Hey we were just talking about this lol! James Bond comics and strips collection! :tup:
LOL at James Bond being turned down from S.H.I.E.L.D! 
Hah! Thatâs quite funny
Huh, I didnât know there were people hoping the movies would be bad. So a movie is adapted from your favorite comic or book, so what? If itâs good, itâs good, if itâs not, itâs not. I donât know how that at all harms your experience with the book. There is a reason itâs called an adaptation, itâs not a scene for scene recreation. Every media has itâs strengths and weaknesses, but they tend to all have the same goals.
Did Superman Returns make you dislike the comic stories of Supes any more? Would Watchmen being a crappy movie make you like the graphic novel less? I guess I just donât understand, to me they are related, but not the same experience. I can separate them no problem. The difference between seeing a movie and say, the broadway production of the same movie. Iâm not expecting the experience to be the same, Iâm expecting them both to set out and be good in their own right. Thereâd be no point if it provided you the same exact experience. To fret that other people will only know say, Watchmen, by the movie is really an exercise in futility too. How many people do you think that would only know Watchmen by the movie would have ever ventured upon the comic? It wouldnât be likely. You may even interested a small percentage to pick up the graphic novel and see what all the hubbub is about. So while the movie sucking can hurt the perception Watchmen, who cares? Itâs Watchmen if you think itâs awesome, itâll still be awesome if the movie blows.
I like that there have been some good comic book movies, itâs cool to see something you like in a new way. Just like everything there are good movies and there are bad ones, and like most entertainment a lot of it will be mediocre, a good bit of it bad, and a smaller portion good to great. We follow comics, so we see this a lot.
I for one am pretty geekily excited about upcoming comicbook movies, and I know that not every one is going to be fantastic.
oh you and me both brother.
i want a damn luke cage movieâŚ70âs blaxploitation shenanigans and all. or heroes for hire in the 70âs.
edit: lol going back to page 1 i realized i pretty much wrote this post over again haha. thats how much i want to see doom get owned.
If they do a Heroes for Hire movie or even a Luke Cage movie, if they throw in Cage saying, âSweet Christmasâ in the trailer, iâm there opening night.
Eh still the whole argument that the perception of comicbooks in movies will hurt comicbooks is really not holding water with me. This isnât new to comicbooks. Hell, all sorts of things have been adapted into movies.
What he goes on to talk about is how the mainstream culture limits what companies are willing to make and put out there, but this presupposes that comic book fans and movie fans are the same people, which in large part, they arenât. Well, they tend to crossover in one direction only, which is why you have the perception of comic books being a limiting factor (to Ebertâs comment) versus a movie that is seen as an evolution. These opinions of comic books from people who arenât going to read a comic book is really, at the end of the day, not all that important, they werenât going to buy a comic off a rackâŚwellâŚever. It would be ridiculous for say, Marvel comics to shun stories because they are afraid of upsetting some soccer mom who loved the X-men trilogy.
The argument that the mainstream culture limits what companies is willing to do, is valid, always has been. It affects all mediums because business want to do whatâs safe. Itâs why you can have your story where you kill Superman, but you better damn well bring him back and reset almost every major development that happens to any of the characters. They want a comic that will reach the biggest audience, so thatâs why cool projects like Scott Pilgrim or Lullaby wouldnât be something that comes out with a DC or Marvel imprint on them, they are new, risky, and comic book companies are in the business of telling good stories, but only good ones that will sell.
The perception that permeates comics wasnât created by movies. They were thought of as an inferior medium far before the advent of the movies, and I donât think they do nearly as much damage as people are thinking. You think that a crappy Spider-man movie hurts the Spider-man comic? I will grant that it could support the idea of comics being hackneyed shallow stories not worth further exploration, but how come this is only true of comic books and not other literature?
The legitimacy of comics has been something that comics would have to turn around, and itâs not happening because the biggest brands of the genre are these time-trapped nostalgic figures. Watchmen is really good, hell, my university teaches a course on the novel, but comics of this level arenât a dime a dozen. Most people get their perception of comics from there interactions with comics, not movies.
For contrast, take books, that have been being adapted into movies since well, practically ever. Books are perceived as a higher form of entertainment than movies, with âThe book was betterâ being a common phrase uttered by fans. This relationship with books being superior to movies was not created by movies, nor is it perpetuated by it. Books are immune to the discourse because peopleâs relationship with books is different than there relationship with comics.
