As we have seen all too many times before, adapting something that has extensive source material for a movie is not an easy task, especially if it has a dedicated fanbase. Harry Potter fans know all too well about that. Even when we have TV shows that cover these things, they are not able to fully commit to translating the comic pages to the screen. There are many reasons given for this kind of change, but and some people can forgive the changes. What has become a problem for comic book readers is when the comics make changes so that they can adjust to what the movies have established, and that has been happening a lot more in Marvel so that it can all fit in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This article will explore 5 changes Marvel Comics has made to their characters in order to fit with the movies.
1. Spider-Man’s Webs
We watched Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, and for those who did not read the comics or watch the cartoons first, webs coming out of his hands made sense because…well…it’s in the name. He’s Spider-Man. Well, in the comics, it was a different case. In the comics, he only has the spider sense, super strength and agility. The webs come from webshooters; devices that shot out a web fluid devised from a formula he came up with. Early concept art and images of Spider-Man showed Peter Parker working on some device he attached to his arm were shown, and it looked like it was gonna go the comic book route. When the movie was released, it turned out that the webs came out of his wrists instead. It was a welcome change, as it was brought to emphasis in Spider-Man 2 when he lost his powers. The comics, for a time, used this idea too. The comics made it so that Peter would shoot webs organically as well. It happened twice. There was a time when he was turned into “Man-Spider” and another when his stories were becoming more supernatural and he was discovered to be a spider totem and eventually got to upgrade his power set and was able to shoot webs from his hands. This happened in the mid-2000s, when the Raimi Spider-Man films were all the rage. Eventually, everything went back to “normal” regarding Peter’s webbing after 2007’s storyline: One More Day.
2. How Intelligent is Tony Stark?
DC has the “who beats who” argument, even though we know that no matter who beats who, Batman beats everyone with prep time and plot, as long as he’s motivated enough to do it. Marvel, on the other hand, has a different main argument. The biggest argument in Marvel has to do with intelligence. The fandom often argues about who the smartest in Marvel is. While the fans all agree that Reed Richards is the smartest (with some who try to argue that Doom is smarter), the rest of the list is debatable. The list that made the most sense was Reed > Hank Pym/Doom > T’Challa > Bruce Banner > Tony Stark. This list changed over time, especially when the MCU brought all of these characters to the screen. Tony Stark became a big focus in the intelligence department, and overshadowed all of the other geniuses. Hank Pym is no longer smarter than Tony Stark, and the MCU even gave Tony Stark a lot of Hank Pym’s intelligence. T’Challa is no longer smarter than Tony Stark. Even Peter Parker is smarter than T’Challa now. Bruce Banner, although it was highly debatable, could achieve just as much as, if not more than Stark, if he had the same resources, but could never get to do it, but displayed his smarts. Tony Stark went from somewhere along the lines of fifth smartest to the third smartest, behind Reed Richards and Moon Girl. T’Challa was pushed all the way to number 10. This was done in an official list released by Marvel: the first time Marvel had ever done so, and this was coincidentally at the height of the MCU, where Tony Stark is the smartest character, or second smartest, because of Shuri.
3. Cyclops Gone Bad
There are very few major characters who have been as disrespected as Scott Summers on screen. Even though Charles Xavier meant for him to become the face of his peace and cohabiting mission between humans and mutants in the movies and comics alike, Scott’s treatment in the movies left a lot to be desired. It seemed that with every movie that was released, his screentime was decreased, and more was given to Wolverine, who was the most popular character, and is the most popular mutant. As time went by in the comics, Cyclops became more and more unstable and extreme in his actions, and it eventually led to him becoming a Magneto-figure, except, unlike Magneto, we followed through on his entire story before he went evil, instead of being introduced to him being evil. This period had Wolverine stand up and become what Charles Xavier had intended for Cyclops: the leader of the X-Men, the head of the School for Gifted Youngsters, and the one who stands between good and evil, representing mutantkind. This was happening during the time when Wolverine was the only character anyone cared about in the X-Men movies. Wolverine was the only one who had solo movies at that point, and was the only one who had appeared in every movie to that point, apart from Charles Xavier. Cyclops eventually died, and for some weird reason, Beast brought back Cyclops and a few other mutants from the past, as teenagers, to the present, and it coincided with the time that the movies were focusing on the past, and would inevitably introduce teen versions of Cyclops, Jean and Storm.
4. Inhumans vs X-Men
It’s funny to think about how the comics were cashing in on what was happening in the movies, but were sabotaging the X-Men IP at the same time, because the company that makes the movies did not own the film rights to mutants. This was made all the more obvious when they set up a war between the Inhumans and the Mutants of Marvel. The Terrigen Mists (the source of the power of the Inhumans) were spreading across the world. Normally, this would not have been a problem, as it would just mutate those with inhuman genes, and they already had a community that would accept them. The problem was that these mists were deadly to mutants, and that brought them to butting heads with the X-Men, who obviously wanted to protect their own kind. The story is nice, but it came at a time when the Inhumans, famously known as a cheap knock-off of the mutants, were about to make their debut in the MCU. What this came across as is a ploy to finally prove to themselves – and the readers, that the Inhumans were the next big thing. In-universe, the Inhumans also won the war. The fans didn’t turn a blind eye to this one, and shunned the company for doing this kind of thing. The Inhumans comics didn’t sell that much better, and the mutant comics were being published less and less, and the mutants were still being pushed back further…until the deal between Disney and 20th Century Fox started being negotiated. Now that Disney has bought Fox and its properties, the mutants are back at the forefront and are better than they have been in a long time. The funniest part of this story is that the Inhumans were at one point owned by 20th Century Fox, and Jessica Alba wanted them to be in the unmade Fantastic 4 movie.
5. The Maximoff Twins
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