10 Superhero Movies That Made Major Changes To Iconic Comic Moments

5. The Dark Phoenix Saga - X-Men: The Last Stand

The Comic Book Moment: The Dark Phoenix Saga is the X-Men arc, a highlight of Chris Claremont's resurrection of the series that is still highly regarded today. In short, Jean Grey is taken over by powerful entity the Phoenix Force while on a mission in space and becomes one of the X-Men's fiercest villains, most prominently destroying a star and killing billions of people. The whole thing ends with Jean sacrificing herself, but has been brought back in various forms over the years.

The Movie Version: The original X-Men trilogy took the idea of a great power lurking inside Jean, seeding it in X-2 with firey whisps as she used her powers and exploding it in The Last Stand, but completely changed the origin; it was some latent ability she held, not an outside force, that was instigated (rather than being quelled) by her sacrifice. How she was handled in Brett Ratner's sequels was an even bigger departure; due to a confused development stage, she winds up acting as more of a henchman.

Did The Change Work? The presentation of Dark Phoenix in The Last Stand is pretty terrible, with Ratner clearly not all that interested in paying off Bryan Singer's obsession, but as an idea putting the force into Jean isn't a bad one, especially given how grounded and allegorically-driven the X-Men movies were at that point.

Now we're over ten years on and comic book movies can hew closer to, well, the comic books, it is expected that the forthcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix will adapt the source material much closer.