5 Movie Adaptations That Completely Missed The Point

Wanted the comic book, by Mark Millar, is about a gang of supervillains who secretly rule the world. The Wesley character starts off in the same place as his cinematic counterpart -- same life, job, girlfriend, etc. -- but instead of simply yelling at his boss and tennis-serving a guy with a keyboard, he starts murdering everyone who ever wronged him. From former teachers to girls who rejected him to just ... random people who looked at him funny.

Presumably to ensure that only complete sociopaths could sympathize with this character, Wesley then rapes "an A-list celebrity" (we're gonna say ... Steve Buscemi?), which his pals at the Fraternity immediately cover up. Sure, there are some bigger, badder villains whom Wesley and Fox need to take down, but that doesn't make him any less of a murdering rapist.

But In The Original ...

Kick-Ass is based on another Mark Millar comic, and there's something really wrong with that guy's brain. In the comic, Dave is a sad sack who becomes a superhero, sure -- not so much because he wants to make the world a better place, but because his life sucks. Both Comic Book Dave and Movie Dave pretend to be gay to get close to the girl they have a crush on, then come clean to her. In the movie, she returns his feelings and they hook up. In the comic, she has a much more realistic reaction: She tells her boyfriend, and he punches Dave in his "nice-guy" face.

Then there's Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage's Batman-esque character). Big Daddy wasn't actually a cop who lost his wife to the mob; that was just the story he gave to anyone who asked. He was a regular accountant trapped in a failing marriage, so he ran away with his baby daughter. He raised her to be a mentally unbalanced killer, all so they can play superhero together. Seriously, Big Daddy does such a number on Hit Girl that even after he dies, she has visions of him that encourage her to kill people.

The entire point of the comic is that real-life "superheroes" would all be lonely, broken individuals who would invariably end up worse off than they started if they gave in to the delusion.

But In The Original ...

In the novel, Kersey is a paranoid nutjob who is clearly a much bigger threat to society than the saps he murders. Instead of valiantly intervening during violent crimes to save innocent lives, he goes around shooting petty criminals, like a guy robbing a passed-out drunk or two 17-year-olds stealing from a car. At one point, he nearly kills two young guys in the subway not because he saw them commit a crime, but because they look like the type who would.

In the book, Paul is an anxious everyman who needs to get close to his target to hit them. In the movie, he's a stone-cold superhero who could snipe the eyes out of a squirrel a hundred feet away. (The squirrel was probably selling drugs to kids, anyway.)

By the end of the novel, the human personification of Fox News programming is attacking teenagers because he doesn't the way they're dressed. In a 2008 interview, the author flat-out says, "The point of the novel Death Wish is that vigilantism is an attractive fantasy but it only makes things worse in reality." The makers of the movie stopped after "vigilantism is an attractive fantasy" and ran with it.

But In The Original ...

Edge of Tomorrow is based on a Japanese novel with an even more nonsensical name: All You Need is Kill. In the book, it's explained that "Cage" (Keiji) and "Rita" (Rita ... but, like, in Japanese) have become "antennae" for the aliens -- meaning that as long as both are alive, the invaders can loop back in time whenever they lose a battle, like your dickhead cousin who keeps resetting the Nintendo whenever he's losing in Mario Kart.

Realizing that the only way to win is for one of them to die, Rita attacks Keiji, forcing him to kill her. When he does, the cycle is broken and Keiji is able to repel the remaining aliens. And that's the whole point of the story: Every victory comes with a cost. Rita had to watch a close friend die to end her loops, and now it's Keiji's turn to lose her. Whether you're in the trenches of WWI or fighting tentacle monsters from outer space, winning a war always means some people are going to fall in the process.

Unless you're in a Tom Cruise flick. The movie simply brings everyone back through the magic of alien blood bukkake, meaning that Cage's victory comes at no personal cost. Keiji learns that you can't win without sacrifice. Cage learns that if you don't succeed at war, you can just try, try again.

Besides having the same job and birthday as Capote, there's a scene in a party in which the narrator expresses that he has no interest in either horses or baseball. Later, Holly states: "If a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, I'm in trouble anyway: he don't like girls." The narrator doesn't disagree. Yes, this was the most direct way you could tell readers a character was gay back in 1958.

"Paul" is not a lover, but a surrogate brother to Holly ... which is why (in both versions) she calls him Fred, after her real brother. On a side note, that's much less creepy when their relationship is purely platonic. The film changes their friendship to romance for the sake of a Hollywood happy ending, because showing the two drinking mimosas in their pajamas apparently wasn't dramatic enough.

For more works that Hollywood butchered to make a buck, check out 29 Movie Adaptations That Left Out the Best Parts and 7 Awful Movie Versions Of Books That Deserve A Second Try.

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