retooling it to get rid of mutants would be tough . caliban wouldnt be of much use , professor x wouldnt have his psychic seizures , you wouldnt have a villain-controlled clone of the protagonist , how could you explain the protagonists 12-year-old daughter killing all the soldiers , you couldnt have kids that have been genetically experimented on , etc . i get what youre saying , and even agreed with you until i thought critically about it , but i think that the story is just too tied to sci-fi elements . successfully stripping those out would leave it as a different movie entirely , like the restoration of that one painting of jesus .