Comics: Movie Adaptations

As generally the best source of stories that provide an excuse to use the latest special effects techniques and deliver to an existing fan base its probably safe to say that Comic Adaptation movies are here to stay.
Am I a fan? On the whole, no.
Since the year when both the unfortunately named 'Batman Forever' and the movie of Judge Dredd I have learned to be generally wary of and not get excited about comic adaptation movies. I get kind of excited, some I want to see, but do I expect them to be great movies? no.

For me this stems from the question so fundamental to my general approach to everything: why? What do movies add to a comic.
Perhaps its better demonstrated with literature, and particularly with something that probably everyone has read - Harry Potter.
I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that a Harry Potter movie was better than the books. Maybe, just maybe, a blind person may say it, because a movie has audio, but I'm pretty sure Harry Potter would have been translated into brail, and audio books by now.
Furthermore, if directors or actors do a particularly good job of portraying a character, people don't talk about them as geniuses, or particularly creative. Credit goes where it is due, to JK Rowling.
Similarly, one could examine the same phenomena of adaptations of novels such as 'Captain Correlli's Mandolin' (I haven't seen it), 'Memoirs of a Geisha' (also haven't seen it), and Dan Brown's sensation 'The Da Vinci Code' (The closest I've come to either seeing it or reading it is the opening segment of Epic Movie).
With literary adaptations the movie's function is clear, to extract more money from an existing fanbase.
Noble comics though have at least 3 purposes when it comes to the movie adaptations:

1. To make money.
2. To introduce the comic to new fans through a new medium.
3. To do something new.

And I would put a priority on these in exactly the same order.
Now let me briefly explore the ramifications of these, and hopefully highlight some parralals with the above literary examples.

Money Makin' money money makin!

The Batman franchise demonstrates this principle best, the burton franchise perhaps. And of note is how little was learned from the Burton experience.
The first movie, Burton sat down, flipped through comics, applied his own style, secured Jack Nicholson, Jack Nicholson stole the film, won an oscar and so - a sequel was commissioned.
Tim Burton went through the same creative process, got Micheal Keaton back, expanded on all the brilliance he injected, bigger sets, better special effects, got Dani Devito as Penguin, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman who probably introduced most kids to their first erection, and... the film flopped.
No Joker, no Jack, no money.
So the studio fired Burton, brought in some guy who turned the franchise into a toy selling extravaganza. Batman now wore 10 different suits per film. Henchmen were more gimmicky and more colourful, more celebrities were brought in to play the roles. Scripts and Dialogue took a back seat to Big explosions and gimmicky crap. The Batmobile now needed to be redesigned every movie. Far more colour, far more stupidity.
And it made money, no doubt pissing off many fans of the comic franchise. But they didn't matter, it was all about luring them in to pay for a ticket.
The producers made all the important decisions, and the studio, they weren't fans of batman, they were fans of money. The second director gave advice to Chris Nolan 'to watch out for when you go to more toy launches than film premiers'. The studio went for the easy dollar. Got too busy, and blew it.
Flash forward a dozen years and witness Spiderman 3. Now it is worth noting that Spiderman is probably the second most valuable franchise after Batman. And furtermore the principle of sequels. You see when you watch a TV show each week, you arent subconsciously wanting to watch something new, you are wanting to watch last weeks episode as if for the first time. This fundamental psychology is what makes sequels such a money maker even though they have an appalling track record of ever being superior to the original.
Same goes with movies, what really draws the crowd in is the fact that they enjoyed the first one so much. No big surprise there, but what happens in the mind is that their is a desire to actually experience the last movie they enjoyed so much again, but they can't because they have already seen it. They want to see the exact same movie, but with the old experience of surprise.
So payload really comes from one film when the next film is released. This is especially true now, when studios aim to recoup their costs and turn a profit on opening weekend, something that has seen the death of the romantic film.
So Spiderman 3's record takings are really a testament to the fact that raimi didn't fuck up SPiderman 2. He created something growing and developing and people were hooked.
Enter motivation number 1 for movie adaptations, enter: priority one. Sam Raimi, wanting to continue a good thing was weighing up between having the Lizard as the bad guy, or Sandman. The studio however wanted Venom to make an appearance for a spin off franchise, in a sophisticated move. Also possibly on the toy sales front Ozbounre Jr, had to become Green Goblin again. Add Black Cat and the movie got too ridiculously busy to even follow what was going on. And Sam Raimi was the one that looked like he was going to get fired for it, when much like Poochy in the Simpsons it was really the marketing department that got greedy with product expansion and fucked it up.
Now one can witness the same principle in effect, Nolan with the solid offering of The Dark Knight killed Two Face in the concluding scene of the film.
I read it as not that ambiguous that Harvey Dent was dead and wasn't coming back as the intention of the sequence, yet the producer tells it "Producer Emma Thomas said that Dent's last scene was ambiguous enough to suggest that perhaps he was still alive." in other words, the producers don't wish to squander the two most marketable batman villains in one film, without having even used two face to promote the film.
It's this kind of thinking that makes franchises generally unsustainable. It also crops up often enough to make me not expect great things out of comic book movies, though in general I think the industry has learnt a degree of restraint after killing the first batman franchise, the fact that overcrowding films happened again in Spiderman 3 though means don't hold your breath.

