10 Superhero Movies That Made Major Changes To Iconic Comic Moments

The Comic Book Moment: Less a moment, more an entire character. Bucky Barnes was first introduced in Captain America #1 as a youth-appeal sidekick and went on to appear in pretty much every issue as his "Young Ally". The timeline is fuzzy, but the accepted canon was that he died in the in the same mission that led to Cap being frozen, something that was retconned by Ed Brubaker in the mid-naughties; the writer obviously resurrected Bucky The Winter Soldier, but a stronger backstory where Barnes met Steve around the time he became a superhero and became skilled assassin in WW2 was also added.

The Movie Version: The entire Captain America trilogy took heavily from Brubaker's work, especially his Winter Soldier arc, and the overall point and theme remains the same. The ostensibly big difference between the two is the way Bucky "died", but The First Avenger also some other big changes to the backstory; it made Steve and Bucky childhood friends, with the latter being a solid rock to the former, and downplayed Barnes' darker pre-Soldier side.

Did The Change Work? The Captain America movies hinge entirely on Bucky - Steve Rogers is the hero, but each film is a key step in the Winter Soldier's development - so having him a more integral part of Steve's life from the off makes sense and has been effectively called back to throughout the series.