8 Superheroes Who Failed In The Movies But Soared On TV

7) Constantine

Like many Alan Moore comic book creations, his magic-wielding anti-hero John Constantine was not brought to the screen very faithfully in 2003’s Constantine. On the page, Constantine is a blond-haired Northern Englishman with attitude. In the movie, he’s now the decidedly not blonde, definitely not English Keanu Reeves who spends the entire time moping.

In 2014, NBC revitalized the character for a Constantine TV series. While we can’t argue that it was perfect (for one, his signature chain smoking and bisexuality were either toned down or removed all together), it was a much better version of the character than the movie. Based on Matt Ryan’s spot-on performance alone, it deserved more than the single season it ended up getting.

6) Elektra

2003’s Daredevil did not only mess up the titular Man Without Fear (sorry Ben Affleck, at least you’re Batman now), but it also gave us a pretty poor version of his love interest Elektra. Despite Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s real-life relationship, the pair lacked chemistry and the version of the character’s backstory presented in the film removed much of her awesomeness.

Somehow, though, Elektra came back in her own spinoff in 2005. This one was even worse, however, and probably helped set back female-led superhero movies by about a decade.

At long last, this year we got a better version of Elektra Natchios in Netflix’s Daredevil, as played Elodie Yung. The show actually made a lot of changes to the character from the comics, and not all of them worked, but she was still more engaging than the movie iteration.