Bringing it to the people:

Whilst I doubt as many people have watched all the Harry Potter films as have read the books, I know for certain more people have seen 'The Dark Knight' than probably ever will read 'The Long Halloween', the same is probably true of 'Batman Year One' by Frank Miller that inspired starting 'Batman Begins' from Batman's beginning.
Same same for all the Marvel franchise movies, Hulk has high brand awareness from the 4 seasons of television shows screened in the 80's than from people reading the comics, Alan Moore reveared within the industry has to endure director after director shitting on his masterpieces with cinematic offerings like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Contrast the Wild West of Comics with the mystical east of comics - Manga and its incestuous sibling anime and you see a very different scenario. If a manga is popular an anime series is practically a given. But you'd expect less people to watch the anime (even slightly) than have read the comic. Because manga is enjoyed by young and old, and widely read.
Amongst my friends in Oz who play basketball, roughly 1/3 has read one of Phil Jackson's books and his are probably the highest profile publications on basketball after 'The Jordan Rules', but almost every Japanese person I know and Chinese for that matter has read Slam Dunk.
Only in the east it seems are people logical enough to conclude that if they enjoy movies adapted from comics, then they will probably enjoy comics also.
Female fans of Peter Parker and Mary Jane (their relationship being the one true advantage Spiderman holds over Batman at the box office by sneaking a chick flick into a comic book film) would for the most part like at least 80% never stoop to read Spiderman comics.
Furthermore only in the west can a film like Sin City make money. Sin City was literally a take for take, frame for frame motion comic. Scenes, makeup and actors were shot to make it as close to the same physical appearance as possible as the original comics. The one legitimate offering of Sin City on my own cynical criteria is that it was a chance to experiment with the new special effects techniques.
But otherwise, I say, go read fucking comics.
I consider reason number 2 to be an illegitimate symptom of cultural prejudice, that slowly I hope is changing (but with the editorial management of DC and Marvel, has little justification to do so) that simply doesn't appreciate the merits of the genre.
This second reason for comic book movies gets up my nose the most, particularly because fans of the comics endorse it. There favorite comics are somehow validated by being made into a film, like that is the aspiration of all people who get into comics in the first place.
It may well be, but that just indicates that the quality of comics are going to drop, just like the glut of literature now written in the hope of being featured on Oprah's book club (although I seem to remember she threw the program in because she didn't have time to do it monthly anymore).
The great irony is that from a technological viewpoint, the cinema is cashing in on comics now because they are starting to catch up with the imagination of comic book artists.
For me, maybe I'm a psycho and have unrealistic psycho expectations, but Heath Ledger's joker just wasn't scary. I hypothesize that it was all actually filmed and cut from the movie for a non-R rating and thus the scariest thing about Joker was the implied violence. I hope this is the case, because when Batman Begins came out I went and bought for $9 both Batman (1989) and Batman Returns and watched them and discovered they actually weren't as great as I remembered, particularly on Micheal Keaton's part, the rubber suit making his job functionally ridiculous.
But along with the Superman franchise, these films did do the one legitimate form of bringing the comics to a new audience - kids.
Not people who are too lazy or too arrogant to deign to read comics, put up with the 95% shite to find the true masterpieces of the genre, but children a new generation to follow the adventures of characters that have been around almost as long as the Hardy Boys.
I was what 6 when Batman came out, and Joker terrified me, with his disfigured mindless girlfriend, his Joker Juice and his buzzer that burnt a man alive. But despite the darkness of batman, to 6 year old me it was explosive, the ridiculousness, and at 6 I wasn't reading batman year one by frank miller or Alan Moore's killing joke. But I was watching Adam West's batman.
So there's upside and downside, to motivation number two, but it isn't as compromising as number 1 - making money.
But on this criteria a movie like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Transformers is good at reintroducing something to a new generation, or the Brady Bunch so targeting children can't be that great and noble a thing to do.
You then have left the 'truthist' school of which tries its upmost to be true to the comic, Nolan and the newest incarnation of Batman could be accused of this but I think he does enough remixes to disqualify himself (not necessarily a bad thing). The real founders of this school are the makers of 'Sin City' and '300' that literally try to remake the comic as true to the drawing style as possible, or even I believe the upcoming adaptation of 'The Watchmen' Alan Moore's masterpiece.
These are the most acceptable to many comic fans, but to me truthist adaptations for one work best on short run self contained comics and are impossible for ongoing franchises, and two are at their best when they offer nothing new at all. That is they are so true to the comic, the only real creative work is the special effects, makeup, and audio/voice.
I didn't go see 300 but I did buy the comic and would never have thought there was enough to it to make a film. I saw Sin City and discovering them to be so true to the comic, I never had any desire to see it again, I just read the comics.
The truthist school as I dub it, opting for the best case scenario of virtually replicating the comic on film so as not to upset any fans, could more easily achieve this concession to the fan base by just not making the film.
I hold this truth to be self evident and stepping forward interpret it to mean, that in light of recent practice reason number 2 - bringing a comic to new audiences is really just reason number 1 in disguise.
In the one justifiable first case it is a device to sell shit to kids or a 'new generation' and in the other justifiable sense it aims to keep fans happy so it grab an extra $16 off them at the box office, whilst stimulating their minds with nothing new at all.
The biggest appreciators of 'Sin City' weren't saying 'isn't it great how every character sounds exactly the same' the were saying 'Wow! its amazing how much this looks like the comic' I mean if you read SIn City it's a real fanboy piece of crap written by a guy that can't get laid and possibly has a crush on some Japanese girl he knows.

