Comic nerds feel Hollywood gets it wrong!

Just look at the last few years:

Batmans 1-10 (or whatever) - utter shit
Judge Dredd - balls
Tank Girl - pants
Daredevil - toss
'LXG' - complete + utter shit
The Punisher - arse
From Hell - total wank
Judge Dredd - piss poor
Tank Girl - laughable
Catwoman - er...

and of course theres the catalogue of upcoming atrocities

V for vendetta - from the creators of the Matrix. Im hoping Will Smith plays V - for that extra touch of crapness.
Elektra - Look like a pile of crap to me.
Watchmen - im very dubious about this one
Constantine - need i say more?
Fantastic four - in sure itll be shit...

Good, or even passable Fomics are very thin on the ground, the only ones that rate IMO are:

X Men 1+2 - worth a mention for not being total bollox, but still... very,very weak.
Blade 1+2 - meh. not the worst, not great. very little relation to the original comics
Spider man 1 - passable but with a shit ending

Spider man 2 - getting slightly better
The Hulk - Not very faithful to the comic - but i thought it was OK
Hellboy - almost good.
American Splendour - might be good - havent seen it yet..

If they cant get it right - why cant they just leave comics alone????? Surely theres plenty of new foreign films every year that they could just remake instead?

You missed Ghost World, which is great, and the third Blade film, which is completely appalling.

What did you not like about X-Men? It was never going to be Beckett, in fairness?

Ghost world is good. Forgot about that.. but, like American splendour, its an 'easy to make' fomic as its all character and dialogue driven, with no action scenes?

i think if the 2 X men films were combined and about 2 hours cut out it might make a pretty good flick. My problem with them is that they have potential, but they're severly limited in terms of scope and imagination... the environments are restricted, theres one or 2 big set action pieces per film etc... unlike say Spiderma, which seems more realistic as he is interacting with everyday objects and people, and not just in 'the lab' set, or the 'deserted military complex' set.. youre right to say that they're not the worst, and in light of the competition, they deserve some praise... but I wanted more dammit!

Wheres the imagination?

PS; Has anyone heard about this 'Iron Man' adaptation? And do Kevin Smiths' excerable excuses for cinema count as comic adaptions?

Best non-comic book comic book films:

1. The Matrix
2. The Incredibles
3. Sky Captain

Best comic book film that everyone forgets was one:

Men in Black

As regards Huk's post, I think Hollywood is treating comics (okay, superheroes) worse than books, because it's an area where you can throw a certain amount of money at special effects, and get more back, even if the film is terrible (In a sane world, Daredevil wouldn't have made its money back). So comics have become synonymous with the sort of low-risk investment that gives producers all-day erections. Whereas with a book adaptation, you generally have to get in actors, or a script, or the rest of that unpredictable rubbish.

I believe theere was a Cap America film release a couple of years back as well... havent seen it though.

The award for best Fomic IMO has to go to the shogun assassin /lone Wolf + Cub films (although these were directed by Kazuo Koike, who also wrote the manga...)

best film of a comic = popeye obv (i haven't seen this since it came out but i loved it then)

there is plenty scope re watchmen to make it better of course [ / well-worn contrarian mantra ]

Jesus. That was awful as well if i remember correctly.. does anyone know of a definitive list of comics that have been turned films?

The thing that really bugs me about this, is that it must be SOOO easy to adapt a comic to film. I mean, the storyboard is DONE for you before you even start the bloody thing...

TS: the fomic director shd be a massive old-skool fan vs the fomic director shd be a complete newbie

(what can film do that comics can't?) (answer: lots of things obv - and vice versa - but how much is this ever used?)

= true if you don't mind yr film being like 21 hours long? (a frame-by-frame exact recreation wd be an interesting experiment, in a

(though like all experiments, the "interesting" aspect might be that the resulting film wz superboring)

Within limits obviously - you dont need to take every frame, since it would be so detailed, you could take out big chunks of comic, and still be able to use it as a decent storyboard..

Comics != superheroes

I notice the scare quotes, but this statement still bothers me, and to recycle Tep's analogy, any dramatic (ie non-action) movie would be ez2make. You really ought to see Splendor, it's very NOT 'ez2make' by eschewing usual linear narrative modes and conflation of the characters with the people they're based on who appear in the film as themselves in addition to the actorbs.

Daredevil is underrated fun. DD > SM1 > XM1

Elektra will suck, yet I'm going to watch it anyway.

& for the record, HB and SM2, as far as adaptations go, are both fab & awesome as films. I'm saying this as an HB fan and a Spidey non-fan.

Have you tried comparing a spiderman comic to the films? take 2 or 3 frames from each 'scene' in a comic, and hey presto, you have your establishing shot, character shots, camera angles, scenery set up etc.. for a scene in a film. IMO this is EXTREMELY well illustrated by the film version of Hellboy, which (in the origin scene for example), basically uses the comic as a storyboard.

