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

7. Hellboy: The Golden Army - "Can't Smile Without You"

One of the best examples of a comic book movie series that adapts hardly any of the actual plot material from the page and still absolutely nails the tone, style and overall quality of its source material, Hellboy benefits immeasurably from both the participation and support of original creator Mike Mignola and the incredible imagination of writer-director Guillermo del Toro. Make no mistake, though, the films are very much Del Toro's Hellboy and they reflect the enthusiastic Mexican's passions more than they do the comics writer. This is especially true of the sequel, The Golden Army, which has no real basis in the continuity of the comics and offers both the demonic hero and his fish-man sidekick Abe a shot at romance. In the short form storytelling of the comics, love stories don't often get a look in amongst the monster fights. Hellboy does have a very brief romantic story with a girl he rescued from fairies years earlier, but his relationship with firestarter Liz is strictly platonic. The first film needed the character to have more of a character arc than he gets within an individual action packed story in the comic, so Liz became his unrequited (and, later, requited) love. At the time, the change felt slightly awkward, but the romantic tension in the sequel, as the two superpowered characters try to maintain a normal relationship, functions much better. At the same time, Abe gets given a story of his own thanks to a romantic interest in fairy princess Nuala. The universality of romantic problems creates a greater, more personal bonding experience between the broadly blue collar cigar-chomping Hellboy and the bookish intellectual Abe than exists simply through a shared role in apocalypse prevention. It all culminates in a hugely enjoyable boozy singalong to Barry Manilow's ultra-cheesy Can't Smile Without You, which also serves perfectly to create an effective tonal shift as the villainous Nuada enters immediately afterwards.