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  1. #1
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    Default Why Change That?

    When a comic book or standard book for the matter is adopted for the screen some change is necessary. Some things that work on the page won't come off on screen and some other compromises have to happen like story compression and composite characters. But others leave you wondering why change that? One of mine is from the MCU, that Captain America's mighty shield is vibranium and not the vibranium-steel alloy that it is. A scene in which Howard gives Cap the shield and tells him that it was made by his friend Myron MacLain and is a alloy of vibranium and steel. What are the unnecessary changes that just bug you.
    Last edited by McMax; 05-16-2016 at 09:02 AM.

  2. #2
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    For me it's characters who are either name-checks or re-invented to the point they are nearly unrecognizable.

    Was there any reason for the character in Iron Man 3 to be named Mandarin besides it being the name of a classic Iron Man foe? I sort of get the argument that the real Mandarin wasn't Ben Kingsley but Aldrich Killian, but even Killian was too different from the classic Mandarin to seem like it was anything more than using the name of an Iron Man villain without really wanting to use that villain.

    The same with Zemo in CA:Civil War. Loved the motivation and the role the character played ... just wish the guy wasn't supposed to be the movie version of Baron Zemo.

    And in the DC movies I'm left scratching my head wondering when Jonathan Kent became an impediment rather than an inspiration for Superman. Or how the Joker managed to disguise himself as Lex Luthor in Dawn of Justice. (Wait, you mean that his seeming random dialogue was supposed to make him seem a genius and not an obvious sociopath )

    My personal favorite though is the Atom on Arrow who manages to be nothing like the Atom for much of his early appearances because they just pasted the name Ray Palmer on a character designed to be Ted Kord (the Blue Beetle). And Palmer's fiancé wound up with a name change because they had already introduced her character (Jean Loring) in a different role.

  3. #3
    Astonishing Member Exciter's Avatar
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    I think for some time the movies felt the need to run away from the costumes, though that's changed a bit. Deadpool looked ripped from the page, and Dr. Strange is looking to be the same. It still irks me that after all these movies, we never got Jackman in a proper Wolverine costume.
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    Death becomes you Osiris-Rex's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Exciter View Post
    I think for some time the movies felt the need to run away from the costumes, though that's changed a bit. Deadpool looked ripped from the page, and Dr. Strange is looking to be the same. It still irks me that after all these movies, we never got Jackman in a proper Wolverine costume.
    And Mystique is still running around naked instead of wearing the costume she has in the comic books.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Exciter View Post
    I think for some time the movies felt the need to run away from the costumes, though that's changed a bit. Deadpool looked ripped from the page, and Dr. Strange is looking to be the same. It still irks me that after all these movies, we never got Jackman in a proper Wolverine costume.
    Some costumes just look horribly silly on the screen due to their colors. Case in point - Spiderman in Captain America: Civil War. In prior movies they muted his colors a bit so they weren't so garish but in Civil War it was full on bright colors which looked ridiculous next to everyone else. Hawkeye would have looked equally ridiculous if they'd gone with his traditional purple. Basically nothing bright works well on screen which is why everyone ends up in leather, street clothes, or darker shades (compare how Cap looked in his movies vs the Avengers where he got a bright costume and looked hideous).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon Clark View Post
    For me it's characters who are either name-checks or re-invented to the point they are nearly unrecognizable.

    Was there any reason for the character in Iron Man 3 to be named Mandarin besides it being the name of a classic Iron Man foe? I sort of get the argument that the real Mandarin wasn't Ben Kingsley but Aldrich Killian, but even Killian was too different from the classic Mandarin to seem like it was anything more than using the name of an Iron Man villain without really wanting to use that villain.

    The same with Zemo in CA:Civil War. Loved the motivation and the role the character played ... just wish the guy wasn't supposed to be the movie version of Baron Zemo.

    And in the DC movies I'm left scratching my head wondering when Jonathan Kent became an impediment rather than an inspiration for Superman. Or how the Joker managed to disguise himself as Lex Luthor in Dawn of Justice. (Wait, you mean that his seeming random dialogue was supposed to make him seem a genius and not an obvious sociopath )

    My personal favorite though is the Atom on Arrow who manages to be nothing like the Atom for much of his early appearances because they just pasted the name Ray Palmer on a character designed to be Ted Kord (the Blue Beetle). And Palmer's fiancé wound up with a name change because they had already introduced her character (Jean Loring) in a different role.
    Just to play devil's advocate a bit...

    That depends on what you consider necessary to be "recognizable." Take MCU Zemo, for example. I absolutely see where you're coming from, but really, what defines comic book Helmut Zemo? The fact that he's the son of a Nazi? His view on the aristocracy and the nature of rulers and the ruled? I think you can argue that his worldview from the comics is a defining trait, and in that sense, MCU Zemo isn't the same, no. (And I say this as someone who has come very much to enjoy comic Zemo in the little of him I've read. I've got a stack of his appearances on my read pile as we speak.)

    But comic Zemo also holds a grudge. Like, better than almost anybody not named Victor Von Doom. One major element of Helmut Zemo's motivation in his early appearances was essentially the grudge he held against Steve Rogers for thwarting his father's, and by extension his whole family's, ambitions.

