Every day, it seems like we get more news about the upcoming MCU X-Men movie. All signs point to Sadie Sink debuting as Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day this summer, Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier is set to helm the movie, and Beef scribes Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo will pen the script, promising plenty of soapy interpersonal conflict.However, one bit of news does raise some concerns. Speaking with Collider, Schreier confirmed that he and his creative team are already looking towards future sequels. “What are the different places this can go? What are the places that [have] been in the comics? What hasn’t been explored as much, and how can that be incorporated?” he mused. While looking to the comics is a smart move, there are some classic stories that the MCU X-Men should avoid… especially the Dark Phoenix Saga.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Phoenix No More… Please!It’s easy to see why the movies would want to adapt the Dark Phoenix Saga. The storyline represented the first example of what Chris Claremont, working then with artist and co-plotter John Byrne, could bring to the franchise, reinventing the perpetual Z-listers as characters worthy of rich drama and heavy themes. However, as by demonstrated the two failed movie adaptations of the storyline (both, strangely, written by Simon Kinberg, no single film has enough space to chart Jean Grey’s corruption, sacrifice, and eventual victory over the Phoenix Force.During his seventeen-year run on Uncanny X-Men, Claremont established himself as a master at serialized storytelling. He ensured that each single issue told a satisfying tale, while constantly setting up an ongoing threat or concern. The seeds of the Dark Phoenix storyline begin in 1976’s Uncanny X-Men #100, when the X-Men face robot clones of their teammates in space, and resolves in 1980’s Uncanny X-Men #138, in which Cyclops leaves the team after Jean’s death. Along the way, the team fights the Hellfire Club, some leprechauns, and Colossus as a Communist crusader called the Proletarian.The same is true of most major X-Men storylines under Claremont. The Mutant Massacre only makes sense because previous stories established the Morlocks, the unsightly mutants who hide in the tunnels underneath New York, and the team’s fraught relationship to them. Inferno requires years of storytelling to not only trace Jean Grey’s return from the dead, but also Cyclops’s marriage to Jean’s clone, Madelyne Pryor, who becomes the demonic Goblin Queen after her husband rejects her. And The Fall of the Mutants, which ends with the X-Men faking their deaths and hiding out in the Australian Outback, doesn’t make sense until we see how badly the mutants work as mainstream superheroes.Even the major stories after Claremont have the same problem. How can you adapt Grant Morrison‘s pop-art take on the team unless we accept that mutants have long been feared and hated? The Messiah Complex epic is based on the idea that the mutant population is growing, which sounds like an ideal model for an MCU adaptation, except the central conflict stems from the Scarlet Witch magically undoing mutations years before. Even the recent Krakoa arc, in which the mutants gain their own sovereign nation, gains its power from decades of stories about mutant oppression.Evolve or DieSo where should Schreier look when planning the adventures of the MCU X-Men? Certainly, there are some great starting points in the comics (see: X-Men: Year One). But most of the comics spring from the tapestry of Marvel’s shared universe, a universe that was built differently in the MCU. Schreier and his writers don’t have the advantage of a world that already fears and hates people born with powers, even if Wonder Man and, presumably, Brand New Day are starting to seed some of that prejudice.Instead, the MCU X-Men must look to the comics for themes, not for specific story beats. Sure, they can do a story about a mutant who cannot control their powers, but Jean’s arc is too tough. What about people like Havok, Rogue, or even Cyclops, who have accidentally hurt people they love because of their abilities? You can do a story about mutants forming a haven against a hateful public, but it would have to be something smaller than the nation of Krakoa.Such an approach to the X-Men requires Marvel to change the way it approaches adaptation, but it’s not a huge change. After all, Civil War, Age of Ultron, and Infinity War all take basic ideas from their comic book predecessors, but go in new directions that suit this particular version of Captain America, Iron Man, and the Avengers. Further, Schreier already did this with Thunderbolts*, which gestures at storylines about misfits working for a malevolent government authority or becoming the Avengers, but doesn’t copy any specific beat.From the AshesObviously, X-Men is an important franchise for Marvel. Not only do they contain some of the most popular superheroes in the company’s roster, but they also offer space for some of the best storytelling the genre has to offer. As the MCU loses its grip on popular culture, it’s clear that the studio needs the X-Men to reignite the movie-going public’s interest.The X-Men have done this time and again in the comics. But Schreier, Jin, and Calo can’t take beloved storylines and put them on the screen and just trust that they’ll be beloved in this new context as they were on the page.Instead, they should follow the model of the characters they’re writing. They need to let these stories mutate, helping them evolve to match a new medium and a new movie-going audience. The audience deserves to see why the X-Men have captured the imagination of readers for decades, with stories that work for the current movie-going audience.The post No More Dark Phoenix! The MCU X-Men Must Stay Away From These Stories appeared first on Den of Geek.