10 Things The Marvel Cinematic Universe And Dark Knight Trilogy Have In Common

2. Merging Characters From The Comics

Whiplash Ras Killian In each franchise, there are examples of individual characters who are an amalgamation of two characters from the source material. In the Batman comics, Henri Ducard is a character unto himself - a skilled martial artist, marksman and detective who Batman looks to for extra training, while Ra's al Ghul is a totally separate character and a much more prominent character as one of Batman's key villains. In the Batman Begins movie, they are one and the same person, with Ducard being the alter-ego of Ra's. But the major examples of such amalgamations occurring in the MCU all come in the Iron Man movies. Aldrich Killian is a mish-mash of three different characters - first, he takes his name from the comic version of Aldrich Killian, a scientist who killed himself after helping to create the Extremis virus. Second, he has the same powers as Mallen, the main character who used the Extremis virus in the comics. finally, he claims to be the real Mandarin, Iron Man's main foe in the comics who is nothing like Aldrich Killian's depiction in the movie - indeed, the comic book version looks far more like the decoy played by Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3. Similarly, the character of Eric Savin in Iron Man 3 is an amalgamation of the Mallen character from the comics (sharing the same Extremis power-set) and Coldblood, a cyborg mercenary who has appeared alongside the likes of Iron Man and the X-Men, who goes by the name of Eric Savin in the comics. Also, in Iron Man 2, Mickey Rourke's Ivan Vanko character is an amalgamation of the two Iron Man comic book villains Whiplash (with whom he shared similar armour and whips) and Crimson Dynamo (with whom he shared a surname and some armour elements).
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Contributor

I'm a Tottenham Hotspur fan who loves comics and comic book movies.