The
point to be made is that the market
for films made from stories that already
have a huge audience is huge. Trying
not to dip out of the comic book genre,
and only because I feel it’s
pertinent to our current discussion,
I’ll mention briefly J.R.R.
Tolkien’s “Lord of the
Rings,” which bounced to film
effortlessly (aside from a difficult
year of filming and nearly 2 years
of post production) and lucratively
(because of the millions large international
fan-base).
So
now we’re seeing that making
films out of comics isn’t just
an opportunity to make loads of money,
it’s an opportunity to play
with film and filmmaking in ways that
would otherwise be received awkwardly
from audiences.
Lets
face it, American audiences aren’t
the most open in the world so stylized
film making has always been left up
to European filmmakers, directors
of photography hailing from Warsaw
or ushered in quietly under the radar
by slowly exploring a style throughout
a decade or more, creating eras in
film history.
What
the comic genre has done for film-makers
is it has given them a way of trying
radical styles, letting them put their
Major in film with a Minor in Symbology
to the test, visually packing films
pushing an audience that’s already
in love with the material, without
the worry of people walking out of
the theatre or receiving hate mail.
At
this point I’m undecided on
my position; this article is my own
exploration of whether I’m “digging”
comic genre films. I won’t know
for sure until I see some of my favorites
come to life, looking ahead to the
Fantastic Four release at the beginning
of May.
“Sin City” was the most
recent adaptation I can think of,
so let’s start here. Coming
from the realm of graphic novels it
pushed me to actually go back and
read Frank Miller’s comics wondering
if they had captured that “thing”
that Mr. Miller was going for, and
they had. Scene for scene, and this
is probably because Frank got to direct
his own comic, matched.
The
style was held onto, beautifully.
The grit didn’t quite come off
the page only because it would have
turned the stomach of even the staunchest
Hell’s Angel member and had
to be turned down for a larger audience,
but what amazed me, after seeing what
the “Blade” comics had
become, after seeing Batman get nancified
for film and sitting idly by while
“Road to Perdition” was
completely ignored in the box office
was that “Sin City” literally
jumped off the pages of the book onto
the screen and into the open hungry
arms of an audience that didn’t
even know the comic book ever existed,
due to, based on a scan of my own
reasons for seeing the movie, Jessica
Alba appearing in the trailer and
wielding a lasso. Come on guys.
Also
a large part of the country wide migration
to the theatre had to be the fact
that here was an interestingly shot
film that we could watch even with
all the style and not feel like we
had a Polish DP’s foot in our
mouths because the whole story was
based in a world and came from a mind
where things looked, moved, and talked
like this giving us an almost superhuman
ability to suspend disbelief for nearly
3 hours even through lines like Dwight’s
“It’s time to prove to
your friends that you’re worth
a damn, sometimes that means dying,
sometimes it means killing a whole
lot of people.” A sweet line,
tough as hell, but doesn’t leave
you wondering what’s going to
happen. (I’m getting there,
my own opinion is slowly forming.)
Still,
I liked it. Which I think is where
the power behind comic genre films
comes from. It’s an audience
that’s already been primed through
exposure to the content by either
having read the material in comic
book form, or seeing the trailer enough
times to know that Jessica Alba as
Nancy in leather chaps on big screen
is as amazing as Haley’s Comet
and not to be missed.
In
summary, Sin City accomplished what
it set out to do which was to tell
Frank Miller’s grisly dark tales
and it was worth my ten fifty at the
theatre. Just remember that once Nancy
Callahan comes on-screen a hat, or
better yet an upside down bucket of
popcorn (unsalted) in your lap is
strongly advised.
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