10 Biggest Missed Opportunities In Recent Comic Book Movies
How did some billion-dollar studios overlook these chances to dominate the box office?
Superhero movies have been box office monsters for decades, but only since the turn of the century have they been the popular culture-shaping juggernauts that they are today, pulling in hundreds of millions to even billions of dollars per release. And all of them draw from the same, almost unending, and fiercely beloved source material: comic books.
But while comic books and movies are both visual mediums, they are inherently different artforms and adaptations between them will have to involve a lot of changes. This is not a bad thing by nature, in fact it allows the adapter to make corrections or modernize the adaptee. It does, however, pose a frustrating problem when a superhero movie has a clear method of bringing to life an iconic or important piece of comic lore and instead decides to go with a different, less impactful vision.
To be clear, creative adaptations should never be stifled. But considering that comic books have been described as our modern myths, they've been an under-represented medium since their creation, and their ideas and characters have made various studios more money than some countries entire economies, it feels like the least superhero movies could do is show some respect for their predecessors.
10. Showing Bruce And Hulk Merging (Avengers: Endgame)
The Hulk has always been one of Marvel's tentpole characters as he is very much one of the only figures they created that is based on a stark, tried-and-true literary archetype. He is nakedly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the nuclear age and the dichotomy and balance between Dr. Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk has been a major part of their characters' appeal since their inception, both onscreen and in the comics.
At the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, Hulk gets completely bodied by Thanos and only lives because Hiemdall uses the last of his power to open the Bifrost one last time. For the rest of the film, he regresses into Banner and refuses to be summoned on command by his other half. Fans knew this was building up to an epic and emotional showdown between the Gamma scientist and the green goliath.
A showdown, sadly, they were denied. In Avengers: Endgame, the Hulk is now a fusion of Banners mind in Hulk's giant muscular body. Bruce laughs off their abrupt transformation with a one-line joke about radiation baths, but it doesn't fix the fact that audiences were cheated out of a long-built up, character based conflict that would have been one of the franchise high points.