Comics to Big Screen

[mclaw666]

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Funny his name should be Bubba.
I'm getting annoyed at many of the comics coming to the "big screen." There are too many purists and not enough radicals, and the production companies cater to the purists while recruiting new fans by recreating the hero's back-story. Anytime a[n older]

Comments

[boffo]

X-Men started in the middle of the series, although it had somewhat of an introduction with Wolverine and Rogue encountering the X-Men for the first time and joining up. Blade also started in the middle, but had some flashbacks to explain the origin.

The Tim Burton Batman wasn't an origin story, although it did start pretty early in the story.

[mclaw666]

I did enjoy X-Men. Blade is one of my favorite movies, but I don't consider it as much a comic as I do a movie. Blade as a comic is kind of sketchy, seemingly moving from one Marvel comic to another, finally finding its home in a comic named "Blade."

Tim Burton's Batman was good (mostly for Vicki Vale), but it still felt the need to put the killing of his parents in the movie.

Worth mentioning: Iron Man is also coming out. It's almost like Marvel just discovered this new thing called "movies." I miss the old days, when we had original stories, like The Last Mimzy.

[boffo]

About 7 or 8 years ago, Marvel was on the verge of bankruptcy because few people were buying comics. Then suddenly someone (I believe it was Avi Arad, but I'm not 100% sure of that) hit upon the idea of, "Hey, we own a bunch of the most popular characters in American mythology." So they focused less on publishing comics and more on licensing their characters, and made a ton of money. Then they decided that there's enough money in movies that they should start making them themselves instead of just licensing the characters.

I'm not sure what you mean by The Last Mimzy being an original story. It's base on a 1943 short story.

[mclaw666]

My point exactly. (thought process: I was originally going to say "E.T.", then "A.I.", then I thought "The Time Machine", and thus... sorry. bad attempt at humor. Foul! Ambiguous reference! 10-louf! Service!)

In any case, Hollywood is so saturated with crap because people are remaking films, making comic books into movies, and having to re-tell older stories. It's hard to sort out all the good from the bad in all the crap. It's even hard to sort out the original crap from the new crap that's retelling of the original crap that didn't do well in the first place. I know I don't make much sense, but the point is, uh,... oh yeah.. crap.

[jorend]

Loved the first X-Men movie.

At one point, I thought Marvel was making too many movies, too quickly. But assuming they would've sucked anyway, I guess it doesn't really matter when they suck.

There is a problem with comic books: they start out simple, and then they get complicated. Eventually they get ridiculous. They tend to accumulate unlikely crap. (Like the jet in X-Men.) To make a coherent movie out of that is really hard if you don't start at the beginning. Too much unlikely stuff in one movie makes the movie suck; the easiest way to avoid it is to start from issue #1.

LXG made no sense to me as it is, but I think if it had started from issue #100 it would have been even more baffling.

There are other reasons, too. The transition from ordinary person to superhero is automatically interesting and helps keep the protagonist off balance and the plot rolling. (shrug)

The only reason not to start at the beginning is, if you end up with a franchise, everyone will want to go see "episode one". How can you pass that up?

[mclaw666]

Rant on. LXG shouldn't have been made. I understand starting at the beginning for some movies, but I think for mainstream characters like Spider-man and Aquaman, you'll be playing catch-up later on, saturating the screen with villains, if you do end up with a franchise. Imagine someone like Spongebob as a super-hero. Would you really want to see how he became Spongebob? Bad example, I know, but he's mainstream, and a story from this point on would be more interesting than his beginnings.

For a comic like Hack/Slash, you do need a bit of the background to understand why Cassie does what she does. I do get your point about the franchise, starting in the middle, then going back. Example: Hannibal Rising; ick. I have the strange (read: bad) feeling when Johnny Depp hangs up his pirate hat, Disney will pursue the beginnings of Jack Sparrow.