Why X-Men: Dark Phoenix Failed

2. We've Seen This Story Before

If you're remaking something that lots of people hated, rule number one is to make damn sure that you're letting every one of the fans who were disappointed that first time that it's completely different and thus worth their time. That simply never happened in the marketing campaign.

The result, inevitably, saw mainstream fans wondering why Fox were bothering to try again with something that simply hadn't worked the first time because so little was done to address this being a fresh take. It always felt like a retread and like Fox were simply taking advantage of the opportunity provided by Days Of Future Past to tackle an iconic storyline.

The same thing happened with The Amazing Spider-Man movies, which purported to remake Spider-Man's origin story in a fresh way, but which never managed to get away from the fact that their reboot was so close to the original. And while The Last Stand was a benchmark Fox should have been confident of clearing with Dark Phoenix, they failed to get around fans keeping The Last Stand's take on the story as the original one.