 |
| Green Lantern, total dud. |
Comic-book movies, they either have it or they dont. They either make a piss load of money or they flounder like a deflated party balloon in a rich kid's pool. You'd think after the early success of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man that other studios and directors could pull the same thing off and create another successful franchise. You'd think that after the massive success of Christopher Nolan's Batman films that studios and directors would get it right. Alas, that has not been the case and I want to examine why that is not the case. I want to examine why some still fail while others succeed.
Character Development
To figure out why we have this problem we must first look at what makes a good movie overall, not just in this category. One of the most important ingredients for any movie is Character Development. All of the Best comic book movies spend a lot of time developing the hero's past and present. It's essential to see what drives the main character to become the hero, it's even important for the development of the villain at times, like Loki in Thor. It's not just a tool for the justification of actions, it's also a means of identifying with the hero, we need to feel what he/she feels, in order to make a satisfying connection to the film. Film's like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, and Iron Man do a great job of character development and the movie version of Thor is pretty much all character development because of transitioning from one personality to another.
For me, the best way to handle character development is to have someone close to the hero die early on, before they become the superhero, it's a powerful catalyst if properly handled. All of the films mentioned above have the death of some one close to the hero. In Spider-man it's his uncle who dies in his arms. In Batman it's his parent's who get murdered in front of him. In Iron Man it's two Deaths, the Death of Tony Stark's father, which leaves the burden of running an entire international company and the death of the man who helped him survive his hostage ordeal. Through Yensin, Tony Stark was able to realize that he had to take responsibility the weapons he created that are killing innocent people. In Thor, one could argue that nobody important to the hero dies, but there is something that is just as important and that is the illusion of death, it looms over the entire film. First you have Thor being exiled to Earth, which is the metaphorical death of the person who he is at the time. Next you have his father's sleep mode, which in this instance is taking along time and is simulating death. Lastly, Loki, Thor's brother and the Villain, lies and tells Thor that their father did actually die. All of these events and a few other create a change into the hero we have at the end of the film, a sort of prodigal son.
Take our word for it...
In movies like Green Lantern, there is very little of this going on at all and with a very small amount of time spent on it. Oh sure you have that Green Lantern who escaped to Earth and then died when he handed over the ring, but this was the first time they ever met. This brings me to the next subject. The guy that handed over the ring To Hal Jordan was suppose to be this big shot hero, but we were only told off screen that he was, we're just suppose to take the word of these aliens. So there is no connection to the audience by the death. It would have been great to have at least 15-20 minutes of photage dedicated to the previous Green Lantern so that there could have been a little more impact when he died. The same thing goes for the fantasic four, very little character development was provided before their accident. We just have to say, "Ok, they're scientists turning knobs, pushing buttons, and saying big words", but why are they scientists and pilots? Instead we get "Oh hey! we are fun and goofy with our new super powers, let's say corny things now." And this brings me to the ultimate Comic-book movie killer...
 |
| It should say "Prepare for the Craptastic" |
The Cheese Factor.
Let's start out with a little story. I had just returned from the video store where I picked up a copy of "Daredevil", easily one of my favorite super heroes. I put in the dvd and pressed play. I was pretty satisfied with the beginning, it was darker than I thought it would be, Michael Clarke Duncan as a believable Kingpin, there was a little mystery in it. Enter Jennifer Garner's character, still okay, he tracks her down to a playground and the cheese commences. Why oh why did they have to include one of the most hokiest fight scenes in the history of cinema? Nothing about the faux "hit on me" fight scene was believable. Then there was the even more cheese-tastic villain Bullseye throwing out all his little projectiles in cheese-tastic fashions, good lord. So yes, crappy fights and corny dialog are a couple parts of cheesiness, but another is, too much SFX or crappy SFX. One film this is prevalent in is "Wolverine", it was yet again one movie that seemed like it was going to be great. They developed character from youth to adult, connected with the audience, then severed that connection with over the top SFX (jumping over an exploding helicopter anyone?) and unfinished CGI(looking at claws in bathroom.) There was also the metaphorical rape of another classic comicbook character "Deadpool"(Ryan Renoylds) that sealed the movie's fate as well as another crappy hokey fight scene on top of a nuclear cooling tower.And the fantastic four movies as well as the recent Green Lantern basically relied on CGI and special effects to tell almost the whole story(look at these super powers! Aren't they cool!?). When will movie makers learn *cough George Lucas cough* that you can't force feed CGI to people and expect it to tell a story? Oh well. The movie that takes the cake though is Joel Shumacher's(sp?) Batman and Robin where the cheese raineth down! Take a look:
Really Hollywood? What in God's name were you thinking? It's hilarious in retrospect though.
