Moviedom has adored comics as source material for decades, but comics lovers haven’t necessarily returned the love. NOW senior film writer Norman Wilner offers his views on cinema’s adaptations, and Christopher Butcher and Peter Birkemoe, who run comics haven The Beguiling and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (coming May 9 and 10), weigh in too.
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Fritz The Cat
The film nerd says…
Animator Ralph Bakshi adds his own issues to Robert Crumb’s horny kitty, and the result is a freak show for the ages. That said, the dialogue and the attitudes are so tied to their era that it’s hard to take it seriously now… and in that way it’s remarkably faithful to its source.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: The film outraged Robert Crumb so much that he actually killed off the character Fritz the Cat in the next strip he did. The movie ended up celebrating the 60s counterculture and zeitgeist, whereas Crumbs’ work was always very critical of it.
A History Of Violence
The film nerd says…
Here’s a great example of a source being totally transformed by its interpreter. John Wagner and Vince Locke might have written the graphic novel, and Josh Olson may have written the adaptation, but this is 100 per cent David Cronenberg’s film. The intensity of the violence, the sexual charge in the relationship between Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, and the insistence on playing a simple pulp story as realistically as possible – that’s all Cronenberg’s, and it’s what makes this movie so gripping from start to finish.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: It’s a terrible, terrible comic that made a pretty good movie. That’s because it’s not an adaptation. The lamest parts of the comic were excised long before it got to the screenplay. The film is stronger for not having the comic’s more sensationalist elements.
Butcher: I heard that the comic was brought to David Cronenberg one day and he said, “Really?”
American Splendor
The film nerd says…
The intriguing formal games employed by directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini – breaking the flow of a scene so creator Harvey Pekar can point out what’s wrong with Paul Giamatti’s interpretation of him, for instance – would overwhelm a lesser text, but somehow it feels like exactly the right way to capture Pekar’s cantankerous creation.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: As with Ghost World, you had a close collaboration with the creator. The Harvey Pekar work used as the source material for that movie comes from a wealth of short stories that make up his career. They did a very good job of capturing his tone.
Butcher: It was good that they made Pekar into someone you’d want to spend time with, when that’s really not the case. He’s a pretty grumpy guy.
Sin City
The film nerd says…
Opinions are mixed on Robert Rodriguez’s digital adaptation of Frank Miller’s noir series, but I love it. The minimalist approach reduces every one of Miller’s hardboiled clichés to its essence, and lets Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke find surprising depth in their archetypal characters. Pulp fiction should always be this potent.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: There’s not much depth in Sin City’s content, either the comic or the movie. It’s all visuals and tone, and they captured those. Nobody looks at Sin City and thinks of plot.
Butcher: It was pretty successful in bringing the comic to the big screen. It looked like the comic on the big screen, and people really responded to that. It’s not a perfect book or movie.
Ghost World
The film nerd says…
Daniel Clowes’s cynical vision of young adulthood gets opened up most effectively in Terry Zwigoff’s adaptation the insertion of Steve Buscemi’s cranky, alienated Seymour expands our understanding of Thora Birch’s withdrawn Enid in a way that might not otherwise have been possible.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: Creator Dan Clowes was on set with the director and co-screenwriter every day, so while there are differences, particularly Seymour going from throwaway character to central character in the movie, the tone is entirely faithful and successful.
Butcher: Ghost World the movie is a translation of the comic book and not just an adaptation.
300
The film nerd says…
Zack Snyder’s dedication to replicating the panels of Frank Miller’s graphic novel actually works against the material, turning Gerard Butler and his 299 Spartan buddies into fully poseable action figures rather than letting them develop their characters. And the Persian warriors get increasingly silly over the course of the picture.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: I’ve heard criticisms of the flashback sequences and how the book’s viewpoint is much narrower. The book has a singular point of view that suggests the story may not be true. In the film, you don’t get that – it’s just reality.
Butcher: By making the bad guys more epic and the good guys more homoerotic, they actually captured the comic’s intent more clearly than those who made Sin City.
30 Days Of Night
The film nerd says…
The sleek, almost elegant aesthetic of David Slade’s vampire-siege chiller is quite removed from the angry, chaotic design of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s graphic novel, but I thought it suited Danny Huston’s lordly performance as the movie’s principal villain – and made the gruesome violence seem even more monstrous by contrast.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: The idea that “this would be a great vampire movie” was at the comic’s core when it was created. I’m not saying it was a movie pitch with staples, but there’s very much a sense that the idea of a movie was there at the outset.
Butcher: It’s a pretty straightforward adaptation of the first book, which is weird because the book’s only 80 pages long. It is bang on – they even captured the visual style.
Persepolis
The film nerd says…
I wasn’t a huge fan of Marjane Satrapi’s book, and I can’t say I enjoyed the movie version – co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud – either. Yes, it brings Satrapi’s uncluttered black-and-white images to life, but it fails to make the text anything more than a series of random episodes about how fascinating Marjane Satrapi finds herself. The descent of Iran into theocratic fascism? That’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.
The comic geeks say…
Birkemoe: Persepolis succeeds as a comic and a film on the strength of the story and the voice, but it doesn’t do anything to impress people on its comic-ness – Persepolis could have been a short story, novel, children’s book or movie. But the filmmakers chose a style of animation that really suited the voice of the source material.
Butcher: Author Marjane Satrapi didn’t do a lot with comics as a medium, but she was a fan of the medium, and the filmmakers were sensitive to that. She never lost the core directness of her black-and-white drawing, and I think it was a very successful adaptation of the work.
