10 Movie Franchises That Ruined Iconic Characters Twice

6. Cyclops - X-Men

The First Time

James Marsden was perfectly cast to play Cyclops, so it's a shame that nothing particularly interesting was done with the character across the three original X-Men films.

This reached an infuriating apex in X-Men: The Last Stand, where the beloved superhero ended up dying off-screen at the hands of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). A most underwhelming end for a character who never got close to his potential, then.

The Second Time

With the launch of the X-Men prequels, the franchise was able to explore the backstories of many of its most iconic characters, and when the brilliant Tye Sheridan was cast to play young Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse, fans were thrilled.

Sheridan gave a decent enough performance with what little compelling material he had in Apocalypse, but by the time Dark Phoenix came around, he was again relegated to being "just another mutant."

This culminates in the character dropping an hilariously out-of-place f-bomb later in the film, which only further cements how fundamentally Simon Kinberg has misunderstood this young iteration of the character. Rubbish.