As Sarah previously reported, there are some problems with the Watchmen movie. Fox apparently owns a chunk of the rights to make such a movie, and Warner Brothers didn’t clear that up, so a judge has clamped down on WB’s ability to distribute until the rights are cleared up and fair amounts of money exchanged.
Righty-o. I read this and shrugged, until I saw the virtiol expressed in the thread. Should we boycott Wolverine, Fox’s next big comic book movie (I hadn’t even been aware that there is a trailer, which I still haven’t seen, out until I saw Sarah’s thread)? Should we write letters of protest to Fox execs? Should we thank Alan Moore’s sock-puppet that the non-squid ending has been delayed from reaching theatres?
People are incensed, which got me to wondering … why are comic book movies so important?
No, really, why?
I enjoy a good comic book movie. I’ve hated a few. I’ve completely ignored many of them too. But why do comic readers get so worked up over seeing their favorite characters or stories on the screen?
When (yes, when) Watchmen comes out, depending on reviews, word of mouth and my personal impressions of the advance footage, I’ll decide if I want to see it. But being Watchmen doesn’t, to me, give this movie any more credibility or make it more a must-see. Isn’t it enough for Watchmen to be a successful book? Why does it matter if it gets made into a movie?
Sure, I guess the movie sold an extra million or so copies of this book for DC, but by and large, how many comic book movies have actually done anything to increase comic book sales?
I’m cool with the movie being made, and will likely see it based on the footage I’ve seen so far. But if it doesn’t happen, really, so what?
December 28th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Simple answer. We love to see the characters and worlds we’ve read about get realized on film. Who doesn’t believe that the Iron Man movie didn’t provide fans with something special? I can’t wait to see the Avengers realized.
Everytime a comic film is done right, the chance of us seeing more of those worlds realized increases. Everytime a comic film fails, the chance of us seeing more of those worlds realized decreases.
If we’d only had Daredevil, Elektra, Ghostrider, and the Spirit as evidence to the potential of the genre, to Hollywood, what are the chances I’d get to see the Avengers realized?
December 29th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Superheroes are a genre. Iron Man is a character, and yes, I enjoyed seeing his character in film. I enjoyed seeing Batman in film.
Comics are NOT a genre. They’re a medium. Much like television or radio or a book or a magazine.
If Alan Moore wanted Watchmen to be a movie, he would have written a screenplay. If he had wanted it to be a prose novel, he would have written it as a prose novel. The story he wanted to tell and the way he wanted to tell it were best suited for a comic.
The textual relationship between the pirate ship story and their visual parallels to events in Watchmen are something that comics do really well. Comics allow for long sprawling tales that do not need to be condensed into three hours. The pacing can be slowed and controlled in ways that film cannot.
And I defy somehow to figure out how to do the Doc Manhattan chapter (the one where he’s having the same conversation in multiple time periods) in a way that’s better than the comic did it. I think it would be difficult to depict on film or in prose. The graphic medium does that type of scene well.
I firmly believe the Watchmen film should not exist. At all. It is perfectly fine in graphic form.
Television shows do not need to be made into feature films to validate their existence. To prove that they’re somehow worthwhile. But somehow we all want our comics to be made into movies. We want to take the comic out of the medium it was designed for.
December 29th, 2008 at 9:09 am
People should boycott the Wolverine movie because the trailer looks terrible.
December 29th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I understand what you’re saying, Robert, and I don’t really disagree. I guess I just wonder why so many people get so lathered up. Isn’t it sufficiently realized when you get to read it as a comic?
December 29th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Well, I’m not getting all that worked up about the whole Watchmen controversy. I’d like to see it, because I think it looks great (even if it is under 3 hours and there’s apparently no squid), but I’m not worked into a lather either. It will come out. There’s too much money involved for it not to come out. Maybe WB and FOX will work out some kind of deal like there was for Titanic (which involved Paramount and some other studio… I forget which) where one company owned the domestic rights and the other the overseas rights. Of maybe WB will just owe FOX a big, big pile of cash. Or maybe a deal will be struck to get the Adam West Batman show on DVD (not sure why people are clamoring for that, but whatever).
