So I'm home for the summer, and as a way of starting off my six-week break before heading back to school, I call up my three closest friends, and we all head out for some pizza. Things are going fine, until I bring up the subject of Batman Begins. One of my friends enjoyed it (as did I), but my other two friends, who are adamant comic book geeks, immediately start spewing vitriol about how much the movie sucked.
I'm all for difference of opinions, but their complaints hinged on how much of the movie "didn't happen in the comics." The first hour, which even Devin said was great, got torn to shreds by these guys because "Bruce wasn't taught by Ra's Al Ghul." According to them, the movie should've shown Bruce learning while he was growing up, maybe traveling to Japan to learn ninjitsu. Nevermind the film's point or reason for where Bruce is taught, it "didn't happen in the comics", and thus its inclusion in the movie is stupid. Him taking prototypes from Wayne Enterprises' R&D and using them to assemble the Bat Suit was "idiotic", because according to them, Wayne built all of his own stuff (my bringing up The Mechanic was ignored). Then we got on the subject of the Batmobile, which they hated, because it wasn't sleek or sporty.
"Bruce made the Batmobile like a sports car, because of his playboy nature," they argue. I point out that in Batman: Year One, which is what the movie follows closest, the first Batmobile is a friggin tank, even bigger than the one in the movie. Besides, I say, which is going to scare criminals more--a dorky looking hot rod with fins or this massive tank barreling down on you. That's beside the point, they refute. In the comics, the Batmobile doesn't look like that, and therefore it's stupid.
At this point I bring up Burton's Batman, which one of them hails as the best Batman so far--even though, I point out, the film has The Joker killing Bruce's parents, and can hardly even be called Batman, since the movie's pretty much all about The Joker. That doesn't matter, because it "looked like the comic", and Keaton had a better Batman voice.
"But nothing in that movie's plot happened in the comics," I say. They say that it has, but I get the feeling that they're simply saying that to prove me wrong, and since they're the big comic book readers, I can't really argue it.
"A comic book movie should follow a comic almost exactly," they argue. If it doesn't then the movie becomes terrible, no matter how well or reasoned the film's decision was.
Their arguing extended to other films. X-Men (including X2) got a lot of the flack, because "the leather uniforms were stupid" and "they fucked up Wolverine's backstory." When I call one of my friends out on the fact that he applauded at the end of X2 and couldn't stop going "WOW," he backpedaled and said that the more he thought about it, the worse the movie is, because "it's set up the Phoenix story without the Shi'Ar, which is how it happened in the comics." And because, by and large, none of either X1 or X2's plot really happened in the comics, they're both horrible adaptations.
I try explaining to them the difficulty of adapting a comic book, and how things have to be changed and condensed in order for something that has forty years or more of stories and character development into a two hour film. Sometimes changes work, sometimes they don't, but don't dismiss all changes outright. I bring up Spidey's organic webshooters, and how they were able to work it into his personal conflict in Spider-Man 2, but it gets the biggest groan from them. I said that for a movie, it'd be pretty silly to have a 17-year-old kid make a sticky substance that he could swing from in his basement that 3M can't in their labs. "But part of Peter's mutation was that he was driven, instinctively, to make and spin webs, which is why he was able to make something that 3M can't," says one. I counter that by saying that it made more sense if his body produced it, since that's how spiders make their webbing, but he returns to his mantra: "That's not how it happened in the comics." They don't like the "genetically altered" spider, bullshitting about how only a radioactive spider would cause the change (???), but even when I point out an interview with Stan Lee where he said the spider was "radioactive" because it sounded cool and topical in the 60s, and how if he were creating the character today he'd probably use "genetically altered", they just stick with their "It's not how it happened in the comics."
One of them brings up Sin City, which was a shot-for-shot adaption, and says that ti worked perfectly. The Crow, he says, while not a shot-for-shot adaptation, followed the graphic novel's plot almost exactly (I have my doubts about that, but I'll admit I've only glanced through the original graphic novel.) I tell them how it's great the it worked for Sin City and The Crow, but those were graphic novels and are a lot easier to follow faithfully. Doesn't matter, they say. Comic books are comic books, and the same faithfulness should be upheld across the board.
Now, a lot of this boils down to them failing to grasp the term "adaptation", or really take into serious account the rather flimsy (and in some cases, like X-Men, downright nonexistent) continuity that comics have, but my failure to get through to them made me wonder if anyone else has gotten into these kinds of discussions. Now, my friends aren't stupid. They're intelligent people, and whenever we're not discussing comic book movies we see eye-to-eye on pretty much every topic, which is why I'm dumbfounded at their stubborn mindset about comic book movies.
