To say that superhero movies have become popular in the last couple of decades would be a massive understatement. The genre has achieved such a dominant position in pop culture that many prominent filmmakers have started seeing it as a threat to the continued existence of other forms of cinema. Despite their recent global dominance, superhero movies have been getting made for almost a century, stretching back to 1939''s Mandrake the Magician.
These movies were born out of the popularity of superhero comic books. Of these, Marvel and DC are the two comics publishing juggernauts that have been responsible for the majority of superhero movies. But the process of adapting comics has rarely been a one-to-one transference of what is on the page to the silver screen. Let us take a look at some comic book movies that have strayed far from the source material.
10 Catwoman
When it comes to femme fatales in comics, Catwoman was the OG anti-heroine who shook up the status quo in comics where female characters were often relegated to the role of damsels in distress. Catwoman's enduring popularity has made her an important part of the Batman franchise, and the character has been played by a number of actresses across the decades. When Halle Berry took up the mantle of the cat, the results were surprising to say the least.
The actress played Catwomanin a solo movie that was originally designed to be a star vehicle for Michelle Pfeiffer, reprising her role as Catwoman from Tim Burton's Batman movies. After Pfeiffer exited the role, the project was retooled beyond recognition. Halle Berry's Catwoman does not live in Gotham and has no connection to Batman. Also her name is Patience Phillips instead of Selina Kyle, her superhuman abilities have a supernatural origin, and she is straight up a hero instead of a villain/anti-heroine.
9 Constantine
In a sea of spandex-clad heroes and anti-heroes in the comics, the trench coat wearing, perpetually smoking and swearing John Constantine stands out as something different. Originally a supporting character, Constantine's popularity was so explosive that the character was soon headlining his own comic series. Interest from Hollywood quickly followed, and a solo Constantine movie was announced.
However, the film fans got starring Keanu Reeves as John Constantine was so far removed from the comics that it stirred up a great deal of controversy. Instead of being a London sorcerer and warlock with blonde hair, this version of Constantine was an LA-based, dark haired detective of the supernatural. The character's supporting cast from the comics was also retooled heavily to fit the film script rather than the comics. In recent years, the director of the movie has admitted he would have liked to have made the film more comic-accurate.
8 Steel
John Henry Irons is a prominent supporting cast member of Superman comics. As an engineer who works in Metropolis, John designed a superhero suit for himself to take up the mantle of Superman after the Last Son of Krypton succumbed to his injuries from a brutal battle against Doomsday. John's character became so popular that he got his own solo movie in 1997 starring Shaquille O'Neal as the titular Steel. However, the film dropped everything about the character's comic origins aside from his name and occupation.
In the film, John is a weapons designer who comes to learn that his modified weapons are being supplied to criminals by an underground bootlegger. In order to stop his weapons from being used for evil, John designs a superhero suit for himself and becomes the vigilante Steel. A big part of director Kenneth Johnson coming on board for the movie was his condition that the character be as far removed from his comic book roots as possible. "I didn't want to deal with childish characters in funny costumes," Johnson stated in an interview. "[Producer] Joel Simon told me that Steel was different, that he was really a knight in shining armor in a contemporary setting. I said that if I could lose the comic book cape, then maybe I could make it work."
7 Fantastic Four
Despite being known as the First Family of Marvel Comics, the Fantastic Four have always struggled to find worthy representation on the big screen. In 2015, Fox studios released a fresh reimagining of the iconic superhero team as a bunch of young scientists working on a top secret project for the government. The experiment involving inter dimensional travel goes awry, and the scientists end up getting superpowers. This is quite different from the comics, where the Fantastic Four got their powers after encountering cosmic radiation during a trip to space.
Their arch enemy Doctor Doom also gets a new origin in the movie that makes him a victim of the same experiment that gives the Fantastic Four their powers. A lot of the film's departure from tradition had to do with director Josh Trank's vocal disinterest in comic books. “You could take the most ‘comic booky’ things, as far as just names and faces and identities and backstories, and synthesize it into a tone," Trank explained in an interview. "And the [comic book] tone that [screenwriter Jeremy Slater] was interested in was not a tone that I felt I had anything in common with.”
6 Venom
The general public knows that Spider-Man is a popular superhero character, but it can be difficult to realize just how overwhelmingly popular the webbed wall-crawler is compared to every other comic superhero. Even Spider-Man's supporting cast is more popular than most prominent superheroes. Case in point, when Sony Pictures decided to make a big budget movie focussing on Spidey's nemesis Venom, and the film managed to outgross Wonder Woman's debut feature.