As for WHY people want to see comic book movies… Well, that’s kind of a silly question. Why does anyone want to see any book made into a movie? Is this any different than Harry Potter, LOTR or James Bond? Or anyone’s favorite book that’s been made into a film. Benjamin Button, whatever. Sometimes a great book makes for a really disappointing film (The Golden Compass), and other times an “unfilmable” book turns out surprisingly great on the big screen (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). Sometimes it turns out really different than the book, but still makes a great film anyhow (Contact).
We don’t NEED a Watchmen movie in order to validate the book (no good book needs it), but in the right hands it could make a seriously awesome film. And, as Robert and Vincent already said, we like to see our favorite characters come alive on the screen. As long as they’re done well anyhow (Nolan’s Bat-movies, for instance).
Does a good comic movie boost sales? Not necessarily, but Watchmen hype has clearly given that book a big shot in the arm. Likewise, I’d never read V For Vendetta until that movie came out (and now I see it in bookstores all the time). Hell, I never even knew about Harvey Pekar until the American Splendor movie was released. I think 1989′s Batmania was a huge boost to the comics industry, but the DC regime at that time also took advantage of it and had a lot good stories out there, both in floppies and stand-alone GNs. 2008′s Batmania is a different animal, since Didio & Co. aren’t doing a thing to attract new readers. They’re churning out confusing, convoluted crossover “events” that even infuriate a lot of longtime readers. And they’ve taken Bruce Wayne off the table for now (not to mention Superman too).
Batman Begins officially brought me back to comics after a decade away, although the Spider-Man and X-Men films started that momentum that brought me back. So I think it can have an impact, but a limited one. Floppy comics are certainly a dying medium, so I’m not sure anything can really save that. The industry has to embrace other media if they’re going to survive long term. That’s no different than newspapers and magazines, really.
December 29th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
To steal shamelessly from John Lennon, Comics fans are the…well, you know.
Comics fans see themselves as a minority. A unified minority that must act as one to “uplift” themselves into the ranks of relevance and acceptability in the world. Any film that deals with comics must not make us “look bad”. Any film that is even passably acceptable must be supported for the sake of the cause, in the hopes that if we support the mediocre ones, better ones will be made. And yet, when we get mentioned on television, it’s always the lowest common denominator that gets on camera. The clownish looking ones in the crazt costumes, mugging and howling at the lens, making us all look that much stupider.
For those who view comics in that light, the films don’t just mean good entertainment, they’re a ticket to respectablity. If enough (good) films get made about comics characters, the more possible it is we’ll be able to talk about our hobbies without following up the admission with hasty justifications like “investments” or other self-loathing excuses.
Many non-members of the group, like movie producers, see us as a homogeneous community – they all like the same things, will go to the same movies, and will vote as a block on any opinion. There’s no need to make “better” movies to appeal to them, since they’re happy with the crap we already make. And if a film for “them” fails, it’s not because the film was bad (coughspiritcough), it’s because that genre doesn’t work anymore.
If Dark Knight had not done as well as it did, Watchmen would not be getting nearly as much hype as it is. It would be just another comic flick, regardless of the level of respect the book has. And if it didn’t have as much hype, Fox wouldn’t be trying so hard (and succeeeding) to get a piece of it.
Watchmen is being built up to levels of expecttation it can scarcely hope to reach. To many, it is the film that will make the scales fall from the eyes of the unbeliever, who will fall to the ground weeping and begging forgiveness that they ever made fun of the people who read funnybooks. Hardly. It may well be as good a teling of the story as the original was. But there will ever be people who will be there to tell us why it wasn’t. They left out the squid, they left out the Black Freighter, Nite-Owl looked too good in his costume, not enough boobies, there will be an endless list of ways it Wasn’t Good Enough.
