As someone who’s both a big movie buff and a major comic geek, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with comic book movie adaptations. When they’re done right (such as the Iron Man movies and the original X-Men movie), it’s a wondrous thing – movie magic at its finest. On the flip-side, however, you also get stuck suffering through steaming heaps of dung like the Wolverine movie, where the filmmakers blatantly couldn’t care less about the source material or its fans, which just makes us comic geeks want to beat someone within an inch of their life for completely screwing up a beloved character. What I find interesting, though – and what I’ll be focusing on in this post – is just how many comic-book based movies have come out in the last few years. More specifically, how many of them have come out that feature no super powers, and zero characters dressed in spandex.
When the average moviegoer hears the phrase “comic book movie,” they are almost certainly going to immediately envision something featuring superheroes of one sort or another. Which isn’t too surprising, considering that not only comic book movies, but the large majority of comic books themselves are primarily about superheroes. That being said, there are still a vast number of comic books out there covering every imaginable genre – crime fiction, westerns, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, you name it. And a surprising number of these have been made into movies. So what I’ll be focusing on here are movies that are based on comic books that most people would likely not realize were based on comic books (although some are certainly less surprising than others).
Let’s start with two movies that shouldn’t surprise anyone as being comic book movies (although neither features superheroes of any sort), both based on the works of the brilliant Frank Miller – Sin City and 300. Both of these are just great films (I’d even say Sin City is among my top ten favorite movies of all time). But let’s talk about 300 first. To begin with, to all those idiot critics out there who complained about the film’s lack of historical accuracy, let me re-emphasis: THIS IS A COMIC BOOK MOVIE!! Yes, the comic book was inspired by actual historical events, but it was never intended to be an accurate portrayal of said events. It was meant to be a fantastic, larger-than-life depiction of them. And the movie follows suit. It’s not supposed to be a historical film, much less a documentary. It is a fantasy, pure and simple. It just happens to be a fantasy loosely based on a real event.
What can you say about this movie? It’s got it all – violence and bloodshed, sex, political intrigue, powerful characters, a lush (yet very dark) visual style. I was completely engrossed in this movie from beginning to end. Gerard Butler is fantastic as King Leonidas (and is an actor whose work I’ve continued to enjoy ever since), and Lena Headey is wonderful as his queen (the line she delivers when she kills the traitorous senator is easily one of the best in the movie). Now I fully admit that this is the kind of movie that’s not going to appeal to everyone, but I loved every minute of it (and I’d love to see Hollywood put out more films like this).
Then there’s Sin City. This is another movie I just can’t say enough good things about. For starters, I’ve been a fan of Robert Rodriguez as a director going all the way back to El Mariachi. And the fact that he brought in Frank Miller to be co-director on the movie (and used the original comics as his storyboards) I think was a stroke of genius. The biggest plus this movie has going for it is that it’s based on a great set of stories. In my mind (although, as a writer, I admit I may be a bit biased) there’s nothing more important in a movie than the story. I don’t care how great your actors are, how top-notch the director is, or how massive a special effects budget you have, if you’re starting with a weak story, you’re going to end up with a weak film.
Which, of course, is why Sin City shines. Because on top of a great story, it did have a top notch director, and a cast full of brilliant actors & actresses (and I’m guessing a pretty solid effects budget). Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis especially stand out in my mind as giving great performances, but even the bit players are great actors. Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Powers Boothe, Rutger Hauer, Elijah Wood, the list goes on and on (and I’ve written before about how much I loved Devon Aoki as Miho). I’m also a huge fan of the visual style of the film – the black & white with just splashes of color here and there really has an impact. It’s just such a great movie. Now if only they’d get around to getting the sequel released!!!
Let’s switch gears a little now, and move on to a movie (and sequel) that still has a solid comic book feel to it, but isn’t quite as blatantly a comic book movie as the two above, and that would be the wonderful Men in Black (I and II). How can you not love these movies? Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones both give great performances (not to mention Frank the Pug, who steals pretty much every scene he’s in, and the wonderfully funny worms). And once again you have a movie that starts with a solid story (more so the original than the sequel, but sadly that tends to be the norm with sequels), and more importantly, really great dialogue.
Which is something I’d like to take a quick detour to discuss. I think one of the biggest things that makes a movie truly memorable is great dialogue (this is one of the reasons I’m such a huge fan of all things Joss Whedon – the man really knows how to write great dialogue). If you think of all the movie moments that really stand out in your mind, I’ll bet a lot more of them are going to be memorable quotes than really big explosions (not that there aren’t a few movies that have some pretty memorable action scenes, mind you). And this is why we see so many forgettable, throwaway movies these days – too much focus on big action scenes and visual effects scenes, and not enough solid, memorable dialogue.
