How NOT To Make A Comic Book Movie (Why These 10 Failed)
Not all comic book movies are successful — most of them actually suck.
These days, it seems every major blockbuster is based on a comic book property, and almost all of them rake in a billion or more at the global box office. Let's face it, comic book movies are easy money for studios these days, but that doesn't mean they are all created equally.
It's a sad fact that most comic book movies suck... and they suck hard. Some of the biggest box office bombs were based on one comic book or another, which just goes to show that there's a right way and a wrong way to make a comic book movie.
It's only recently that these sorts of movies could be considered well-made, but the past 40 years are speckled with a few good ones. Superman, Batman, and Blade are some early examples of good practices in making a comic book movie, but even those franchises went off the rails with their fourth, fourth, and third sequels, respectively.
The movies that do well should be studied by filmmakers, so they don't churn out the horrific crap that Hollywood has spewed out over the years. These ten films are some of the worst to have been inspired by a comic book, and they stand as examples of what NOT to do in adapting a comic book for the silver screen.
10. Redoing The Ending In A Rush - Dark Phoenix (2019)
2019's Dark Phoenix was the biggest box office bomb of the year it was released, and it ended up being a terrible adaptation of Chris Claremont and John Byrne's greatest story written for the comics. "The Dark Phoenix Saga" was one of the most important X-Men stories ever told, so this adaptation had to be amazing.
Of course, it wasn't, and it ended up being so far from the source material; few people even bothered to watch it after the reviews came out. The film suffered from several problems, but the biggest one was the ending, which was changed shortly before it was released.
The ending of the movie originally had one that was similar to the ending of an MCU movie (Civil War, as opposed to the assumed Captain Marvel), so the studio opted to reshoot the whole thing, so as not to be compared to the popular Marvel Studios film. If the script had only deviated from the script up to the ending, it might have worked, but changing it like that ruined the movie.
On its own, it's not incredibly terrible, but a lot of the plot elements seemed forced and unnecessary. The death of Mystique was meant to be a pivotal turning point, but they let that out in the trailers and ruined the surprise. That alone was a major problem, as the marketing for the movie only managed to push potential viewers away.
The movie cost $200 million to produce, and while it technically made a profit with a $252.4 million global box office haul, the marketing costs made it a $133 million loss for the studio.