Which just leaves the new...

This reason for making a comic book film, rarely sees the light of day. At best it is restricted to special effects. I think the only comic adaptation I can think of that did something close to something new was Tim Burton's Batman.
For the record I doubt I'll ever be inclined to go back and watch them, they just don't work like they used to. But what I do still respect about Tim Burton's films is that they managed to capture so much of what Batman is and has been over generations of editors, writers and owners, over multiple genres that it did become something new.
I mean, the sets were new, but the overall darkness was sort of the grit of Frank Miller, master of the cliche, the Joker was similarly Alan Moore's psycho-admirer of batman incarnation, and yet there were stupid scenes like when Batman selects a specific one of 6 bat suits on his rack. Or when Vicki Vale wakes in the middle of the night to see Bruce Wayne preffering to sleep hanging upside down like a bat. I've never seen another movie that simultaneously took itself really seriously and yet laughed at itself so much.
The reimaging of both the Penguin and Catwoman, and even choosing to do them in the first place put Tim Burton in with Sam Raimi as being a classics man.
But outside of the flop, Batman returns, movie adaptations of comics rarely offer anything new.
Enter the 'realist' school, Nolan and Favreu (director of Iron Man) probably exemplify this approach in recent years.
But first let me digress, I perused an Alan Moore article on 'How To Write Comics' where much to my appeal he mentioned that somebody should consider what a comic offers that other media don't. The example was that in a comic when you surprise someone with a twist, its actually easy for a person reading a comic to flick back and find all the clues you planted earlier in the comic, so the clues can be quite subtle and the reader can enjoy your treachery and subterfuge.
Not so with Movies, even on DVD it isn't easy to backtrack and look for clues, so they either have to be more obvious, or you suddenly witness a flashback scene when the detective realises what is going on or the big surprise is revealed. As such a movie becomes either predictable or contains a shitty flashback sequence.
I have paraphrased him the insight isn't my own.
Now whether you are talking about Harry Potter or comic adaptations, the principle in reverse is true, one advantage movies have as a medium over comics is that you have real people. It is easy to get the physics correct on a cape blowing in the wind, the actor stays in proportion and his nose is the same in every scene.
You get to see the characters 'brought to life' this was more or less the only appeal in Harry Potter movies, and this stopped being worth the money of admission halfway through the first one. Equally enjoyable would have been a concept art book.
Through this simple observation comes the evolution of the realist school. Nolan is great at this because he insists on real special effects, and is Computer Graphic averse. SO he actually goes and builds a working Batmobile, Batbike etc. He also then takes license in trying to portray how Batman would 'really' exist in real life, like his Kevlar-weave body armour, ordering 10,000 masks and 10,000 ear pieces and generally engages in acts of rationalization (that means to start with the solution or finished product and then figure out plausable reasons for why it is the case). This exercise is what brings things that are new. Similarly in his approach to Joker and Ra's AL Ghul. In my book Ra's Al Ghul is the shittest villain in Batman's rogues gallery, introduced as a 'Bond-type' villain in the 70's or 80's who uses lazerus pits to perpetuate his youth, Nolan rightly decided Ras Al Ghul was a pretty stupid character, then he stupidly put him in his first film. But instead he is rationalized or 'realized' as mathematicians refer to -i^2 by reworking the character not as an immortal, but as a terrorist who merely uses diversion and misdirection to perpetuate the myth that he is immortal, I suppose like EZLN leader Marcos wears a balaclava and claims 'we are all Marcos'.
Similarly, the Joker whilst differing from Ras by being actually a good character, has an unlikely combo of disfigurements that Tim Burton admirably tried to make plausable. In short Joker, fell in a vat of acid and not only permanently altered the pigment of his skin to deathly white and his hair colour to green, but his face was left in rigor mortis - conveniently making him look like a clown.
Presumably Nolan did what I did, and when reading the wikipedia article on Joker one day, noticed he was based on a character 'The Man Who Smiled' and followed the link where he discovered that the title character of the movie had something called a 'Glasgow Smile' now known as a 'Chelsea Smile' to most which is where you saw from the corner of a persons mouth into their cheeks.
Here Nolan cried 'Eureka' or something, and 'realized' the Joker into having a glasgow smile, and then some face paint and hair die. In that regard the 'new' Joker is kind of new.
