Most of what people know about heroes comes from the movies,
but it is not uncommon for integral parts of a character’s storyline to be
totally changed or even left out. Often times these defining parts will be
removed because they are a bit too gritty and dark to appeal to a large
audience, or sometimes it is just hard to communicate the depth of the story in
such a short amount of time. Whatever the reason, for people like me (and now
you) these end up being very noticeable changes that may skew how you look at
the hero and what they’re doing. Here are a few examples that come to mind
immediately.
For any of you that have seen the X-Men movies, you may remember Cyclops as
being kind of jerk to Wolverine. He’s constantly doubting him, putting him
down, and just acting super jealous about his girlfriend. They did this in the
movie to endear us to Wolverine, but in the comics, Cyclops garners a lot of
respect from everyone on the team. Cyclops is actually the “field leader” of
the X-Men, and basically coordinates most of their plans of attack. He is a
brilliant strategist, and team leader, is solemn but realistic, and is also the
only X-Man to consistently defeat Wolverine in combat when it comes to that. As
a side note, Cyclops’ eye beams are not lasers based on heat, but are actually
beams of kinetic force; they don’t burn things, they smash.
Until the most recent Spiderman movie, there were a lot of things that were
changed from the comics. In the Spiderman trilogy featuring Tobey Maguire,
Spiderman’s webbing came right from his arm, when in the comics (and most
recent film), he created web shooters and loads them with web pellets. Even in
the most recent movie it’s not quite right, since we see Peter Parker steal the
web technology from Oscorp, but in the comics, Peter creates the webbing
formula himself in a chemistry lab he has set up. I’d also like to point out,
if you remember in the first movie when Green Goblin (who isn’t just in armour,
but has green skin and looks like a goblin) drops both the school bus of
children and Mary Jane forcing Peter to choose who to save, the result was very
different in the comics. In the movie, Spiderman manages to save the kids as
well as Mary Jane, and it’s a happy ending. In the comics, it was actually Gwen
Stacey who was dropped, and Spiderman chooses to save the children. As Gwen
falls, Spiderman shoots a strand of webbing to catch her so she doesn’t hit the
water, but when he gets to her after saving the school bus, her neck has been
broken, leaving him to wonder if it was his webbing or the Green Goblin that
killed her.
I expect some other very key elements are going to be changed in upcoming
movies. Ant Man, who will be featured in the next Avengers movie, is known for
being an abusive spouse to his superhero wife. Wonder Woman has one key
weakness, which is being bound by a man; if she is tied up, she can escape,
unless a man tied her up, in which case she loses all her powers. And finally I
don’t even want to get into how badly they messed up Deadpool in the Wolverine
Origins movie, with Ryan Reynolds, but let me just say: Deadpool doesn’t have
eye beams, Deadpool doesn’t ever have his mouth sealed up, Deadpool doesn’t
have swords coming out of his arms, and Deadpool can only teleport because of
device he carries and activates. *sigh*
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