I can understand the thought that movies are a part of that atmosphere that cultivates the way people think of comic books, but as I said, in large these arenât the same audiences. The young male that comics are usually targeted at may see Ironman and decide to read the character.
I think you lay blame on something thatâs been a very recent development in the big picture to how people think of and interact with comics. Itâs a relationship that was forged prior and apart from movies. Like books came in with the thought of being higher forms of entertainment, it was done without movies. (Much like tragedy is considered a higher form of art than comedy.)
How this changes is not by taking away movies. If Johnny Q Public doesnât see Wolverine, heâs not going to seek him out in a comic book store. Not generally, what comic books have to do, is be able to make the jump that books did, which is hard, but not impossible. You generate your own legitimacy, you can only throw negative perceptions onto something not strong enough to stand up to them. (Hence the masses of terrible book adaptations, not hurting the perceived inherent superiority of books to movies.)
You miss the point. This isnât about blame, and itâs not about movie fans and comics fans. What my article concerns is the people who are producing the films and comics.
There is currently a widespread perception that comics are inferior to movies. I donât care who started it, but itâs there, and if an indisputably intelligent man like Roger Ebert is under this mistaken impression, then itâs going to be pretty hard to shake. The enormous boom in films based on comics is recent, but the mentality that films are superior are not.
Whenever Iâm curious enough to ask, most people seem to believe that the reasons for wanting an adaptation of (for instance) Watchmen are self-evident. They take it for granted that comics should be made into movies, that it is an intrinsically good thing, and that it needs no more reason than that. Though many of these people would identify themselves as comics readers, they are manifesting (however unconsciously) the mentality that film is superior to comics.
In the past 20 or 30 years, there have been many attempts to prove the legitimacy of comics. The rest of the world needs to know, but most of its die hard followersâwho mostly donât give a fuck about artistry and just want to know if Spider-Manâs baby will be born with superpowers or a tumorâneed to know it as well. The current trend of widespread comics-to-film adaptations is, by far, the biggest step backward I think weâve seen in a long time.
Writers and artists in the comics medium are living in an atmosphere in which the quickest way to fame and fortune is to do something that can be made into a movie. This results in comics that were not written with their native medium in mindâstrike one against artistic legitimacy. The current ignorant viewâthat film adaptations are naturally an elevation of comics materialâis being consistently reinforced. Strike two. Mainstream comics, a den of shitty characterization and soap opera-like storytelling, are given no reason to improve themselves and stand on their own merits, since theyâre essentially serving as both Hollywood R&D and fodder for trade paperbacks. Strike three.
In short, the fact that people who have never set foot in a comic store are the ones who believe in the inherent superiority of film* is precisely why film needs to back off. Comics needs to finally throw off the anchor** and prove itself to the world, and it canât do that with film constantly breathing down its neck.
(*Though, as I said, there is reason to believe that this view is held by plenty of the people who regularly set foot in comic book stores as well.)
(**What is the anchor in question? Good fodder for discussion. In a general sense, the anchor is the mentality that weâve been discussing. However, more specifically, Iâd agree that the mainstream industryâDC, Marvel, and all those guysâare guilty as hell. The industry itself, along with Hollywood strip-mining, is holding the art form back, but the two reinforce each other. What reason do the big houses have to clean up their act if they get consistently rewarded by both Hollywood attention and a readership that doesnât demand anything better?)
where is my deadpool movie? they need to hurry and make it asap
Maybe a GOOD venom? I would LOVE an Earth X, Universe X, Paradise X trilogy.
I agree with many of your points. I do respectfully disagree and think you overlook the correlation between movie fans and comic fans and how that has a direct link to the production of films and comics. You canât have one and not the other itâs all the same issue.
I think we shall just have to agree to disagree, I think we can both agree that we want comics to take that step however it is that it occurs. We also agree that the relationship people have with comic books as an inferior medium is the biggest hurdle to it being considered on the level of novels or film. I think the onus is on the comics world, and that it is something that, like for books, can and must happen to the world of comics. Comics have survived largely without comic book adaptation until very recently, and I donât see a couple of decades ago as being all that much different in the legitimacy of the medium to what the major publishers are putting out now. Comics have largely earned their relationship with people by what artists and writers were giving them prior to the last handful of years.
In all honesty, though, I would rather people never encounter Watchmen at all if the alternative is that they only watch the movie. If people are too lazy to read, appreciate, and enjoy a comic, then fuckâem. Thatâs my philosophy.
