Superhero Powers That Were Changed On-Screen

If the trailer is any indication, most of what makes Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) such a fan-favorite comic book character — her fan-girling over superheroes and being an awkward but endearing daydreamer — remains intact in the new adaptation. Her power set, however, seems to have been completely revamped for the show. In the comics, Khan can polymorph, which usually manifests in her stretching or growing out her limbs to superhuman size. However, in the most recent trailer, she's creating glowing energy constructs like a Green Lantern (though we do see her use these powers to create a giant fist, so that's something).

There are many reasons — and a lot of speculation — as to why Marvel and Disney might have made this change for the show. These include a (relatively) limited TV budget to do stretchy skin effects, wanting to have her powers more closely resemble those of Brie Larson's Captain Marvel (who she'll co-star alongside in 2023) or her original powers being too close to those of Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four, who made his MCU debut in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." Whatever the case may be, the rest of the show seems to be comics-accurate — at least for now.

Spider-Man has been swinging around New York since 1962's "Amazing Fantasy #15", and to do it, he's almost always had to use mechanical web-shooters and specially-designed web fluid. While many fans prefer this origin, it always stretched credulity to a certain degree, even for comics, that a kid struggling to pay rent somehow had the resources to make devices that rival state-of-the-art military tech. It would also have made perfect sense for Peter Parker to have gained innate web powers from his radioactive spider bite along with his other abilities (climbing on walls, relative super-strength, speed, and agility), none of which are spider-specific like web-spinning is.

When James Cameron was tasked with writing and directing a "Spider-Man" feature film in the early 1990s, one of his biggest adaptation changes was turning the hero's web-shooters from mechanical to organic. When that version of the film fell apart and director Sam Raimi took over, Raimi decided to keep the organic web-shooter idea Cameron introduced. Afterward, Marvel Comics used a mutation storyline to make Parker's web-shooters organic, as well, though this didn't last long — the controversial 2007 crossover "One More Day" erased the mutations and restored the original web-shooters, and subsequent Spider-Man reboot films have also maintained their mechanical nature.

While the superhero Falcon (aka Sam Wilson, played in the MCU by Anthony Mackie) hasn't had a solo film yet, he is still a fan-favorite due to Mackie's scene-stealing performance in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and subsequent MCU films. This eventually led to a lead role in the entertaining — if flawed — Disney+ show "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier."

In the MCU films and show, Falcon is just a regular human soldier who is specially trained to pilot what can best be described as jet-powered wings (thus his name). He can certainly go toe-to-toe with some super-beings due to his military training, but he has no actual superpowers to speak of. In the comics, however, he did have one power: the ability to talk to birds. These included a bird companion named Redwing that would help him fight crime (in the films, of course, Redwing is the name of Falcon's mechanical drone).

The decision to take away Sam Wilson's avian communication abilities and replace them with something more grounded to better fit the tone of the "Captain America" franchise is perhaps the most understandable of any of the changes referenced here. And at any rate, the MCU did, at least, follow the comics by having Sam eventually become Captain America in his own right.

It's pretty obvious at this point that Ryan Reynolds was born to play Deadpool, Marvel's resident "Merc with a Mouth." But while 2016's "Deadpool" and its 2018 sequel "Deadpool 2" hewed pretty closely to the comics (especially concerning the character of Deadpool himself), those weren't the first times Reynolds played the character.

In 2009's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," Reynolds played Wade Wilson in one of the film's early action set-pieces in a characterization that was broadly accurate. However, this was before Wilson turned into Deadpool in the last act ... and that's when things really went off the rails. The film's version of Deadpool looked nothing like his comic book counterpart, his power set included both teleportation (without a device) and Cyclops' concussion beam, and — worst of all — they sewed his mouth shut. This is probably one of the most egregious character adaptations in the history of superhero films, and it's no surprise that, unlike some other examples, this version of Deadpool is now nothing more than inside joke material.

The original "The Eternals" comic series, written and drawn by legendary artist Jack Kirby, is about a group of powerful and immortal god-like beings who are the basis of human myths and legends. They were sent down to ancient Earth by even more powerful Celestial beings to protect humans throughout history from the monstrous Deviants. All the heroes in the group shared similar powers — for instance, each of the Eternals possessed super strength, invulnerability, flight, telepathy, and a myriad of other latent psionic and magical abilities. Of course, certain characters were better at certain powers than others (Sersi was better at using magic than Ikaris, for example), but otherwise, they all had a relatively equivalent power set.

However, in the star-studded 2021 feature film "Eternals," director Chloé Zhao made the decision to split these superpowers among the Eternals, giving each their own unique ability. Only Ikaris can fly, only Sersi can transmute objects, only Makkari has super speed, etc. This helped differentiate the Eternals and made the film generally less cluttered and confusing than it may have been otherwise.

It cannot be overstated how ubiquitous Image Comics' "Spawn" was in the early-to-mid 1990s — he adorned t-shirts, toys, video games, posters, and of course, comics. This was even more impressive considering how mature the comics themselves were, featuring dark themes and depictions of graphic violence.

This popularity led, inevitably, to a big-budget feature film from New Line Cinema in 1997. To the film's credit, it's actually fairly accurate to the comic book, following U.S. special agent Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) after he's betrayed and killed by his evil boss, a sequence of events which was itself set in motion by the demon Malebolgia in order to turn Simmons into a Hellspawn (or simply Spawn) who will lead Hell in a war against Heaven.

The only real adaptation change — and it's a pretty big one — is the fact that in the film, Spawn doesn't have a necroplasm counter. In the comics, Spawn's powers derive from the necroplasm in his suit, which, once depleted, would send him permanently back to Hell with no chance for escape. This means that, despite his demonic abilities being extremely powerful, he has to be sparing with them while on Earth, giving him natural limitations. While the movie version does incorporate the idea of necroplasm, there's no mention of the counter, meaning the film has to rely on other sources of dramatic tension. Perhaps the necroplasm counter will finally appear on screen in the "Spawn" reboot film — assuming it ever gets made.