Little Panel, Big Screen

During my interwebs surfing , I've come across two little chunks of comic-to-movie adaptation newslets that seem to beg some kind of comment: I don't have to remind my 4 readers how I feel about the whole comic-book to movie thing (Why...are...you....doing this?!), but I feel like the announcements are large enough to at least recognize.

The first is Zac Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's The Watchmen, something that I (and many others) would argue is the comic book that matured comic books: even Maus, since it's basically a biography, doesn't carry the heavy narrative weight that Moore's and Gibbons opus does. The Watchmen is basically the first movie released as a comic book first, which is why I actually have high hopes for it: unlike other comic books that are too fantastical or too intimate to make a good movie, The Watchmen reads like a movie from the beginning: the pacing, the framing, even the action, all seems made from production stills. I loathed Snyder's 300, but here's a (admittedly old) transcript of his talk that seems to show he at least has a lot of respect for the material. Below is also a rad graphic showing the casting options for the last two times The Watchmen was considering for Hollywood, as well as the most recent iteration. I personally think the casting of Ron Perlman as The Comedian would be brilliant (second only to Mel Gibson), but that's just me.



The second little piece of "Holy-shit-it's-really-happening" news released this week is that Spielberg has seemingly found his Tintin.

(sounds of shotgun being removed from gun rack)

The movies are slated to be all original scripts...

(sounds of shotgun cartridges being loaded into shotgun)

...with a lot of money attached to them; Spielberg is slated to direct the first, Peter Jackson the second, and as-yet-to-be-determined hot young director to helm the third...

(click-CLACK!)

and they will all be motion-captured CGI films. Hooray!

(BLAM!)

Your Monster Is Leaking

The above is the debatable leaked concept art of the main antagonist monster in the new film Cloverfield, to be released in about 2 weeks. Filmed in the faux-verite style so popular with the kids in recent years, there's been internet chatter back and forth about whether this is just fan art, a ruse created to throw off the fanboys, or the actual good stuff, but regardless, I like the illo a lot. Look out! Walking whale!

Now, all we have to wait for is to see whether is actually going to be a cool movie that will live up to the hype, or yet another in a series of disappointing movies that could never replicate the excitement generated by their art direction and pricey ad campaigns. It may be that my advanced age of almost 30 has made a cynic out of me, but I ain't holding my breath.

*UPDATE!* Turns out it's not real, just some guy's stab at it. I still like the drawing, though.

Worst. Movie. Ever.

Back sometime in 1987 or 1988, a tattered manila folder with KFC stains on it made it's way from DC out to glamourous Burbank, CA, onto the desk of some producer at Warner Brothers. On it was scrawled in child-like script 'Batman: The Movie". A worse thing has never happened to the film or comic world since. Well. Maybe this or this. But that's it.

As someone who is himself in the midst of collaborating on a pitch book based around a comic, I recognize immediately my position is untenable, but a man's gotta eat, and the reality is that comic book movies are big bucks these days. And I mean big bucks. And if you lump fantasy and sci-fi movies in there, you've just about got the big money market cornered.

The rise of the comic movie dovetailed nicely with the rise of CGI: if you ever seen the old Spider-man TV show and it's subsequent effects, you see why previously super hero media felt a little limp. There's only so many times you can run the film backwards before the kids catch on. Suddenly, fireballs and monsters looked really really cool. And everyone knows cool = moola.

The problem is that comics and movies operate in two completely different visual languages.

I won't bore you with some real pencil neck talk, but to be brief: no matter how fresh the effects are, comics always worked on the imagination in ways that made the reader complicit in the action of the comic book. Comics books are an active medium. Movies are passive: you just sit there and receive the cues. So whenever I see a movie translated from a comic book of fantasy novel, no matter how great it looks, a little piece of me dies because it's like watching everyone's imaginations stuffed into the same little box. Anyone that thought juggernaut's charges looked like anything but this, tough luck. That's the way it is now.

Without further ado, this amazing list of the Pulp Secret's Top Ten Worst Comic Book Movies. They're all incredibly crappy, and there's few I have to rush out and rent. It takes a lot to make an even crappier looking Fantastic Four movie. Prost!