Comic book movies

bmthlove

Which comic book movies/portrayals of the characters in them do you think did the original material justice and which were just epic fails?

Personally i think the only movie I've seen in a good while that stayed true to the comic book (well, apart from the ending obviously) was watchmen, i thought it was perfect right down to the casting and the casting in the x-men movies has always been spot on too imo.

Feel free to agree/disagree and otherwise throw in yer own two cents on the matter!

Fysh

I have to disagree on Watchmen. The ending change didn't bother me that much, but the whole film's dedication to staying faithful to the comic seemed to be very superficial - the look of things and certain shots were right, but there didn't seemed to be any attempt to translate any of the storytelling techniques used in the comics into the film. The utterly rubbish change to the storyline used to shoehorn in the changed ending didn't help, and it was compounded by the lack of realisation that one of their "faithful to the original comic" shots specifically went against the change - as Dan leaves the original Nite Owl's place we see the sign for his auto shop, which says "obsolete models a specialty" - except in the film, Dr Manhattan never invented the new fuel cell that rendered petrol-based engines obsolete, so there would be no such thing as a garage specialising in obsolete models. A minor detail in itself, but I think it neatly highlights the flaw (as I see it) in the film's execution.

The X-men casting was pretty good, as were the overall storylines (although to a far lesser extent in the third one).

Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman has been very good, although a large part of that has been the quality of the scripts used for both films.

Paul Giamatti was very good in American Splendor - I enjoyed it at the cinema, but having recently re-watched it on DVD I wandered through the extras where Pekar himself recorded significant bits of commentary and it's very interesting to see how accurate Giamatti's portrayal was.

jabbathehurt

Fysh wrote: »

I have to disagree on Watchmen. The ending change didn't bother me that much, but the whole film's dedication to staying faithful to the comic seemed to be very superficial - the look of things and certain shots were right, but there didn't seemed to be any attempt to translate any of the storytelling techniques used in the comics into the film. The utterly rubbish change to the storyline used to shoehorn in the changed ending didn't help, and it was compounded by the lack of realisation that one of their "faithful to the original comic" shots specifically went against the change - as Dan leaves the original Nite Owl's place we see the sign for his auto shop, which says "obsolete models a specialty" - except in the film, Dr Manhattan never invented the new fuel cell that rendered petrol-based engines obsolete, so there would be no such thing as a garage specialising in obsolete models. A minor detail in itself, but I think it neatly highlights the flaw (as I see it) in the film's execution.

The X-men casting was pretty good, as were the overall storylines (although to a far lesser extent in the third one).

Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman has been very good, although a large part of that has been the quality of the scripts used for both films.

Paul Giamatti was very good in American Splendor - I enjoyed it at the cinema, but having recently re-watched it on DVD I wandered through the extras where Pekar himself recorded significant bits of commentary and it's very interesting to see how accurate Giamatti's portrayal was.

I have a signed copy of the graphic novel version American splendor worth anthing?
Now to contribute to thread I agree the watchmen was a good adaptation not excellent but good, Alan Moore has said it was "unfilmable" I enjoyed the G.N. I do however feel in comparison the film was slightly juvenile the director seemed to focus more on the fact that superheros where ultraviolent,(gore scenes), swearing and having sex. This does seem to be Zack Snyders style. Don't get me wrong though love his films, his dawn of the dead remake and 300 are some of my favorite films.
Now for my 2 cents for me some of the best comics to screen are the animated ones. Growing up I loved and still love the Bruce Timm Paul Dini Batman The Animated Series, (Notably the Jokers sidekick Harvey was created in the series and was so succesful that she was introduced into the DC universe.) Early 90's X-men, HBO Spawn mini series (Athough annoyingly after 3 series they never finished it so I been left on a permanent cliff hanger ever since!) Im currently hooked on Batman Beyond great spin on the batman universe. Comic related cartoons are the best translation in my opinion as they don't have to compromise as the film adaptions have had to, examples being Sam Jackson as Nick Fury, redesigned costumes, or origin stories etc.
Im watching Spiderman 3 as I write this its a bit meh!

draven3410

Reason Nick Fury has Samuel Jackson playing him is because they're drawing more from Ultimate timeline of comics than the Earth 313 timeline. When the Ultimates was been made way back, there was an article say that because Samuel was a comic fan the creators were hoping he'd play the part in the film when it came out. (long term planning by marvel there!)