Lone wolf is a another good example, whole scenes are played out which are practically identical to the comics, right down to the positioning of characters in the frame. Admittedly, there are some genres and creators whose work is more suited to storyboardisation than others,(most manga, and the works of frank miller would be a good example), but stil I think that the standard Marvel DC superhero type comic would be extremely adaptable...

I believe theres some truth there - so, as I see it, you owe me one regurgitated hat.

Ill check it out, i know nothing about the comic though., and your right, that by 'ez2make, i did mean 'non-superhero', I wasnt trying to impinge on Ghost World or splendour, just making a distinction in my usual garbled fashion.. (come to think of it, ghost world the comic is very close to GW the fomic.. another storyboardisation perhaps?)

& for the record, HB and SM2, as far as adaptations go, are both fab & awesome as films.

they're the best by far, I agree with you there. Hellboy in particular was surprisingly good.

"Hellboy", otoh, nailed that dividing line between realism and the "aw, crap" humor of the character.

The trouble is, fomics are started because of the source, which is then tossed out the window by actors/studios/directors/writers who want to put their own spin on the property. Jon Peters' ideas for Superman being a prime example.

(ooh, ooh, the Jeffrey Tambour cigar/match scene is great too)

Has anyone mentioned 'The Mask?' I never saw that. Or 'Mysterymen,' which was great.

casey jones was great in APT PUPIL and CRASH.

yeah it's very close except for THE PLOT AND MAIN CHARACTERS NOT EVEN EXISTING IN THE COMIC wow this adapting is easy

do you think the Art School Confidential movie is going to be done in the same way, and the end credits will have to run an hour and fifteen minutes to make up the feature time?

Once you're in the territory of adapting stories you fall into the same problems as you have w/books i.e. "how long do we want this film to be anyway?" but the Harry Potter films are more interesting in this regard than anything in comics.

Another peril w.r.t. filming actual comic stories is that (and this may just be me!) plot holes and incredulities seem to gape more on film than on the comic page. This may turn out to be a bigger problem with Watchmen than cutting out the Silk Spectre's backstory or whatever outrage they commit.

er.. I admit to not having read much of Ghost world, but from what Ive seen, there does seem to be a distinct similarity between the comics Ive seen and the film:

http://www.hyperreal.org/~mike/livejournal/ghost_world_soundtrack_strip.gif

http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/clowes/ghostgal/ghost1.html

Now maybe these appeared after the film came out or something? Perhaps you can enlighten me?

I also dont think Dick Tracy or the Phantom have been mentioned either...

Arent you a charmer!

I dont mean to offend your Ghost world fanboy sensibilites any further, but are you sure about that? Doesnt Seymour give Enid a tape in the film? And what about bottom link? Now unless were talking about a different film, that does seem to feature two of the main characters sitting in a very similar cafe as the one featured in the comic. And as far as I remember, from flicking through the book a few years back there are some supporting characters (such as Josh), scenes and situations that are lifted directly from it as well.

Surely that would constitute most of the MAIN CHARACTERS and at least some of the PLOT being included, no?

ALSO - having neither read a comic nor seen the film adaptation of that comic /= being able to comment on how 'faithful' the film adaptation is in comparison to the comic. eg. seymour does not give enid a tape in the film. or the comic.

haha - having read ghost world the comic and seen ghost world the movie /= being a ghost world fanboy

Oh? So youve read the comics and seen the film eh? Then why are you making the ridiculous claim that none of the main characters or any of the plot from the comic exists in the film? Your reaction gave me the impression that youre a (rather precocious) Ghost World Fanboy.

Sorry about that.

I guess youre just a jackass.

ALSO - having neither read a comic nor seen the film adaptation of that comic /= being able to comment on how 'faithful' the film adaptation is in comparison to the comic. eg. seymour does not give enid a tape in the film. or the comic.

Ok, so what? He gave her a record instead? Again, I havent inscribed the film to memory or anything, but I recall a similar scene. And as I said before, my distant memories of the comic, and some crappy documentary I saw when the film came out, gave me the impression, that it was indeed quite 'faithful'. Daniel Clowes own words back this up to some extent.

"The basic structure is very much the same. The girls graduate high school and they’re very close. They start to drift apart when they see their world-views are slightly different. At the end of the film, it’s very much the same, but it takes many routes along the way that are much more complicated."

and on storyboarding:

When we were making GHOST WORLD, we sort of had this little storyboard we could follow [with the comic], and it was actually more detrimental than anything else. [It was] much easier to start from scratch and just think of it as a film rather than a comic book brought to life

http://cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Comics&action=page&type_id=&cat_id=&obj_id=28549

I guess he mustnt have read the comics either then...

