It can always be tricky to adapt something when the source material has so much to go off of and thousands of die-hard fans to please. This didn’t stop the MCU from making some changes when it came to bringing comic book characters and stories to life and quite often these have worked for the better as these fans have set out to prove.
Marvel comics have been going for quite some time now, with long-standing characters like Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man etched into the comic book communities psyche at this point. That’s not to say they were always represented in one way in the comics, they’ve been going for years and over time they have bound to have changed as society’s values have shifted and different writers have taken a crack at them.
When it came time to adapt them for live-action, writers had to think about them anew, sure there was a tonne of material to work with, and there are certain aspects that you absolutely cannot change, Captain America is all about righteousness and justice, Iron Man is a bit of a narcissist, Spider-Man is a nerdy, lovable teenager, but not everything is set in stone.
Another aspect that writers need to consider is the storyline itself. Many of the stories we are watching on our screens have come from the comics, but with a little twisting and pulling to make them fit. Occasionally these don’t always go down well, with comic book fans claiming that a character has changed too much, or that a storyline didn’t work, but sometimes they actually make a lot more sense and bring in a fresh perspective that fans have come to love, and just make so much more sense for the screen.
Fans have taken to Reddit to discuss which changes they think have worked best.
Wong’s change from comic to screen has been a real win for Marvel studios, thank god they didn’t just make him some manservant to Doctor Strange.
As time has moved on, we don’t think his original portrayal would have gone down very well as all.
Taking a once villainous race and making them more nuanced, with both good and bad within, makes for far more interesting stakes.
With an already famous billionaire genius/butler combination in the form of Batman and Alfred it was an interesting take to make JARVIS an AI character that becomes Vision instead.
Sometimes, when there is so much chemistry between characters on screen it makes sense to make them end goals rather than distract with other romances.
Many agreed that Thanos’ reasons for wanting to murder half the universe were a lot more compelling in the films compared to the comics.
And finally, most superheroes don’t have secret identities, in today’s modern age they likely would have been figured out at some point, as we saw with Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
These are all changes that fans have come to adore from the MCU, and going forward they will continue to bring a fresh look at the comic book universe to bring them up to speed with where we are now.