Direction
The other day I asked my friend Stephen what he thinks will make a good comic-book movie and he offered up the answer; a good director. He's right of course, a good director makes a world of difference for a few reasons. Firstly, you need a good director to stand up for the material. Sometimes the studio that is financing the movie gets ideas they think the movie would be better, mostly for the sake of profit. If you have a decent director worth his/her salt than they will be like "Yo studio, shut the eff up! I will not bow to corporate sponsors!" and then proceed with making the film. You also need a director to break down the film to see how they can relate to the audience using the things I mentioned before. A good director can take the fantastic elements of a heroes journey, powers, or equipment and make them seem possible, thereby shrinking the need for suspension of disbelief. For most of the film you want to be able to say "Yes, this could possibly happen" i.e Batman Begins(kinda helps if you're a billionaire with access to a research lab), of course if they have superpowers it gets harder, but that's where suspension of disbelief comes in, moving on!
Here's the controversial part of good director. Say a comic or graphic novel has been published and has become a massive hit among comic book fans. Then said comic book gets picked up by a movie studio. They hire a director that is also a big fan, but the director knows the ending of the comic wont translate well to the screen so he changes it, much to the ire of the fans of the original piece of work. However since the director knows he has to change the ending, he has to seamlessly work the ending into the rest of the film. There is a particular director and film I'm talking about here, Zack Snyder's version of The Watchmen. In the graphic novel, the villain creates a giant Lovecraftian monster which supposedly appears from another dimension and kills most of NYC's inhabitants. Since the story takes place during the cold war, it unites all of the world super powers against this threat and creates world peace. That wouldn't translate to film very well, so instead Zack Snyder used the public's general fear and mistrust of Doctor Manhattan(the blue guy) by having the real villain create a bomb that simulates Dr. Manhattan's powers, detonates it and kills millions of people in several cities around the world. Whew, out of breath.
Here is an example of Dr Manhattan's powers:
And here is a scene where the bomb goes off. Unfortunately this was the only clip of it that I could use.
It was definitely a risky choice to alter the ending this greatly, but I think he did the right thing and it fit the film and the original story just fine despite what all the fanboys think. Too bad this film was under-received when it was released.
Consequences
The last thing I want to cover is consequences. Every good comic-book movie should have them for the hero. All of the good ones I've listed have them. Batman becomes a target for the law, Spider-Man hurts his relationship with MaryJane, Thor loses his brother(or so we thought!) and gets stuck in Asgard, and Tony Stark poisons himself with the paladium he needs to power his heart and the suit. If there weren't consequences for these heroes, despite the brave things they did, than we wouldn't be able to identify with them on a human level. They would just be these demi-gods flying around and doing nice things we don't appreciate. The consequences bring them down to Earth so to speak and inspire conflict within themselves. This theme is virtually non-existent in Fantastic Four and the earlier Batman films, they were the kind of films that wanted us to bow down and worship these people, they were some kind of rock-stars instead of people.
Acting counts too, but for the most part the things I talked about were key to a comic-book movies survival, some of the movies we've seen are missing things, but most of the ones that have come out lately are pretty decent. If you have anything to add or if you have disagreements, than you are welcome to say something.
