How closely should comic book movies be based on comic book stories?

While films based on Marvel properties have certainly taken inspiration from famous comic book storylines – such as "Days of Future Past chapter – one thing that fans have noticed is that these storylines are rarely actually directly adapted. Whether a title is just borrowing a few elements from a known plot, or changing big key aspects, the movies often act as reflections of famous arcs and miniseries, but have never actually been beat-for-beat retellings. This creates a certain schism in fanhood.

With each feature that comes out, we see a wave of new complaints from those who are unsatisfied with the way that directors handled certain elements of famous story – like Wolverine traveling back in time instead of Kitty Pryde – and believe that it’s a betrayal of the source material to not do everything that the original author and artist did. Of course, the most popular counterpoint to this debate is that direct adaptation is dull (being all stuff we’ve already seen), and that plots deserve new life and creative changes when changing mediums. When boiled down, this is really a matter of taste, but that’s not going to stop fans arguing about it.