8 Comic Book Characters Hollywood Will Never Understand

3. Constantine

CONSTANTINE: THE HELLBLAZER #4
DC Comics

John Constantine, a Vertigo mainstay and a defining character from DC's imprint, is slowly developing the renown he's deserved for years. Unfortunately for John (as well as his fans), getting to this stage hasn't been particularly easy.

In the original Hellblazer comics, Constantine is Liverpool born and bred, a master trickster and an occult con artist. He's disreputable, but charmingly so, and as a bisexual is one of DC's most high-profile LGBT* characters. If you'd only heard of the character through his 2005 movie, however - or even his short-lived 2014 TV show - all of this will have likely flown underneath the radar.

Francis Lawrence's Constantine movie may have boasted the talents of the ever-wonderful Keanu Reeves, but it just wasn't authentic. The film not only got rid of the character's trademark Merseyside roots - it straightwashed him too. The TV series faired better in one regard, with Matt Ryan taking the character back to the British Isles, but showrunner David Goyer wasn't interested in portraying the anti-hero authentically, also opting to forgo John's sexuality once again.

Ryan's depiction of the character has benefited from a move to TheCW, but a Constantine film remains a pipe dream for now and even then - given Hollywood's disastrous record when it comes to depicting LGBT* superheroes - it feels unlikely that he'll be portrayed properly.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.