Here, there be rant.
I’ve got a buddy. More than a buddy. One of my best friends. Goes by the name of Justin. A tall, lanky fellow, fellow film major, and Kung Fu black belt. More importantly, we’re both comics nerds, and hungrily devour news about upcoming comic book movies. We’d have these amazing and epic debates over what should/should not happen in the next film, what is or is not happening, and othersuch nonsense. Friends of ours know these debates. If memory serves right, we weren’t speaking to each other for about a month because of our “What should happen in Spider-Man 3″ debate. It was fierce.
Recently, I’ve grown weary of debates like these with him or anyone else for that matter. It got to the point where I was just left thinking, “I’m not the director. I’m not the producer. I’m not even the coffee monkey. Arguing about what should go on in these movies is fucking pointless.” It was fun once, screaming and ranting about Brett Ratner and shit. But it gives me a migraine now. If friends approach me with movie news or speculations or rumors or anything of the sort, well… Let’s just say I get pretty fucking irate.
So when I come across news on my own, I have no one to blame but myself. Or Xerexes, I guess. Comixpediating son of a bitch.
Now, I pretty much agree with the basic assessments of this blogger here. Sure, the costumes could be better. Sure, Stacy X is a pointless damned character to have in the movie, and it’s damned weird that she’s standing alongside Psylocke and Callisto. Overall, it seems like there’s a lot of stuff being crammed into the movie, over saturating it with “X-tra” characters. So it’s looking not so good, the movie. People are screaming, forums are shouting, fans are foaming at the mouth. The movie could turn out to not be what the fans want.
Oh fucking well.
It’s getting harder and harder to identify myself as a comic book fan. Because we comic book fans are a selfish lot. Trained by our very own entertainment source to be sticklers for hardcore continuity. Growing up reading the monthly escapades of our beloved characters, etc.
The bulk of the superbook fandom, like most fandoms, attains this great sense of entitlement over the characters and worlds they read. So when a movie like Daredevil or Punisher comes out, that are both inaccurate and straight up bad movies, the fandom goes nuts.
Personally, I’m getting fucking tired of it. So I’m going to say this to all the frothing fanboys and comic book readers who waste an excess amount of time predicting and pre-scripting and pre-viewing the movies and their contents in their heads. To all of those who let loose a bloody, screaming rage because the movie didn’t go their way:
They didn’t make the movie for you, they made the movie for everybody. And if you expect them to do otherwise, then you have no clue how Hollywood works.
I’m no expert on Hollywood. Closest I’ve been is to LA, and that was for E3. Not even the same industry. I am, however, a filmmaker, so I have a base insight if nothing else. But to make a movie for the super-niche audience that is the comic book reader is a big, big risk financially. Sure, they could do a panel-by-panel by-the-book 100% accurate rendition of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. But you’ll be excluding a huge chunk of people who don’t even know who the fuck The Dark Knight is.
Making a big budget movie requires many safety nets to ensure that at the bare minimum, you break even. One of those safety nets is simplification of the story, in the sense of adjusting it for the common viewer. And there’s a great difference between that and “dumbing it down.” As long as you have all the base elements from the original story, you’re solid. Eschewing these things is the difference between a good and bad adaptation.
So there’s room for change. In X-Men, they decided to make the starting X-Men Cyclops, Jean, Storm, and Wolverine (as opposed to Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Jean). And that was fine. It was still a good X-Men story because you had the social conflict between humans and mutants, a main villain that opposes or otherwise hinders the belief of peaceful co-existence, and the X-Men willing to fight for those that hate and fear them. Storywise, that’s all you need (aside from, I’d argue, Professor X and the school. I feel those are essential for an opening X-Men story. The characters are variable). So in X-Men, we had a very decent departure from the true “origin story,” but because we had all the basic elements it was a faithful adaptation.
Combined, of course, with smashing presentation and performances. That’s crucial for any movie, regardless of story.
But there’s the whole mentality that needs 100% faithful adaptation. The mentality that refuses to accept variations of every kind. I knew a lot of folks who were pissed off that Spider-Man had biological web shooters, rather than mechanical. Honestly, who gives a fuck? That’s really incidental to the story’s meaning and message.
And when the movie comes out, and you invariably disagree with some part of the adaptation, you can go ahead and be annoyed. That’s fine and reasonable. Disagree, talk about why you thought it was wrong, or how it could be changed. That’s good ol’ healthy criticism.
But don’t be that guy who posts on the forum screaming for the head of Director or Writer because they “betrayed you.” Getting that angry about it doesn’t do a goddamned thing, and only helps to tarnish the reputation and image of the comic book reader. Relax and accept that there’s room for reasonable change during the adaptation. But think about the changes they made, and try to think about why they made them. If you’re stumped, it’s because they did it so more people than just you might enjoy the movie. Because they’re trying to make some money. Which, ultimately, was why the characters were created in the first place anyway.
It’s strange – despite my pretty intense desire for book adaptations to stay true to the source, I’ve always been able to treat comic book movies as distinctly seperate entities.
As long as they are making a good movie, I’m fine with creative liberties, by and large.
That said, the clause is really what I’m worried about – that the movie itself turns out well. Oversaturation of characters could easily throw that off – not because it won’t be as true to the series, but just due to producing a messy and structurally unsound story.
But meh. I’m content to pretty much ignore any of the upcoming news about things, and see it when it comes out, and hold my judgement till then.
