The thing about comics-to-film adaptations is that sculpting the story is a balancing act in and of itself.
When you have heavy-hitting franchise characters like Spider-Man or Batman, just to give some examples, the story becomes easier — all you have to do is take some key ingredients (Spider-Man, Doc Ock, some of the supporting characters) and tell the best darn story you can. But what do you do when its a limited series? Many of these adaptations basically become something akin to staged readings, a la Watchmen, with only the most minor of tweaks to make the story fit into two hours.
Well, it’s looking like Scott Pilgrim is getting (hopefully) the best of both worlds, according to Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Twitter feed, in which — in addition to noting that Lisa Miller, Knives Chau’s dad, and the fight at Honest Ed’s have been cut due to time constraints — he reports:
None of Vol 6 is in the movie. Note that I haven’t finished writing it yet, but they’re already making a movie. Their ending is their ending
He later goes on to report that he has made his plans known, but either party can zig to the other’s zag. And to be honest, I think that’s a really good choice — I don’t think that a different ending by Edgar Wright would necessarily hurt the indie sensation, and one of the appeals in comic book films (at least to me) is to see these cinematic creators’ looks at my favorite properties. What say you, Rama readers?
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:04 am
This sort of thing comes up all the time in the manga to anime transition. Akira is famous example in that the movie (sorta) covers about the first 2 books of a 6-book series. Miyazaki’s Nausicaa was similar. I like both films, but the filmed Akira is often maligned for its perceived narrative incoherence and the Nausicaa movie really does feel pretty short and clipped in comparison to the manga.
And, I now realized, in both cases, the films’ directors were the original creators of the manga they were based on! I trust Wright, but he has a pretty tough job.