This was despite the Venomfilm making radical changes to the character's comic book origin. Instead of the Venom symbiote attaching to Spider-Man before coming to Eddie Brock, the movie removes the character of Spidey and other superheroes entirely. Eddie as Venom also goes from being the vengeful villain of the comics who has no qualms about killing innocents into a reluctant anti-hero who only attacks bad guys. With the character's recent sojourn into the MCU, Venom seems to be returning to his more traditional comic roots, including a face-off with Spider-man that lead actor Tom Hardy is fully behind.
5 Logan
Marvel fans were agog with excitement when Hugh Jackman revealed that his final movie as Wolverine (at least, that's what he said at the time) would be an adaptation of the Old Man Logan storyline from the comics. But fans also wondered how the film would adapt the parts of the story involving non-X-Men Marvel superheroes, since the comic series was more of a crossover event between various Marvel heroes and villains instead of being a solo Wolverine story.
As it turns out, the film Loganonly takes the central concept of Wolverine in his old age from the comic series, and ignores everything else. Like how Wolverine accidentally killed the other X-Men after being tricked by Mysterio in the comics, but the movie implies it was Professor Xavier who accidentally killed the other X-Men during a seizure. The rest of the movie also finds ways to remove/replace major Marvel characters, locations, and the motivations of the main cast from the comics.
4 Joker
The Joker in the comics has long been defined by his lack of a clear-cut origin story. This only adds to the mystique of the supervillain. But when Todd Phillips set out to make Joker, he decided to give the character a definitive origin story. In Phillips' movie, Joker was originally a failed comedian named Arthur Fleck, whose dreams of becoming a star are crushed under the weight of an uncaring society and his own mental issues.
This origin story goes against the most popular version of the Joker's origin from the comics, where he falls into a chemical vat of acid and is transformed into a white-skinned, green haired lunatic with a permanent smile plastered across his face. "We didn’t take anything from one particular comic," Phillips explained about the process of creating his version of the character. "We kind of picked and chose what we liked from the kind of 80-year canon of Joker. We kind of pulled a few things that we liked.”
3 Birds of Prey
The DCEU had struggled to build a cohesive mythology around its most well-known characters, but it did manage to create stars out of a few less-known players. The best example of this is Harley Quinn as played by Margot Robbie in 2016's Suicide Squad. The character proved so popular that Harley was soon headlining her own movie featuring the all-female superhero team Birds of Prey.
But the characters who show up in the movie are very different from the Birds of Prey team that has existed in the comics for decades. For one thing, Harley Quinn was never a part of the team, while its original founder Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl is never mentioned in the film. But the biggest departure from the comics, and one that caused quite a bit of controversy among fans, was how the character of the mute super-assassin Cassandra Cain from the comics was changed into a regular teen pickpocket for the movie.
2 Wanted
2008's Wanted plays like a slick, Matrix-esque version of the Fast & Furious franchise. But the film's origin actually places it squarely in the realm of superheroes. The movie was based on a comic series by Mark Millar about a young man named Wesley who discovers that he is the son of a deceased supervillain, whereupon Wesley is invited to join a secret society of his father's peers.
In the movie, the supervillains are replaced by a society of secret assassins with superhuman control over bullets. The movie also makes Wesley into a much more likable protagonist, unlike the comics where he is just as violent and gleefully depraved as the other super villains, and remains that way until the end of the story.
1 The Mask
When Jim Carrey burst on to the big screen in 1994 wearing green face paint and decked out in a flashy yellow suit in The Mask, audiences were spellbound. Everyone agreed that no one else could have done justice to the character of Stanley Ipkiss aka the Mask better than Carrey, with his natural proclivity for physical comedy and over-the-top family friendly antics.
But the truth is Carrey was not a natural fit for the character. Rather, the entire comic series on which the movie is based was reworked from the ground up to suit Carrey's personality. In the comics, when Stanley Ipkiss puts on the magic mask, he transforms into a green-faced super villain called Big Head. Unlike the cartoony and harmless hijinks shown in the movie, Big Head takes great enjoyment in killing anyone and everyone in the bloodiest of ways, and Stanley Ipkiss is only one of its many hosts who gets shot and killed by his girlfriend early on in the series.
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