Best faithful to the comic has to be both Batman - The Animated Series and X-men, both ran on Fox in the 1990's, both stayed through to the comics and due to this they became DC's and Marvel's longest running series respectively.

shenanigans1982

Sin City is probably the most faithful adaptation we are ever likely to see.

Despite what fans think the Watchmen movie ending was better than the comic. I think a lot of people are looking for someone/something to point the finger at for the poor movie, and Snyder/the ending seem to get the blame rather than the source material

magwea

Ghost World has got to be up there as one of the best.

Patrick Brown

Spider-Man 2 is the only one I can think of that I unreservedly liked. Haven't seen Watchmen - no matter how good or how faithful it is, it's bound to be an anti-climax after all this time and all the hype, and I don't think I could enjoy it on it's own terms as a film - I'd be constantly comparing it to the comic.

To be honest, I don't see why everything that's successful in any narrative medium has to have a film adaptation made. As far as I'm concerned, making a film adaptation of a standalone comic like Watchmen is no different from writing a novelisation of an original film. It can work with something like Spider-Man, Batman or the X-Men because in cases like that the storylines are secondary to the characters, and you can write an entirely new story where Spider-Man fights Dock Ock (or whatever) that's tailored to the screen.

Saw a trailer for Surrogates last week - science fiction police procedural thing starring Bruce Willis. I wonder how many people will notice that's based on a comic?

magwea

Patrick Brown wrote: »

Saw a trailer for Surrogates last week - science fiction police procedural thing starring Bruce Willis. I wonder how many people will notice that's based on a comic?

Didn't know Bruce Willis was involved. Makes me worry about the film of what was a pretty descent comic.

Dreddybajs

shenanigans1982 wrote: »

Despite what fans think the Watchmen movie ending was better than the comic. I think a lot of people are looking for someone/something to point the finger at for the poor movie, and Snyder/the ending seem to get the blame rather than the source material

Absolute nonsense, the film muddled the ending up as much as possible while sticking to the same basic plot twist. I'm not a huge Watchmen fan but I thought the movie ending was ****e.

pwd

shenanigans1982 wrote: »

Sin City is probably the most faithful adaptation we are ever likely to see.

Despite what fans think the Watchmen movie ending was better than the comic. I think a lot of people are looking for someone/something to point the finger at for the poor movie, and Snyder/the ending seem to get the blame rather than the source material

I agree with Sin City. 300 was also faithful to the comics.
On the subject of Frank Miller comics being made into films: I saw that Hard Boiled might be adapted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Boiled_(comic)

David Fincher directing it would be great. Frank Miller directing it would not be so good. Sin City was excellent, but I think Rodrigreuz would have contributed somewhat more than Miller in directing it. Miller directed The Spirit by himself. I haven't seen it, but it's supposed to be rubbish.
Personally I think he should stick to writing comics. If he wants to co-direct adaptions of his own stuff, then that's probably a good way of making sure he's happy with the result. I think he should forget trying to be a film director though.

Fysh

pwd wrote: »

Miller directed The Spirit by himself. I haven't seen it, but it's supposed to be rubbish.

I tried - twice - to watch the Spirit, but it was so god-awfully bad I couldn't. I was on a long-haul flight and even managed to sit through Mirrors (using the fast-forward option extensively), but everything about the Spirit was awful. Visually it was too similar to Sin City to be interesting, and the plot & dialogue were atrocious.