^^^ This too.
I just noticed earlier this week that the new Punisher movie is under the Marvel Knights imprint, I dunno if the old one was, but it would be cool to see more characters get an R rated movie.
Who would I want under that imprint, you ask? Simple: Daredevil. Letâs face it, his first movie was fucking horrible people. I was so sad that Ben Affleck, and actor I hate with much disdain, was cast in the roll and played up the fact that he canât act worth shit. Then we got Blackpin, a retarded Bullseye, and a non spanish Elecktra. WowâŚgreat job Hollywood.
A series revamp in the vein of Hulk, but with an R rated film, could do the trick quite nicely. I would like a newly revamped Bullseye in classic outfit as well. Other than that I wouldnât want to see Kingpin again, Iâm trying to think of who could replace him but Iâm not coming up with anything.
Ghost Rider under the Knights imprint would be my next choice, then a Dr. Strange film. I just think it would be funny if Dr. Strange said fuck.
Heroes for Hire: Especially if I can get Esther Baxter as Misty Knight. My heavens she would be glorious.
Oh and I am sure Iron Fist and Luke Cage would be good on the screen to with the right script. But show me Esther Baxter in a skin tight jump suit at least 3 and a half minutes and I will pay ten bucks to see that, unless it is Halle Berry Catwoman bad. Then Iâd just buy the DVD.
Well I donât know that just sounds needlessly elitist. âThen fuckâem?â Why? So they see a movie and thatâs there only inroads to Watchmen, so? If they were never going to read the graphic novel in the first place, who cares? They arenât going to get the full experience, or have the same experience you did reading the novelâŚbut that experience is yours a shitty movie doesnât change that.
I donât know to assume that people going to the movie are just too lazy to read a comic book is justâŚwellâŚokay there are levels of retarded, and there is that statement. Have you honestly read the book to every movie youâve ever gone to? Seen the play for every movie adapted from a play?
When youâve read Shakespeare did you go back and read the plays he adapted his plays from? Did you even know he lifted plotlines from earlier plays? Wouldnât it be elitist of me to say that if you fuck you if you saw Romeo and Juliet but didnât read âIl Novellinoâ that itâs adapted from?
My philosophy is slightly less extreme than Zephâs. If a comic is good, then I donât want there to be a an alternate (and diluted) means of experiencing it. In that sense, yeah, fuck 'em. Itâs not that theyâre lazy, but if theyâre going to check it out, then they can check out the real deal. Call that elitist if you want. I call it the attitude of someone who believes the medium can and should be much more than what it is now.
The Shakespeare analogy doesnât work because weâre talking about works being adapted from one medium to anotherâfrom the medium it was designed for, which has its best years ahead of it, to a medium which it wasnât designed for, which is in its death throes. Shakespeareâs plays riffing on earlier plays has nothing in common with the adaptive process weâre describing, and Shakespeareâs end product is something that was absolutely relevant for its timeâunlike film, which is at its nadir of relevance.
My mistake, I should have clarified, Shakespeare adapted it from a book, not a play. Il Novellino, as the name implies, is a novel. A brain fart on my part, so it is the same adaptive process.
Dilution is all relative, a matter of opinion so I hold it as being intensely valid that the movie can be a worse venture than the graphic novel, but what I would argue with, are you satisfied with your experience of Romeo and Juliet? Should you not have ever had the means to see the play, or read it? Watchmen just became the particular film to lynch this argument on because itâs one of the mainstays of the âComics can be really good!â argument (big fan myself) and I by no means think that the movie is going to be as influential as Romeo and Juliet, all Iâm saying is there is validity in adaptation. There are things that can come about from taking an idea here, and making it into a new idea there. It can influence comics, and film. Romeo and Juliet influenced way more people than the Il Novellino ever did.
So is the experience of a Shakespeare play ultimately worth it? (By your philosophy the play should have never been written.) Is what it lent to Romeo and Juliet novel? Itâs hard to make such rash judgments on a movie before itâs even come out, it will probably fall short of the graphic novel experience, but can it give audiences that havenât read the graphic novel, something for them to enter into the same discourse? Iâm more excited by the generation of literary discourse than I am the preservation of the status quo, so I may be a bit, anarchist when it comes to experience. You have your experience, I have mine, itâs through the discourse that I find things become interesting.