And I definitely agree that, regardless of what beef someone has with an adaptation, there are better ways to handle it that go screaming bloody murder, as a large contingent of fandom has a tendency to do.
BUT THERE WEREN’T AN ARMY OF V’S IN THE BOOK!!!!
JUST ONE V AT A TIME!!!!
I AM DISGUSTED BY THESE CHANGES TO “V FOR VENDETTA” AND I SHALL HATE MYSELF FOR PAYING TO SEE THE MOVIE, BUYING A V MASK, A T-SHIRT, AND I SHALL TAKE MY POSEABLE ACTION FIGURE (It’s not a doll, dolls are for kids) AND HIDE IT BEHIND MY “CHOBITS” FIGURES!!
RAMPAGE! RAMPAGE! FANBOY RAMPAGE! GARRR!
Um… no one wants Stacy X fans or otherwise.
You’re right about that, Jami.
Stacy X? Man that’s some stupid shit. But I don’t like judging movies before they’ve been released. And I’ll still go see it, because… Well.. Angel. Mmmm. Tasty boy with wings.
Hmm, I would agree, but then again I spend the entire time during Harry Potter films thinking how it’s different from the book (and does anyone else wish Harry, after 4 years at hogwarts, would remember to USE HIS FREAKING WAND!). I’m willing to forgive changes to the formula as long as I see that they make the film better- every single scene where they made Gandalf look like a girl sucked in LOTR, and was pointless (the fight between Gandalf and Saruman springs to mind….).
But ultimately, yeah, my opinion does not matter, and calling betrayal is a little excessive. Ultimately it’s kind of fun to berate them for their choices, but you’ve got to love kelsey grammar as the beast.
The way I see it, whiny zealots will always be whiny zealots – they just choose different mediums. ::shrug::
I hope X3 doesn’t suck. I really do. And I’m not scared because they have this person or that person in or out. I’m scared because there’s a new vision at play, and that maybe the director (AND the writer, since the last go-round they shat on David Hayter so badly and made him pissed enough to leave) doesn’t get what the story should be about. Or they’re so committed to making their OWN vision that they forget that other films came before, and this isn’t starting over but continuing on. Batman Begins was starting over – and THANK GOD for it – but this? There’s a “3″ in the title. People who didn’t give a shit about X-Men before are going to see it because of the earlier movies. Should you ape Singer’s style? No, you don’t have to: but I think it’s more graceful and well-advised to try and carry on with the path he set.
And stuff.
X3 will suck simply because they’ve overloaded it with characters. It’s what killed the Batman franchise back in the 90s.
Is it weird that whenever I see X3, I see an excited cat face?
Whew, thank goodness I ain’t the only one.
People are making too big of a deal of all the minor characters. I bet if anything they all just show up, use thier power once, then get punched in the face. It’s like with Darth Vader in Episode III. They made a big deal about him being in it and he was in it for two minutes. If anything most of the characters are just nods to the fans, just like when they cast actors that looked like other characters in the first two. Personally I’m looking forward to this movie.
The problem (or possible parallel) in the Darth Vader example is that Darth Vader was in the film for two minutes and it was STUPID. And none of the people who like Darth Vader and think he’s cool liked that portrayal.
I don’t know, William. I don’t think they “overloaded it with characters” – there were lots of them in the first movie (I enjoyed pointing out Pyro and Shadowcat and Jubilee, for one) and the second movie had more (Colossus, another Shadowcat, Siren, Warlock, and the WHOOOOOOLE list that Mystique scrolls through to find Magneto). I think it’s how much of a point the movie makes about these scattered characters – if they’re featured like “Not now, STACEY X, blah blah blah” or “he’s like some kind of MULTIPLE MAN!” in a really cheeseball way, then BARF. There’s a right and a wrong way to do it… I think the right way is to reward the fans with glimpses of the characters they recognize from the series, but NOT punish those who have no idea who they are (ex. when I was watching X2, a friend and I were spazzing all over that list while our other two friends didn’t notice anything special about it). The WRONG way is a furthering of a different agenda, a kind of “who’s who” cascade of names and faces – a furthering of what I felt could go wrong that I mentioned before: getting away from the original point.
(And the Batman series didn’t suck because they overloaded it with characters. It began to suck because the scripts were ass, the effects were stupid, and the acting made me want to stab out my own eyes.)
Well, you’re right. If they do smartly keep all of these mutants in the background, things should be okay. But X2 was pretty much pushing the limits of being un-entertaining when they focused on characters other than Wolverine… Let’s face it. If Huge Jackman didnt carry the weight of the thing so well, the series would be in “Punisher Land”
I thought what killed the Batman movies was a combination of poor directing and trying to take the whole thing back to the “Adam West” era and still keep a semblance of the darkness Burton added to it. In my opinion the Burton movies and the latest one are the only Batman movies worth a damn. (Oh, and the Adam West era stuff is in a class of it’s own. It rocks for it’s own reasons.)
Anyway, I never read super hero comics as a kid. My experience with X-Men started with the animated series. I don’t even know who the fuck Stacy X is, and neither will over half of the American population. As an ‘occasional fan’ of X-Men, I’m just hoping to be entertained like I was when I first started watching the cartoon as a kid at this point.
Stacy X’s mutant power was the ability to control pheremones or something. Basically, they made her power sex.
well that’s no big deal. all girls can do that.