And shifting back to Men in Black, my favorite line in that movie comes when Will Smith asks Tommy Lee Jones why keep aliens a secret, saying that people are smart and could handle it. And Tommy Lee Jones replies, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” Such a great line. And Tommy Lee Jones’ solid delivery in that simple scenes to me is one of the most memorable parts of the movie (and is but one of many great lines in the movie). And here’s some exciting news for anyone out there who doesn’t know already – Men in Black III is due out in 2012! Keeping my fingers crossed that it’s as good as the first two.
So far the movies I’ve talked about, while clearly not super-hero movies, are still pretty easy to recognize as comic book movies. So how about we take a look at a comic book movie that bears no resemblance to what one would normally think of as a comic book movie – Road to Perdition, a Prohibition-era movie starring Tom Hanks, Jude Law, and Paul Newman (and let’s not forget Daniel Craig, BEFORE he became famous as the latest incarnation of James Bond). Yes, believe or not, this movie was based on a comic book. I haven’t read the original graphic novel, but I hear good things about it (and I need to pick it up one of these days). I do know that I absolutely loved the movie. Being a huge fan of gangster movies certainly helps, but this movie also has a great story and just an amazing cast. Tom Hanks does a near-perfect job as a loving husband and father who also happens to be a mob hitman. This is a character that could have easily gone to either side – either too much of a nice guy/family man for you to believe he killed people for a living, or too much of a hardened killer to buy him as a dedicated father. Hanks really does a great job of straddling that line and making both sides of that character believable (and I think director Sam Mendes also plays a big part in this).
Paul Newman once again shows us why he’s such a Hollywood legend. He gives a solid performance as a father torn between his real son and his surrogate son, and makes a great old-school Irish mobster (an even more impressive feat considering he’s not the least bit Irish). And Jude Law certainly gives us one of his more intriguing performances as the psycho hitman who’s chasing after Hanks and his son. The movie was nominated for numerous awards (and won the Oscar for best cinematography), and with good reason. This is a beautiful, stirring film, and one I highly recommend.
Another film that does not at all feel like a comic book movie is the Jack the Ripper thriller From Hell, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore (author of both V for Vendetta and Watchmen), and starring Johnny Depp. I love this movie (interestingly enough, I actually enjoyed the movie much more than the original comic). Depp is fantastic as always, and I’ve always been fascinated with Jack the Ripper, so I’m automatically drawn to any film connected to him. Now the big thing to take into account with this particular movie is that it is VERY loosely based on the comic (I would guess that fans of the original probably hated the movie; for myself, I actually had a really hard time getting through the comic – it’s a very in-depth story that you either really get into, or really don’t, and sadly I just found it to drag way too much). One of the big differences is that the comic is not really a mystery story. The true identity of the killer is actually revealed very early on, and from there the story is much more of a character study, looking into the mind of a man capable of becoming a serial killer.
The movie, on the other hand, falls solidly in the mystery/thriller genre, with the emphasis being on Johnny Depp trying to discover who the killer is. This is a big part of why I liked it better than the comic – I love the mystery element, which to me is part of what makes the Jack the Ripper mythos so interesting. By starting out knowing Jack’s real identity, you take out half the fun, which is trying to figure out who the murderer is. Regardless of its differences from the original story, however, From Hell is a great example of a comic book story completely different from the traditional super-hero comics most people are used to.
Before finishing this off with one of my all-time favorite movies (comic book related or otherwise), I wanted to mention a couple of very recent non-super hero comic book movies, one really, really good, and one not so much. The not so great movie is one that just came out, and that’s the horror-western Jonah Hex. Now I must admit I’ve never read any of the Jonah Hex comics, but I do have a passing familiarity with the character. And one of the few pluses of the movie is that Josh Brolin really does justice to the character. His performance really shines in what is otherwise a fairly mediocre movie. John Malkovich, on the other hand, really failed to impress me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he phoned in his performance, but at the end of the day the character really isn’t distinctive from any of Malkovich’s other baddies. And while Megan Fox always makes for some welcome eye candy, she really doesn’t have much else going for her as an actress (her role here as the pseudo-sidekick/love interest really feels like a throwaway character the movie would have done just as well without).
The movie tries to do the retro sci-fi thing similar to Wild Wild West (now there's an interesting possible blog topic – retro sci-fi/steampunk movies!), but doesn’t completely embrace and go over the top with it like Wild Wild West did (and just isn’t nearly as much fun as Wild Wild West was). And while the supernatural elements are brought over from the comic, they probably could have been done better. The biggest failing in the movie, though, is the direction. My main complaint is that the movie should have been done as a western, and it isn’t. Instead you get a generic summer blockbuster style movie, that just happens to be set in the Old West. I think this movie could have been so much better if it had been crafted to have the feel of an old Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, especially considering the dark, grim nature of the title character. A little more drama and emphasis on character, and a little less focus on the action scenes and big explosions would have gone a long ways towards making this a really enjoyable film, as opposed to the mildly enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable popcorn movie that it was.
