6 Times Movies Ditched Terrible Source Material
If screenwriters didn't rely so heavily on books, comics, and novelty Twitter feeds for material, Hollywood would likely collapse under the sheer weight of one original idea. So it's a good thing all those other mediums are doing the creative heavy lifting for them. Though sometimes it's necessary to judiciously omit a few things from the originals. Here are a bunch of loopy ideas that would have reached the big screen if Hollywood didn't (wisely) deviate from the source material.
Thanos Wipes Out Half The Universe To Impress His Crush, Death
Remember Thanos' first cinematic appearance roughly a century ago, in 2012's The Avengers? In the mid-credits scene, some alien mook tells him that "to challenge is to court death," and the big purple goofball turns around with a creepy smile on his face. That's a nod to how in the comics, Thanos loves death. Not in a "he likes killing things" way, but in a "he wants to marry it, have children, and raise them in a little house with a picket fence" way.
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To be fair, this is what the personification of Death looks like in the Marvel Universe:
So when Thanos collects the Infinity Gems and wipes out half the universe in the comics, it's not out of some misguided plan to free up resources for everyone. It's because he's trying to impress his crush. Here's Thanos, now the most powerful being in the universe, apologizing to Lady Death for taking too long with his little errand of interstellar genocide:
Yeah, Thanos in the comics is pretty much a lovesick teenager who also happens to be omnipotent. Unfortunately, it turns out he's too powerful for Death, who now considers him her superior and thus can't become his mate. You know, the old "can't date you, you're too cool, and also I'm washing my hair" excuse. Thanos reacts to being rejected by moping around and letting loose a single sad, lonely tear.
As a further indignity, Death does eventually reciprocate the affections of an obscure Marvel character called ... Deadpool. Freaking Deadpool. The whole reason Deadpool can't die in the comics is that Thanos curses him with immortality so he can never steal his girl. Real mature.
Related: 6 Adaptations That Fixed The Book (According To The Author)
Venom Could Have Been A Chocolate-Gobbling, French-Kissing Hero
Well before Tom Hardy made a surprising amount of people lust after some alien goo, Venom was a bona fide comic book superstar. After debuting as Spider-Man's goth costume, the toothy symbiote became so popular that in the early '90s, Marvel tried to make him into a hero of sorts. You know, the sort of hero who bites people's heads off and chows down on their brains.
The 2018 film gives a nod to that particular tier of Venom's nutritional pyramid. But in the comics, the writers decided it was hard to keep their protagonist sympathetic when he's going around decapitating people all day (The Walking Dead stopped trying long ago). So they came up with an alternative to cranial goo: chocolate. Because it has a chemical that's also found in human brains and that's what growing symbiotes crave, you see.
OK, maybe it would have been kind of fun to watch Tom Hardy as Venom snarf down large quantities of candy bars. What probably shouldn't make it into a film are the ... other things Venom can do with his mouth. It's doubtful, for instance, that the Fantastic Four's introduction to the MCU will include the scene from the comics wherein Venom attacks Ben Grimm via the erotic martial art of combat French kissing.
Related: 5 WTF Book Scenes Wisely Left Out Of The Movie Versions
The Jaws Gang Use Dead Baby Dolphin As Shark Bait
In the movie Jaws, Quint is a rough, unscrupulous seaman who ultimately dies trying to kill the big bad shark. In the book, he's ... the exact same thing, but with an emphasis on "unscrupulous." For one thing, his special bait for the hunt is an illegally obtained unborn dolphin, which he describes as a "special treat can't turn down." We're assuming that had this made it into the movie, that line would have been delivered in a mock Don Corleone accent.
But what does "illegally obtained" entail here, exactly? We'll, uh, let the man speak for himself:
Later in the book, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss' character) asks "about the porpoise" when he gets anxious about seeing the shark, but by then, Quint seems less interested in using the very specific bait he bragged about earlier. When throwing squids and beer cans into the ocean fails to get the shark's attention (it's a teetotaler, it seems), Quint turns to the dolphin corpse and talks to it: "Well, little fella, he time has come." The little kiss on its forehead is only implied.
It's probably a good thing the author didn't go with the original title, The Heroic Seaman Who Carved Dolphin Fetuses Out Of Their Mothers' Wombs.
Related: 5 Movies That Improved On The Book (According To The Author)
Call Me By Your Name Has A Romantic Pooping Scene
The unconventional romance movie Call Me By Your Name has to be the first Academy Award winner in which someone tastes a peach stuffed with man-juice. But in the original book, that was more than a taste. The protagonist, Elio, becomes infatuated with how parts of the fruit remind him of Oliver, his lover, and after pitting the peach, he uses it like a sticky, juicy Fleshlight. In the movie, Oliver simply teases Elio with the soiled peach before they embrace ... but in the book, he takes a big bite and then snowballs the taste to Elio in their next kiss. Even the book's author says that what's in the movie was all we needed to see.
But that's not the only romantic scene in the book that centers on bodily fluids. One moment that was excluded entirely from the movie involves a hotel toilet. After Oliver goes #2, Elio stops him from flushing, saying that he wants to look at "it" to show they have no secrets. Like, what if Oliver's cheating on Elio with a little dwarf who lives in his rectum? Anyway, Elio then sits down and dumps on his lover's stool, all whilst getting a light abdominal massage. It's not a blumpkin, but it's close.
Related: 4 Scenes From Books That Were Too F***ed Up For The Movie
Grease faithfully follows the plot of the 1971 musical, because "the plot" was a bunch of songs everyone already loved, so why mess with that? Other than to remove the character who's obsessed with indecent exposure, we mean. In the play, protagonist Danny Zuko has a good friend known as "Rump," who earned that nickname because of his unique talent of showing people his ass in a wide variety of circumstances. And yes, he gets a song for himself: "Mooning," in which he uses looking at the moon and his public nudity compulsion as weird metaphors for his longing for the character Jan.
In the movie, Rump is a non-singing, non-pants-dropping guy named Putzie, and "Mooning" was relegated to the soundtrack. Even Fox's Grease Live from 2016 cut the song, because the world isn't yet ready for such an edgy number. That or they realized they'd have to update it into a song about sending dick pics.
Related: 6 Movie Adaptations That Wisely Cut Ridiculous Details
Forrest Gump Goes To Space With An Orangutan And Gets Kidnapped By Cannibals
The film version of Forrest Gump left out some of the weirder parts of the book, and we're not just talking about Forrest's copious weed smoking or his huge swingin' dong. Forrest works a bunch of odd jobs that don't appear in the movie, and by "odd" we mean professional wrestler, Hollywood stunt man, and astronaut. It's on that last gig that that he meets Sue, a male orangutan who accompanies him on a shuttle during a mission into space. Maybe the movie was saving that for a sequel, One Giant Gump For Mankind?
We found some deleted scenes where Lt. Dan helps too (Sue is played by Kevin Bacon).
All is going well until Sue starts messing with the shuttle's controls, causing the shuttle to crash into New Guinea, where they are held captive by cannibals for years. Forrest ends up befriending Sue while there, probably because there weren't any nice volleyballs around.
At the end of the book, Forrest winds up living on the streets with Sue and Lt. Dan. In the sequel, all three go to Baghdad and capture Saddam Hussein. Screw chocolates -- life is more like a box of methamphetamine.
E. Reid Ross has a book called BIZARRE WORLD. He's practically on his knees begging that you order it now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble and leave a scathing/glowing review.
For more, check out Did You Know Die Hard Was A (Terrible) Book:
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