20 Movie Characters Completely Different From Their Source Material

When a film character, particularly a villain, is still as relevant and iconic decades after their first appearance, there is obviously a reason for it. When the seemingly inevitable reboots come knocking however many years later, it's probably a good idea not to stray from those ideas too much, right?

You'd have thought that was little more than common sense, and though such movies have to make an effort to differentiate themselves from the originals, changing everything about a character is largely ill-advised. Look no further than 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, in which the very core of Freddy Krueger's (Jackie Earle Haley) backstory was changed.

The messy story played with the idea of Freddy being a sympathetic, wrongly accused victim before randomly driving home that he was in fact a child molester. Though this may have been the initial idea for Freddy back in 1984, he was changed for the better before the release of the film.

Jackie Earle Haley's version of Freddy also couldn't have been further from his Robert Englund counterpart in terms of the joy he took from tormenting his victims, and his quippy nature, as well as the look. The practical, unrealistic look of Krueger was absolutely key to what made him so memorable, and it's no surprise that the remake was reviled for leaning into a more "realistic", CGI-based aesthetic. Literally everything about Freddy's reimagining in 2010 missed the mark.