Then look at Iron Man and Favreau - there is a scene where Tony Stark is testing all the 'control plates' on Iron Man's exterior and they are all these little folding flaps that adjust automatically to allow Iron Man to fly. Here Favreau wanted to lend plausibility that a suit could actually fly and be aerodynamic somehow, and he insisted that the mechanics be at least conceptually possible [citation needed]. In reality, Tony Stark would be incredibly selfish for keeping his tiny power generator all to himself when it could probably do more good for the entire world than Iron Man ever could achieve on his own, for one thing it would break the dependance on middle eastern oil.
But the realist school does something new, by trying to be realistic in portraying the 'how' of the comic world. Something that ironically makes fantasy more enjoyable. Because it is better if it seems possible to become Iron Man even on flimsy scientific concepts than it does to say be told you can't be superman unless you are an alien from outerspace, or be Jesus unless you are the son of Go, or be Legolas because you aren't an elf with pointy ears.
Batman and Iron Man though, all you have to do is be incredibly wealthy and resourced with state of the art technology, that you then self indulgently use as a vigilante rather than equipping a police force and respecting the rule of law.
But...
But, again even reason number 3 whilst probably the only reason I would consider validates artistically making a film, isn't really done well. I mean rationalization only works when you are already utilising reason number 2, and you thus get to retell the origin stories of heroes and villains and make changes. But whilst it makes the characters potentially more plausible, it doesn't really do anything new.
New stuff is done in the comics, through a vast hit and miss exercise.
For example, Tony Starks explosive admission to the press conference that 'he is Iron Man' seems to break with tradition of the superhero alter ego. Except this was pioneered by Iron Man in the Iron Man comics. Iron Man infact has battled with alcoholism, been secretary of defence in the Bush Administration, and lead a super hero civil war on the side of the government licensing superheroes.
All bold moves done in comics.
I heard Frank Miller's script for what was to be 'Batman Begins' had recast Bruce Wayne not as the son of a doctor who was a billionaire, but as a homeless man that paired up with Alfred his mechanic. Naturally it never saw the light of day, and to me sounds like a shitty idea...but at least it was new. It wasn't something there was a better example of in a comic already.
In general, the tendancy is to be faithful to some previous incarnation or another, or otherwise go back to the origins and rationalize them by todays technological standards.
But not say portraying a character radically differently, like an emotional batman who puts ona tough guy facade to hide his own arrested development. Or a suicidal Tony Stark, willing to don the Iron Man armour as he attempts to hasten his own end to a largely meaningless and unchallenging life.
There was one startling and dazzling exception to all I have said, and that is Superman's son in Superman returns. That was completely new, and the film was regarded as disappointing by both fans and producers.
Furthermore the dynamic itself wasn't fully explored as the audience was much more aware of the revelation than Superman was for most of the film. But as far as I am aware, nobody has yet dealt with the possibility of Louis and Superman having a child, a hybrid kryptonian even though there has been a ready supply of superboys, supergirls and even Krypto superman's dog. And it was done in a film, so I applaud him.
The next closest contender for doing something new was Ang Lee's the hulk that used the Hulk franchise as a metaphor for the repressed anger between father son relationships and the emotional baggage caused by vicarious living. This too was considered a flop, and probably was too clever by half. Introducing emotion and relationships to a cowboy film though, got Ang Lee a reward.
The irony is that comic book adaptations are expected to make more money than the oscar winners for Best Picture.
So really whilst I think if you are going to make a movie, to take the money of an existing fan base, do something new. They may like it, they may hate it, but at least it wasn't something they could find a better example of, drawn more creatively than the films special effects techniques and usually longer and thus cleverer and more intricate in their duration (prime example is The Dark Knights basis in the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale batman comic run of 'The Long Halloween' where the Joker as a plot device was actually minor and most of his role in the events of the movie were actually caused by a character known as 'holiday').
Otherwise at best you do a decent abbreviation of something they have already seen, Nolan is actually good enough to change them up a bit, so the realization component dilutes the truthist aspect of using Year One and The Long Halloween as the overall plot basis.
But the precedents show that this 'doing something new' is financial suicide jeopardizing reason/priority number 1 - make money. Furthermore reason/priority number 2 - introduce to new audience, makes recycling something that has already been done, quite okay and creating something new for a new audience illogical. Becuase then you would be creating new fans that may not like what already exists. So reason/priority number 3 will never happen and if it does be quickly ended.

