10 Comic Book Movies That Aren't Based On Comic Books

4. The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai

Big Trouble In Little China creator W.D. Richter took the director's chair for this ultimate cult escapade. Future Robocop Peter Weller was the title character, a polymath capable of doing everything from perform brain surgery to playing a fine guitar riff. He battled aliens from another dimension, commanded by the mighty John Lithgow, with the help of his band of boffin brothers the Hong Kong Cavaliers. When the story finally made it to the screen in 1984 it had gone through a mind-boggling number of variations. Banzai's author Earl Mac Rauch came up with the character idea, then fleshed him out over a series of aborted screenplay drafts, encompassing several stories. When the film didn't recoup its budget the concept became a comic book. Marvel adapted the movie and Moonstone went on to continue the ride in print. Appropriate, as the jumbled mix of genres and large scope suggested this could well have been a graphic novel. As it happened it only ended up that way.