10 Times Comic Book Movies Departed From The Canon And It Was Great

9. Stardust - There Is A Big Final Confrontation

Before a run of successful adaptations - Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, Kingsman - made them the go-to team for slick, witty, adult versions of offbeat comics, director Matthew Vaughn and his co-writer Jane Goldman established their skill with the form with this fairytale romp adapted from the Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess graphic novel. Stardust is perhaps less well remembered now than those later hits, but it is the perfect demonstration of Vaughn and Goldman's understanding of the fact that what works in one medium may not function in another. Even when working from such a comic book sacred cow as Gaiman, it's important to adapt the source to what works on film and doing so is what made Vaughn and Goldman's film shine and set them on a path to those later adaptations. Perhaps Gaiman's own background in both adapting and writing original scripts for the screen made him more amenable to changes than certain other comic creators. It was Gaiman that first put Vaughn and Goldman together, knowing that their sensibilities would combine to make the material work, and the writer was entirely on board with the film's biggest shift from its source: turning a downbeat, low-key ending into a chase, fight and get the girl action climax. There's a subtle complexity and character depth to the book's ending that appeals by defying expectations that the narrative will conclude with precisely the kind of confrontation that the film creates between hero Tristan and the witch (called Lamia in the film). However, film is a visual medium (even more so than comics) and films require action (by which I don't necessarily mean the sword swinging, punching type of action, just simply the act of doing rather than static talking). Of course, it helps that the big confrontation scene plays out as one of the most imaginative movie swordfights there's been, thanks to Lamia using a poppet to control Mark Strong's recently deceased Septimus as a puppet.