The other, and MUCH better, comic book movie that came out recently (back in April) was The Losers. Now this movie was everything a comic book movie (or any movie adapted from another source, as far as that goes) should be. It was respectful of the source material, and as true to the source material as it could be while still maintaining all the sensibilities of a good movie (sadly, the flip-side of movies like Wolverine that essentially ignore the original comic book stories are movies that try too hard to be completely faithful to their source and its die-hard fans, which generally makes for a weaker movie, because cinema is a completely different storytelling medium from books or comics or video games, and as such there are changes that really need to be made to the way the story is put together to make a good movie, even if that means changing or removing things from the original).
I’m a pretty big fan of the original comic series of The Losers, and so I went into this movie with equal parts excitement and nervousness. The movie did not let me down in the least. They got the characters right, and a lot of the story elements in the movie came right out of comics (I read an interview with one of the screenwriters, and he commented that he’d read all the comics, and that when he read good lines in the comics that he really liked, he pulled them directly into the script instead of trying to re-word them to make them more his, which I thought was brilliant).
I also loved the tone of the movie – light-hearted and fun without becoming overly silly (the comics are more serious in tone, but the light-hearted tone really worked well in the film). This movie is exactly what The A-Team movie should have been (and sadly wasn’t). It doesn’t try to be the big action blockbuster; instead it goes for a simple, straightforward action comedy feel (much like the feel of The A-Team TV show). Sadly The Losers under-performed at the box office (which is too bad but not really a surprise), but people who didn’t go see it don’t know what they’re missing. This is the sort of underrated gem of a film that all too often gets overlooked at the theatres these days (which is really a shame, considering the worthless junk that people do rush out to go see). I’d love to see a sequel to this (since the comics have a much longer story than what is covered in the movie), but that’s probably not likely to happen.
There are a number of other comic book movies that I originally considered discussing, such as Wanted, V for Vendetta, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (all movies that I really enjoyed), but in the end I decided to make this a little shorter of an entry (so that I could get the silly thing finished, if for no other reason), so I’m going to skip them this time around and move right to my final movie (although I’m thinking I’d like to do an entry specifically on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, though not so much on the movie itself as the underlying concept of the movie – and more so the comic books it’s based on).
To bring this entry to a conclusion, I want to review what at one point in time was my absolute favorite movie (and is still very high on the list), and that is The Crow. This is a fantastic film based on an incredible comic (one I highly recommend reading). It tells the tragic tale of a young couple who are murdered by gang members. A year after their death, the man is brought back to life in order to avenge himself and his fiancé. Adding to the tragic nature of the film is the fact that the star, Brandon Lee, died during filming. Brandon Lee’s performance is both intense and poignant – he really brings this character to life. And I loved the dark, Gothic nature of the film, both in story and in visual style (but that’s very much a personal preference for me – I’ve always had a love for films of this sort). This movie (along with the next movie he directed, Dark City) also made me a huge fan of director Alex Proyas, who is high on my list of favorite directors (even though he has only directed a handful of movies).
One of the other great things about this movie is the soundtrack. This is among my favorite CDs, and the music really enhances the intensity of the film. I’ve always loved movies with a well-done soundtrack/score, and am a firm believer that the right music is critical to a great movie. And The Crow did a fantastic job of really taking advantage of the power of its music.
The movie was successful enough to spawn not only three sequels, but a television show as well. Of course, none of the sequels came close to the original film (not a surprise, really – the combination of the actors, the director, and the original story came together in just such a beautiful way that there’s no way you’re going to reproduce that in a sequel). I never really watched the TV show, which is almost too bad, as I’m a really big fan of Mark Dacascos, and I’d love to see his interpretation of the character (have to watch the series on Hulu one of these days, I suppose, since it only ran one season). I think it really says something when a dark, comic book based revenge movie can generate this kind of success. The Crow is a prime example of what you can achieve when you do a comic book movie right. It does a great job of staying true to the source material, while still playing as a great movie.
And with that, I think I will bring this entry to a close. Hopefully, dear readers, you’ll walk away from this week’s blog with a better appreciation for the diversity of stories coming out of the comic book world. There’s a lot more going on than just dudes in spandex, and with luck Hollywood will continue to find great comic book stories to make into movies, that don’t necessarily feature super-heroes (especially considering how much more writing talent you’ll find in the comics industry than in Hollywood).
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