10 Comic Book Characters Who Wouldn't Translate To Live-Action Movies
4. Elongated Man
Elongated Man has all of the elasticity of Reed Richards with none of the leadership qualities or reader appeal. If Reed has yet to score well in theaters, it isn't looking good for Elongated Man.
The inside baseball on Elongated Man is that he was only created because Editor Julian Schwartz didn't realize they owned the rights to Plastic Man after obtaining intellectual property from Quality Comics.
The Elongated Man is Ralph Dibney. Ralph was obsessed with contortionism and researched a rare "gingo" fruit that was believed to enhance flexibility. He then developed a potent extract of the fruit. No gamma rays. No spider bites. Just some fruit extract et voila! It is later explained that Dibney is a metahuman, and the extract reacted with his latent genes to produce his elasticity.
To be fair to Ralph Dibney, he has been charmingly played by Hartley Sawyer in the live-action Flash TV show. Sometimes characters rise to the level of their own drawing power. Elongated Man works as a wacky sidekick on a family-friendly Flash. Unless he is used as a dark, film-noir detective in a Watchmen-style Flash movie, Ralph has made it as far as he's going to make it in the live-action world.