12 Ways Comic Book Movies Totally Ripped Each Other Off

6. Mirroring The Hero

For all the breadth of the colourful, varied rogues' gallery of villains that have appeared in comic book movies, there is something that unifies a significant number of them: they're just like the heroes.

The appeal of casting a villain who shares similarities is of course entirely justifiable: it is in the sparks of similarity, and of perverse familiarity that make monsters all the more enduring. Darth Vader is all the more compelling because of the capacity for Luke to become him, and it is invariably the villains who blur the lines between good and evil who become the most popular.

That is precisely why we've seen villains in comic book movies who are dark mirrors of the heroes: Eddie Brock to Peter Parker, The Winter Soldier to Captain America, Nuclear Man to Superman, and Justin Hammer, Aldrich Killian and to a lesser degree Obadiah Stane to Iron Man. And despite the fact that some have been far from successful, film-makers cannot resist the temptation to continue the trend.