    Also, when Brubaker brought him back as a nemesis during the Bucky-Cap run, it was because Zemo felt Bucky hadn't earned the shield. That he hadn't been held sufficiently accountable for the things he'd done.

    What defines MCU Zemo? His grudge against the Avengers. Because he doesn't feel they've been held accountable for their actions.

    It's all about the perspective.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ZeroBG82 View Post
    Just to play devil's advocate a bit...

    That depends on what you consider necessary to be "recognizable." Take MCU Zemo, for example. I absolutely see where you're coming from, but really, what defines comic book Helmut Zemo? The fact that he's the son of a Nazi? His view on the aristocracy and the nature of rulers and the ruled? I think you can argue that his worldview from the comics is a defining trait, and in that sense, MCU Zemo isn't the same, no. (And I say this as someone who has come very much to enjoy comic Zemo in the little of him I've read. I've got a stack of his appearances on my read pile as we speak.)

    But comic Zemo also holds a grudge. Like, better than almost anybody not named Victor Von Doom. One major element of Helmut Zemo's motivation in his early appearances was essentially the grudge he held against Steve Rogers for thwarting his father's, and by extension his whole family's, ambitions.

    Also, when Brubaker brought him back as a nemesis during the Bucky-Cap run, it was because Zemo felt Bucky hadn't earned the shield. That he hadn't been held sufficiently accountable for the things he'd done.

    What defines MCU Zemo? His grudge against the Avengers. Because he doesn't feel they've been held accountable for their actions.

    It's all about the perspective.
    True, but to me the movie Zemo closes more doors than he opens. It removes one more villain that is uniquely Captain America's and in the process adds nothing that couldn't have been done with a new villain.

    Part of what I liked about Helmut Zemo was the legacy aspect that the Zemo family had for Cap. They aren't using the Skull in the movie universe for whatever reasons. Agents of SHIELD have aged out most of the founding HYDRA members (and their heirs) that might hold personal ties to Cap. Helmut could have given them a guy who wasn't around for Cap's origin years, but who carries a hatred stretching back to those days.

    The movie guy is an enemy of the Avengers in general. You could stick him in any non-cosmic Marvel movie at this point as someone looking for vengeance on the heroes and it would feel the same. He's basically the Punisher but targeting superheroes instead of criminals.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon Clark View Post
    True, but to me the movie Zemo closes more doors than he opens. It removes one more villain that is uniquely Captain America's and in the process adds nothing that couldn't have been done with a new villain.

    Part of what I liked about Helmut Zemo was the legacy aspect that the Zemo family had for Cap. They aren't using the Skull in the movie universe for whatever reasons. Agents of SHIELD have aged out most of the founding HYDRA members (and their heirs) that might hold personal ties to Cap. Helmut could have given them a guy who wasn't around for Cap's origin years, but who carries a hatred stretching back to those days.

    The movie guy is an enemy of the Avengers in general. You could stick him in any non-cosmic Marvel movie at this point as someone looking for vengeance on the heroes and it would feel the same. He's basically the Punisher but targeting superheroes instead of criminals.
    You make some excellent points. And I really do agree with you in regards to the legacy angle. I was hoping they'd keep the family antagonism element for the character as well.

    But realistically, how many films do we expect to get out of the Captain America franchise? And how many villains are we going to need for them? I don't think positioning Zemo as more of an Avengers villain is necessarily a bad thing. And I'm not sure that I agree with you about adding nothing that couldn't have been done with a new villain. Because I'm very much hoping that we'll see some form of Thunderbolts team along the way. And setting up Zemo's antagonism to the Avengers now makes it that much easier to justify his assembling a team to try and destroy them later. Though that may be my personal bias towards the Thunderbolts showing.

    Still, it makes for a fascinating discussion. I would love to see what thinking leads to the MCU's choices. How do they decide what to keep and what to jettison when they reinvent a character? I suspect some of it, maybe even a lot of it, arises out of creating the character in terms of plot function first, and then working out which existing character fits that function. We may never know.

  9. #9
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    I've noticed that the Batman films tended to have characters that were similar to those in the comics, but the names were changed-Grissom in the first film was similar to Rupert Thorne, Ekhart was basically Bullock...and even in the Nolan films, the female officer in the second one was kind of like Renee Montoya but changed (possibly because she betrayed Dent and they didn't want that association?).

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by JediMindTrick View Post
    Some costumes just look horribly silly on the screen due to their colors. Case in point - Spiderman in Captain America: Civil War. In prior movies they muted his colors a bit so they weren't so garish but in Civil War it was full on bright colors which looked ridiculous next to everyone else. Hawkeye would have looked equally ridiculous if they'd gone with his traditional purple. Basically nothing bright works well on screen which is why everyone ends up in leather, street clothes, or darker shades (compare how Cap looked in his movies vs the Avengers where he got a bright costume and looked hideous).
    The funny thing is there are a number of movies with bright poppy colors. The weird thing is few of them are actually comic book movies.

  11. #11
    Extraordinary Member MichaelC's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon Clark View Post
    For me it's characters who are either name-checks or re-invented to the point they are nearly unrecognizable.

