and also, you have to get this all done within a time frame of about 90 to 200 minutes. Thats a daunting task, especially when you consider that comic fans can be extremely picky. So there have been some filmmakers out there who, once given the task of adapting a comic book property, just go with the idea of screw it, Im going to do whatever the hell I want. This can be done for a variety of reasons. Sometimes its because the filmmaker has a message to convey that can only be done by completely transforming the source material. Sometimes its just because they couldnt be bothered to even do a cursory Wikipedia search on the character. And sometimes, it's because cocaine is a hell of a drug. Theres a reason why comic fans are quite skeptical about adaptations of their favorite superheroes, even after The Dark Knight Trilogy and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Its because weve been burned many, many times before. There was a time when the consensus in Hollywood was, no ones going to take this stuff seriously anyway, so lets just play it like a joke. But every now and then, whether its because of intense backlash, a moment of clarity, or even someone who gets put in charge of the project who looks at whats being done and says, guys, no, seriously. What the hell are you doing? the studios come to realize that theyd actually be better served if they took the millions of dollars theyre planning to put into a bad movie, set it in a pile, and lit it on fire. The story of Superman Lives is infamous, and it's one those films that no comic book fan has ever read about and said, gee, I really wish I would have gotten to see Nicolas Cage as Superman fight a giant spider. Here are six more bullets comic book movies have been able to successfully dodge...

6. X-Men

Before Bryan Singer came out with his version of the X-Men, the project languished in development hell for a good ten years or so. In the late 80s and early 90s, Stan Lee and Chris Claremont were even talking with James Cameron about developing the movie, but the deal fell apart when Cameron went over to Spider-Man (more on that later). One draft involved the X-Men vs. The Brotherhood vs. Sentinels, another involved Magneto turning Manhattan into a mutant homeland (probably inspired by Christopher Goldens X-Men: Mutant Empire trilogy of novels), another one had Magneto responsible for Wolverines adamantium, and Joss Whedon even turned in a script that was rejected for being too quick-witted (I imagine whoever rejected that script has been kicking himself ever since The Avengers). One script, however, took a completely different approach in that it didnt use any of the X-Mens classic villains. Instead theres a new group of villains, called the League of Gentlemen, led by a man named Mr. Montclair. These guys were basically the modern-day incarnation of the Illuminati or the Freemasons, and both Wolverine and Jubilee are tied to them, with Jubilees parents having worked on both the Weapon X Project and the Legacy Virus for the League, until they tried to repent and locked the cure for the virus in Jubilees DNA. Thats it. No Magneto, no Sentinels, no recognisable villains whatsoever. Its the X-Men vs. the Illuminati. And while Alex Jones may have loved it, the rest of us probably wouldnt have. While there are some good character beats and writer Michael Chabon said the script could be changed to accommodate the Hellfire Club, it just seems like a massive misstep to completely exclude Magneto, the X-Mens chief philosophical rival, from the first film. And theres a bit too much coincidence going on when Jubilees parents just happen to not only have been involved in both Weapon X and the Legacy Virus, but are also friends with the Beast.