Lastly...

I just want to touch on the license, or mandate a director recieves, that follows on from number 3. Favreu decided not to use Iron Man's arch nemisis 'The Mandarin' in the first Iron Man film and apparantly is struggling to figure out a way to incorporate him in upcoming sequels.
This is/was a pretty sound decision, because I'm not sure if you can quite say obectively, but as close as you can get to being objective: Mandarin is a shitty bad guy, A) he is a metaphore for Communist China, as Iron Man was invented in the height of the cold war to battle communist enemies, and B) Where Iron Man wears a super sophisticated high tech armour equipped with weapons technology, the Mandarin has ten magical rings that give him all his power. It is hard to create a world where both are plausible, magic vs technology only George Lucas can pull that off.
But then you have the latest director of The Hulk, called The Incredible Hulk as a reboot to Ang Lee's flop. Here the director decided the the name of one of the Hulk's arch nemeses 'The Abomination' was stupid, and didn't want it used. Thus the character is only referred to as blonsky, all though the name 'The Abomination' did get an allusion 'You could become an abomination' this sort of license though I don't like because it smacks to me of a director putting their own personal preference above the fans.
Iron Man I don't have a problem with, and to be honest I'm not really a fan of either franchise, but there is a rational provided as to why the decision was made not to use Mandarin but the Blonsky vs Abomination the reason provided was 'the director thought that it was silly/stupid' and that just isn't good enough. It might have floated if he had just said 'look the dialogue would become labored and cliched to give him the name because he actually manifests so late in the film. Thus there really is no reason for anybody to refer to him at all nor for his title to become common usage as he is dead before any characters interract' that's fine, but the treatment is flippant.
Fans should not be scared of a director, the director should be scared of the fans.
Of course, most western comics are now so long running, so convuluted that to be true to them all is as fruitless as attempting to be 'American' its much easier to say what isn't true to the comics than it is to say what is.

I'm quite proud of that little tirade. If I was someone famous it could become a rant as influential as Micheal Moorcock's Epic Pooh