In a shocking turn from what has been the status quo of the Marvel fandom in the last few years, fans are reminiscing about and celebrating all the bold choices the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made that stray from its comic book source material.
The discussion started when one Reddit user asked the community about their most disliked adjustment from paper to screen, prompting another resident of the Marvel Studios subreddit to ask the exact opposite — and arguably more interesting — question.
For the OP, RDJ’s interpretation of Tony Stark and Steve and Bucky’s childhood friendship are the two principal upgrades that Marvel Studios made from the comics, but commentators had a lot more examples to offer. One recent change that had everyone reeling was the MCU’s version of Namor the Sub-Mariner in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The cinematic adaptation, co-written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, took major creative liberties in the creation of the film’s main villain, changing the character from the prince of Atlantis to the king of an ancient Mesoamerican underwater civilization called Talokan.
In the opinion of another fan, the decision to make most superheroes’ identities known to the public in the MCU is a smart one. In the comics, most heroes would try desperately to keep their true selves hidden, but in the films, that only happens on very specific occasions, with most characters enjoying a kind of celebrity status instead.
Although at the time, the choice to make Kamala a mutant instead of an inhuman in Ms. Marvel was met with some reservations, it was surprisingly the pick of two fans in this thread.
Ultimately, the fun thing about comic book adaptations is trying to figure out how the source material might inform the plot of upcoming films while also knowing that there will always be wild surprises and major changes to keep fans on their toes.