B-Weekly Bugle – Issue 4 – My Problem With Superhero Movies

I get pigeonholed a lot into this kinda… ”you read comics, bet you loved that Ghost Rider film, eh?”

“Proper true to the character that was!”, idea, but in reality, I only love a few comic book movies – the ones that are good films, regardless of their Comic Book origins: Nolan’s Batmans’, Singer’s X-men & Superman, A History Of Violence, Iron Man, Road To Perdition to name a few, but there are far, far too many that were made based solely on the cash-in factor, which is upsetting to people who like comics and movies alike. I like GOOD movies and I like GOOD comics, but I’m aware there’s plenty of shit out there, because, quite honestly, there’s far, far too many bad comics out there, giving foundations for bad adaptations.

But I can’t quite fathom how there are bad comic book movies, simply because if there’s a forty/fifty/sixty year history, there are many, many moments, stories, ideas, notions, panels, lines, arcs, retcons, relationships, origins, enemies, crossovers, deaths, rebirths & reboots in all comics, that there MUST be source material for films to be made to the highest entertainment standards.

And there are films that are that good. And for that reason, I’d like to know why there are so many comic book films made at such an unacceptable level. For instance: Batman.

Despite there being six Batman films, I only recognize Batman Begins and The Dark Knight as being ‘Batman films’, alright, when I was 6 and my mother let me watch the Burton Batman, I was a fan, but up until I started reading comics and watching films, I realized it was a pretty terrible film and a pretty pathetic representation of the character.

I was happy when Nolan’s Batman came out, it was like, finally, after almost forty years of trying to get Batman into a real-action film medium, it finally made sense. It was thrilling, action packed, well written, exciting, thought provoking and smart: Which is what comics are.

They’re the art form that’s ignored or laughed at, or even, in some cases, denied existence; (Many a time I’ve been sat on a train, or in work, or on a bench and people have looked at me like I’m reading terrorist weekly or something; or have been met with “Comics? like Beano and stuff?; and you’d be surprised with how many people ‘used to read comics’ years ago, when it comes to a conversational basis, but then only spout knowledge from cartoons. Yea. Different medium, different continuity, different stories. Doesn’t count, move over).

Anyway, they’re the most adult medium. They allow creators freedom to do anything, and try anything, for a budget that’ll cost the price of a decent pencil most of the time.

Narrative structures can be bent and distorted, points of view manipulated and information can be gathered and distributed in ways that allow the reader to take so much more from the material, which is exactly why Watchmen is the piece of literary genius that it is. I was happy and sad when I heard they were making it; I never fully appreciated the comic (Yes, it was 12 single issue comics, before it was collected into the graphic novel format), but billing it as the comic book movie for adults then not keeping promise was its first downfall.

My biggest problem with Watchmen was that after being billed as an adult film , I thought it would have been treated as one. Any by ‘adult’ I mean something that would have made you think, not something that’s just uber-violent and deemed 18 BBFC-wise, which is what it was – for its violence, not it’s thematic content.

Snyder’s 300 worked because that’s a 5 issue series, in landscape A4 where panels take up the entire page, with smaller broken panels within these, signifying smaller movements and push a kind of kinetic narrative, that requires a Hollywood Blockbuster, featuring slo-mo abs coming out the screen, and blood and high end special effects and battle scenes… that’s what story it is, it’s Miller, and it’s flashy!

Watchmen, however, is about 400 pages, with, about 380 of these pages containing 3 panels by 3 panels, more dialogue than a Tarantino movie; where the story is told; where the audience can take pieces of the story and allow it to unfold with their own brain, their own initiative, in its chaptered parts. The film, however, was a mess, it was bad storytelling wrapped up in 300′s splash pages, there was no semblance for it’s narrative, it was clunky and big and didn’t take a moment to breath at all. All the reasons the characters in Watchmen were different weren’t included in the film, for whatever reasons, but they were just regular characters then. I never liked any of them in the film. Not even Ozymandias – and not because I was supposed to not like him…because he was god awful. (Except when he caught that bullet… that was damn cool).

Watchmen tried to honor the story – which it should have done – but by honoring it this much, it lost all means to make a compelling watch. The most painful part being the changed ending. Zack Snyder, as much respect I have for him, will never ever be regarded in the same circles as Alan Moore. He will never produce a piece of art as important and groundbreaking as Watchmen. Ever. (Flash) FACT. So why did he think that it would be clever to change the ending?

Did he not think that Alan Moore hadn’t planned this story for years and thought of every conceivable ending?

Because I can assure you, as a modest Moore fan, he had. Anyone who’s seen any slightly tiny interview with Moore would realize this.

So I have an issue with that particular film. But I suppose it’s easier to mess up something that already has two AMAZING films before it, proving a filmic version of the character can be as entertaining as the comic form (even if the third one was utter shit…)

Wolverine, though, was worse than Watchmen.

Wolverine is one of the most popular characters in the Marvel stable; he can feature in over 10 books a month, he’s that popular. So this film, and its writers – who, depending on where you read, include James Vanderbilt and David Ayer – had the freedom to pick and choose from literally hundreds of stories.

Wolverine sucked more than Watchmen. LOOOOOOOADS! So yea. What was wrong with Wolverine, I hear you say?

Well, I won’t go on forever, I realise that I’m writing a column and I do want you to finish it and I haven’t even gotten to my original reason that I wanted to write this column in the first place, soooo: It cost $185 million, which was the same budget as box office rival Star Trek, but it’s quality was so inferior, it actually gave me a headache. The actual film stock it was made on was changed, film grain changed from cut-to-cut, from scene-to-scene, making it’s continuity terrible, as well as the fact that filmic geography and clothing and other editing factors made continuity worse – at one point, Jackman went through one room, into a different room, which was lit completely different, it seemed like a different time of day, the grain was all over the place… it was shocking. Gambit was elbowed in the face, and then ran over rooftops?

I’m not sure, but I may have done the CGI for that, it was that bad. I remember seeing it online once, (not that I agree with online viewing), but I thought ‘this is the stolen version’, but no, it wasn’t. Surely no company will admit making a film where one claw will not move when the other 5 do?

And they clearly hadn’t done any research on the character or any regards for the continuity of the other X-men films, for instance, Wolvie crushes a chopper in this… he rides a bike in the others. He gets shot in the BRAIN, whereas in the first, there are no signs of holes on the X-Rays that Jean takes. I walked out after the fire escape smashing, so I never saw Deadpool, which is probably for the best.

But anyway: What made me write this column is the fact that:

Spider-Man is being rebooted. Hallegoddamnlujah!

But. I’ve gone on for a while now… I hardly want to read anymore, and I’m writing the damn thing. So I’ll split it, and you can have the second part in a few days or so…