Truth be told, I donât think the Watchmen movie will turn out to be the best thing ever, but I donât feel blanket statements about adaptation being a driving force in the illegitimacy of comics because adaptation works both ways. As many ways as it stifles, it provokes.
Take the novel House of Leaves, which you could say was written largely in response to the way people experience and look at a book. It was a book that saw the rise of internet as a competing and negative force. The writer of the novel (whoâs last name Iâd skewer if I attempted it) had his inspiration influenced and provoked by the competing forces of the internet and movies. If you read it, it does things an E-book or a movie canât. It took advantage of the medium more because of the challenge posed by this competing force. (Itâs a great book from a literary theory standpoint because itâs intensely aware that you and I can read the same book and have two different experiences, just in the way the medium works. I can skim a page you read intently, I can skip forward, or look back, I could read an annotation that you skip or vice versa.)
So in the small picture, yes, a crappy Watchmen movie will have thousands of people walking around thinking how cool Watchmen was, and theyâll never read the novel. Not that they were going to, and yes, the movie companies can change the way comic companies write comics, but I think through the confluence of ideas that having this sort of world can not be stated as an overwhelming bad thing.
What it allows is for people to define both the strengths and inherent weaknesses of the medium. For people to figure out new ideas about where these two things can and cannot cross. The ratio of good stuff to crap in any genre typically weighs way towards the crap side, but there is the chance that the tension caused by this new dichotomy provokes comics to take that step that they need to take.
I am not arguing movie adaptation is a great thing, Iâm just arguing that itâs not overwhelming a negative either.
Also Iâd like to retract characterizing Zephâs statement as âretardedâ, I realize across the net something that may just be a playful barb when I type it can come across as an insult. Not my intent.
Going back to the Watchmen movie, IMHO changing the ending the way they are going to change it on paper sounds like a piss poor decision. Iâm not one that believes that comic book films should be exactly like the source material, though ideally I want good all around decisions that appease both comic fans and film goers, such as was the case with The Dark Knight. The ending to me is not a part of the book you screw around with and if the reason behind it is to soften things for the film audience then they already prove the point so many others made that Watchmen is an unfilmable project. Or perhaps not unfilmable (arguably I would like to see a film within a film like Watchmen had a comic within a comic, but thatâs not going to happen since Black Frieghter will get the exclusive DVD treatment sadly), but something that is best left in either more capable hands or just left alone.
So I prolly will not see the movie on the first day, but I will check it out on cable or something for free. Curiousity might get the better of me and I may see it in theaters early on, canât say.
Watchmen and, possibly the new Watchmen movie
Spoiler
The big monster at the end will be replaced. I hear either by a laser beam, or, Dr. Manhattan lighting up the city? Okay how the hell is the world supposed to by that attack as something otherworldly and unite without the big squid monster? A laser beam? You gotta be freaking kidding me, why wouldnât they chalk that up to a nutty scientist out there or a new super powered guy? Dr. Manhattan, same problem. Letâs not forget about the⌠MASSIVE DEATH AND CARNAGE in the book during that scene, will that be swapped out too? Okay, all of these are rumors except for the squid monster being absent, which just gets a big BOOOO from me. Thatâs one of my favorite parts in the book. I will try to keep an open mind since who knows, the filmâs way of doing things may work, but dang man that just sounds BAD IMHO. :sad:
There is another alternative to the film with that new moving digital Watchmen comic that Gibbons is working on. Frames from the comic coupled with dialog you can listen to. Donât know if XBox Live Arcade has it, but Playstation Network does and you can download them too through podcasts or something like that. I havenât seen any of those entries either, but already I think that is a better solution than watching the Hollywood movie since the ending in theory should be intact. Not having seen either, of course. But no, that still wonât replace the experience of reading the comic either unless they are going to⌠âmoving comicâ their way through all of the News Articles⌠Hmm that would be kind of funny if they did, heh! :wonder:
You know, I wouldnât mind seeing an Invincible movie. I think the character may lend himself well since the types of humor would translate I think.
There was rumbles that Scott Pilgrim is being made into a movie, and if so, thatâll be very interesting since that graphic novel does a lot of interesting things that would be hard to translate into a movie. (For one, the main character uses save points.) A lot of the action in that is subtle, but other things may work better in motion. (Like the music that you can only hear the lyrics of, I do think Bryan OâMalley makes some of his own music that you can listen to, but it may be cool altogether.)