Ah Alias, the source and obstacle to all my pleasures nowadays.

Droid, I'm afraid you're fighting an ill-advised battle since you haven't seen or read either of the texts. Watching a making-of is at best an exposure thrice-removed from the primary texts.

If you had, you wouldn't be so insistent on this point, because the film is indeed quite divergent from the book -- plot-wise -- in several plot points while maintaining certain key events that occurred in the comic -- Steve Buscemi's character is a LOT more marginal in the comic, yet the last scene is the same as the ending sequence in the book. The "basic structure" similarities are skeletal and fairly broad.

That pull quote you use re: storybooks seems to suggest that the makers of the film began to treat Ghost World as a film, not as a film-based-on-a-comic -- but I'm having trouble keeping track of the arguments here, so you might be making this assertion.

I have actually read one of them, but it was a long way back, and I did honestly remember it as being fairly similar to the film. The 'making of' I saw juxtaposed pages from the film with the comic, and it looked pretty close to me, but point taken.

If you had, you wouldn't be so insistent on this point, because the film is indeed quite divergent from the book -- plot-wise -- in several plot points while maintaining certain key events that occurred in the comic -- Steve Buscemi's character is a LOT more marginal in the comic, yet the last scene is the same as the ending sequence in the book. The "basic structure" similarities are skeletal and fairly broad.

All Im being insistent about is, that in response to Jimmys point - that the main characters (- Seymour) and at least some of the plot exists in both the film and the comic. Sure - I SNAFUd, but as far as I can tell, his assertion is equally inaccurate.

That pull quote you use re: storybooks seems to suggest that the makers of the film began to treat Ghost World as a film, not as a film-based-on-a-comic -- but I'm having trouble keeping track of the arguments here, so you might be making this assertion.

Well as it turns out, they developed both simultaneously, so it isnt really a straight adaption anway, more of a companion piece, so I suppose its a bad example of an adaption at all. The point I was trying to make with the quote was that the two were similar enough for Daniel Clowes to at least consider using the comic as a storyboard.

Where'd this come from? As far as I know, Ghost World the Comic (in 8Ball) was completed years before any attempt at making a movie from it got off the ground.

"About five episodes into that, [director] Terry Zwigoff had been reading my comic and was intrigued with these characters. I think he thought they would work well in a movie. He wasn’t so sure about the story working as a movie, but he thought we could do something with these characters, and the framework of their story would make an interesting film. At that point we started trying to make that"

Are you blind? - its right before your first post:

yeah it's very close except for THE PLOT AND MAIN CHARACTERS NOT EVEN EXISTING IN THE COMIC wow this adapting is easy

But fair enough - it was Kit and not yourself who posted it. Didnt see you jumping on his back though.

also it might be smart to not quote interviews that completely disproves your point (well it proves one point - "i r a comic geek").

er what? I think Ive already admitted i was well off the mark. I posted that article in response to kits comment.

learn to read plz (sic)

..you bastards!

As for me, I'd like to see more animated comic adaptations... Not counting anime, I can think of only two animated feature films based on comics: Fritz the Cat and Corto Maltese, both of which are pretty good.

Let's also not forget the patriarchally subversive post-feminism of Barb Wire!

And the plot of Ghost World the film is not that of the comic, and there are main characters in the film that do not exist in the comic, but I don't know how many more people can tell Droid that he would know this if he ACTUALLY READ THE COMIC and not just scans of the soundtrack booklet online

Wait a minute - I thought that "it's very close except for THE PLOT AND MAIN CHARACTERS NOT EVEN EXISTING IN THE COMIC ". What changed in the meantime?

I guess theres no similarities at all there. Daniel Clowes must be wrong when he says:

"The basic structure is very much the same. The girls graduate high school and they’re very close. They start to drift apart when they see their world-views are slightly different. At the end of the film, it’s very much the same, but it takes many routes along the way that are much more complicated."

Jeez. You make one mistake and the whole audio visual club starts picking on you...

Dan, if LBB shows up on ILC because of this I will hunt you down and kill you with steely cold death. Or maybe buy you a pie. It's a tossup.

That scene is near the beginning of the movie.

aargh learn to read plz

I could say the same to you gimptron. Seems you dont even read YOUR OWN posts.

Im happy to admit that my original comment was based on a half remembered reading of the comic... And Im sure you could have proved me wrong without just making stuff up, but obviously thats not good enough for you, you have to insist that "THE PLOT AND MAIN CHARACTERS (dont) EVEN EXISTING IN THE COMIC " even when the similarities are pointed out by the creator himself...

Ah well, wank away my friend...

there's a secene in that movie where a government official throws a pice of paper into a trash can--and the trash can is labeled "GOVERNMENT WASTE"!