To Hollywood, comics are a genre, like Westerns, science fiction or any other. It’s just that unlike westerns, there’s a built-in market for them. Sci-Fi/fantasy has pretty much jumped to a mainstream genre, where the films are being made for a wide audience. Comics films have not. That Dark Knight has done as well as it has is a sign that may be changing, but I have to stand by the opininon that had Heath ledger not died, it wouldn’t have made half of what it did. All it’s going to take is one Howard the Duck and comics films will be back to the stack of “things people don’t want to see anymore”, and comics fans will go back to a fringe group from whom no one cares about currying favor. And that is what we are far more worried about.
December 29th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Thanks, guys.
Shaun, it is kinda silly on the surface. I guess I’ve never really wanted to see my favorite books – comic or otherwise – adapted to movies. I don’t want them NOT made into movies, but I don’t really care if they are either. Interestingly, my two favorite novels of all time, Great Gatsby and Grapes of Wrath, were both made into award-winning films, and I’ve yet to see either movie. (I’m pretty sure Grapes is somewhere in my Netflix queue, though.) I hadn’t seen Blade Runner until shortly after I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in college, and after reading the book, all I could see were the places I thought the filmmakers had gone wrong when I did see the movie.
I think I also wonder if Vinnie’s assertion, that movies give comics a sheen of “acceptance,” is a big (or bigger than many want to admit, anyway) part of it.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I’ll certainly agree the acceptance is part of it. A few years ago my co-workers thought my comic book obsession was strange and something to tease me about. Today they want to talk about Tony Stark and Hellboy. They want to know if Watchmen is going to be good. Sales may or may not have been impacted, but comic books are definitely viewed differently, today, thanks to the good films that have been made.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Some good points Vinnie, but I think too many people have made too big a deal about Ledger’s death. The truth of the matter is, the hype machine was into overdrive well before Ledger’s death. The viral marketing, which included people to go on glorified scavenger hunts, or attend campaign rallies for Harvey Dent, etc., in a number of American cities was a stroke of genius.
That stuff got media attention, and that got people’s attention outside of the usual fan circles. There was a lot of anicipation for TDK based on the success of acclaim of Batman Begins anyhow. I know a lot of people who didn’t see BB in theatres, for a variety of reasons, but that film’s audience really grew on DVD and television and that again helped stoke the fire.
Then there’s Ledger. There was buzz about his performance even before his death, and while there’s no way to prove it now I think we’d be talking Oscar nomination for Ledger even if he had lived. Jack Nicholson stole the show in 1989, and so it was for Ledger. Dead OR alive. The movie’s acclaim, pretty much unprecedented for a comic book movie (though Iron Man was almost as highly acclaimed), would’ve been the same either way too.
A great movie is a great movie, and TDK still would’ve owned the summer, and the year, had Ledger lived to see it. Sure, his death created some curiousity for people who might not otherwise have seen it, but how does that account for people going to see it multiple times and TDK becoming a film that held on to #1 week after week in a typically packed summer? It might not have become the #2 film ever, but it would’ve still cracked the top 10. Easily.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Michael, the Gatsby movie’s pretty good, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the book. Grapes is OK too, for its time. It’s hard to go wrong when you have Henry Fonda in your movie. But, like Fitzgerald, Steinbeck’s better on the page.
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:27 am
Thanks, Shaun.
I think you get to the core of why I’ll go see a comic movie if it looks good, but I don’t pay much attention to the rumors or feel bothered when problems crop up: the good ones are “better on the page.”
Robert, it’s funny that I find fewer people who think it’s odd to see me reading TERRY AND THE PIRATES on my lunch break, so the acceptance level IS higher than in the past, but I actually find it often annoying when a new comic movie comes out and everybody immediately wants my opinion on it. And then they try to talk to me about it and they just don’t KNOW anything about the characters really, and it’s frustrating and I don’t want to explain the comics to them, and I often don’t care about the characters or concept that much in the first place. ARGH!