12 Ways Comic Book Movies Totally Ripped Each Other Off

4. "Your Origin Is Not The Whole Story... It's ALSO In Your Genes"

Superhero origins used to be a pretty definitive thing: Batman came from parental murder, Superman is an alien orphan, Spider-Man was bitten by a spider and the Hulk was zapped with gamma radiation. Those were the pillars of truth that under-pinned the genre, but then, apparently, because we were all getting too familiar with the models, Hollywood decided to change things up a bit in a couple of cases.

Batman is still the product of murder and Superman is still an alien (though now he's also a codex, somehow) but both Spidey and the Hulk were given new elements to their origins, revealing that they were already on the road to becoming their alter-egos even before their respective trigger events.

First Ang Lee's under-appreciated, but not exactly excellent, Hulk showed that Bruce Banner was already genetically mutated thanks to his father's experiments, and then Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man suggested that Peter might be somehow linked to his father's experiments (though that was abandoned somewhat in favour of saying that the spider that bit him was impregnated with his genes.)

The end result is that the impact is taken out of the origin triggers, and we get the surprise-dampening revelation that they were probably already destined for greatness, making their impact as wish fulfilment for fans a little more difficult to get excited about.