    Was there any reason for the character in Iron Man 3 to be named Mandarin besides it being the name of a classic Iron Man foe? I sort of get the argument that the real Mandarin wasn't Ben Kingsley but Aldrich Killian, but even Killian was too different from the classic Mandarin to seem like it was anything more than using the name of an Iron Man villain without really wanting to use that villain.

    The same with Zemo in CA:Civil War. Loved the motivation and the role the character played ... just wish the guy wasn't supposed to be the movie version of Baron Zemo.

    And in the DC movies I'm left scratching my head wondering when Jonathan Kent became an impediment rather than an inspiration for Superman. Or how the Joker managed to disguise himself as Lex Luthor in Dawn of Justice. (Wait, you mean that his seeming random dialogue was supposed to make him seem a genius and not an obvious sociopath )

    My personal favorite though is the Atom on Arrow who manages to be nothing like the Atom for much of his early appearances because they just pasted the name Ray Palmer on a character designed to be Ted Kord (the Blue Beetle). And Palmer's fiancé wound up with a name change because they had already introduced her character (Jean Loring) in a different role.
    I thought The Killiandarin actually embodied the core themes of the Mandarin quite well.
    (1)The Mandarin the comics is a one-man version of the military industrial complex, a ruler who spends all his kingdom's money turning himself into a person of mass destruction, a science and martial arts super-soldier. He basically spends the entire budget on the military, it's just he's the entire military. In the end his fiefdom is too broke to even pay taxes.

    Is Killian a one-man version of the military industrial complex? He's a member of the military industrial complex, he embodies the corruption of the military industrial complex to the point of caricature. He's using taxpayer money to turn himself into a super-soldier, and it's part of a scheme to get America spending even more money on his super-soldier program. While it may not literally make America flat broke by itself, his scheme is a massive example, a caricatured example, of the corrupt and bloated military spending that is causing America such budget problems.

    (2)The Mandarin is a mad scientist.
    Is Killian a Mad Scientist? Yup. It's right there from the moment he pops up.

    (3)The Mandarin possesses superhuman martial arts abilities, the most common example of which is the ability to karate-chop chunks off of the Iron Man armor, and generally physically enhancing himself with chi. As corollary to this, he's extremely athletic.

    Is Killian a superhuman martial artist? Welllll, yes and no. He's not literally superhumanly skilled, but he's superhuman and he uses karate-chops to chop the leg off one armor and chop another armor in half. He's not the Chi-channeling mystic monster comic Mandarin is, but for a simplified movie character he's fairly close. He's also played by a guy who is fairly tall and athletic, the star of several action-movies.

    (4)The Mandarin often schemes to cause world war III so he can benefit from everyone being at war with everyone else.

    Is Killian scheming to cause World War III so he can benefit from everyone being a war with everyone else? Yes and no, but mostly yes. He's scheming to control and render permanent the war on terror, which is to the modern world was World War III was to the 60's.

    Killian IS the Mandarin. People who think he's not are too focused on trivial things like the rings. That's like obsessing over movie Joker not having his acid-shooting-flower.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon Clark View Post
    For me it's characters who are either name-checks or re-invented to the point they are nearly unrecognizable.

    Was there any reason for the character in Iron Man 3 to be named Mandarin besides it being the name of a classic Iron Man foe? I sort of get the argument that the real Mandarin wasn't Ben Kingsley but Aldrich Killian, but even Killian was too different from the classic Mandarin to seem like it was anything more than using the name of an Iron Man villain without really wanting to use that villain.

    The reason was Marvel/Disney wasn't going to put a non-white villain on the screen.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by JediMindTrick View Post
    Some costumes just look horribly silly on the screen due to their colors. Case in point - Spiderman in Captain America: Civil War. In prior movies they muted his colors a bit so they weren't so garish but in Civil War it was full on bright colors which looked ridiculous next to everyone else. Hawkeye would have looked equally ridiculous if they'd gone with his traditional purple. Basically nothing bright works well on screen which is why everyone ends up in leather, street clothes, or darker shades (compare how Cap looked in his movies vs the Avengers where he got a bright costume and looked hideous).
    Is this kind of a new thing because of the recent Batman movies, where everything is dark and muted? Because in movies like the 1966 Batman movie and Superman movies in the early 80s and even into the villains in Batman movies of the 90s the costumes were very bright and colorful. Kind of now comic books is serious business, dude, we gots to make them look real?

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by McMax View Post
    The reason was Marvel/Disney wasn't going to put a non-white villain on the screen.
    or a female, if shane black is to be believed.

  15. #15
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    I'm not big on the muted costumes. They could stand to be a bit brighter. Some actual red would be nice. It doesn't have to be bright!

    I hate that so many villains are one & done. I get that they may never be used again in a movie but I wish they wouldn't be killed.

    I also wish there were more loner heroes. This is a big issue for me when it comes to TV adaptations. Everyone has a team that helps them. I grew up with everyone being a loner. Everyone has a tech team or in the movies, all the Marvel heroes are connected to the government. Maybe I'm just anti social.

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