What does it matter if Hugh Jackman is six foot one, if Spidey shoots webbing out of his wrists rather than a device he invented, or if Paul Newman's character is named Rooney instead of Looney? If it makes for a better and more believable film, then I don't see the problem, as long as the spirit of the character is remembered. Changes can hurt a story, sure, like making Matt Murdock a failed lawyer or changing Dr. Doom's motivation for hating Reed about a petty love triangle, but it comes down to seeing what works and what doesn't. Judge the changes on how they service the story that's being told, not how closely it follows the events laid down in a comic book that changes its own history like Nicolas Cage changes girlfriends.
Anyone else have these kind of discussions? What're your views on this?
I'm all for difference of opinions, but their complaints hinged on how much of the movie "didn't happen in the comics." The first hour, which even Devin said was great, got torn to shreds by these guys because "Bruce wasn't taught by Ra's Al Ghul." According to them, the movie should've shown Bruce learning while he was growing up, maybe traveling to Japan to learn ninjitsu. Nevermind the film's point or reason for where Bruce is taught, it "didn't happen in the comics", and thus its inclusion in the movie is stupid. Him taking prototypes from Wayne Enterprises' R&D and using them to assemble the Bat Suit was "idiotic", because according to them, Wayne built all of his own stuff (my bringing up The Mechanic was ignored). Then we got on the subject of the Batmobile, which they hated, because it wasn't sleek or sporty.
"Bruce made the Batmobile like a sports car, because of his playboy nature," they argue. I point out that in Batman: Year One, which is what the movie follows closest, the first Batmobile is a friggin tank, even bigger than the one in the movie. Besides, I say, which is going to scare criminals more--a dorky looking hot rod with fins or this massive tank barreling down on you. That's beside the point, they refute. In the comics, the Batmobile doesn't look like that, and therefore it's stupid.
At this point I bring up Burton's Batman, which one of them hails as the best Batman so far--even though, I point out, the film has The Joker killing Bruce's parents, and can hardly even be called Batman, since the movie's pretty much all about The Joker. That doesn't matter, because it "looked like the comic", and Keaton had a better Batman voice.
"But nothing in that movie's plot happened in the comics," I say. They say that it has, but I get the feeling that they're simply saying that to prove me wrong, and since they're the big comic book readers, I can't really argue it.
"A comic book movie should follow a comic almost exactly," they argue. If it doesn't then the movie becomes terrible, no matter how well or reasoned the film's decision was.
Their arguing extended to other films. X-Men (including X2) got a lot of the flack, because "the leather uniforms were stupid" and "they fucked up Wolverine's backstory." When I call one of my friends out on the fact that he applauded at the end of X2 and couldn't stop going "WOW," he backpedaled and said that the more he thought about it, the worse the movie is, because "it's set up the Phoenix story without the Shi'Ar, which is how it happened in the comics." And because, by and large, none of either X1 or X2's plot really happened in the comics, they're both horrible adaptations.
I try explaining to them the difficulty of adapting a comic book, and how things have to be changed and condensed in order for something that has forty years or more of stories and character development into a two hour film. Sometimes changes work, sometimes they don't, but don't dismiss all changes outright. I bring up Spidey's organic webshooters, and how they were able to work it into his personal conflict in Spider-Man 2, but it gets the biggest groan from them. I said that for a movie, it'd be pretty silly to have a 17-year-old kid make a sticky substance that he could swing from in his basement that 3M can't in their labs. "But part of Peter's mutation was that he was driven, instinctively, to make and spin webs, which is why he was able to make something that 3M can't," says one. I counter that by saying that it made more sense if his body produced it, since that's how spiders make their webbing, but he returns to his mantra: "That's not how it happened in the comics." They don't like the "genetically altered" spider, bullshitting about how only a radioactive spider would cause the change (???), but even when I point out an interview with Stan Lee where he said the spider was "radioactive" because it sounded cool and topical in the 60s, and how if he were creating the character today he'd probably use "genetically altered", they just stick with their "It's not how it happened in the comics."
One of them brings up Sin City, which was a shot-for-shot adaption, and says that ti worked perfectly. The Crow, he says, while not a shot-for-shot adaptation, followed the graphic novel's plot almost exactly (I have my doubts about that, but I'll admit I've only glanced through the original graphic novel.) I tell them how it's great the it worked for Sin City and The Crow, but those were graphic novels and are a lot easier to follow faithfully. Doesn't matter, they say. Comic books are comic books, and the same faithfulness should be upheld across the board.
Now, a lot of this boils down to them failing to grasp the term "adaptation", or really take into serious account the rather flimsy (and in some cases, like X-Men, downright nonexistent) continuity that comics have, but my failure to get through to them made me wonder if anyone else has gotten into these kinds of discussions. Now, my friends aren't stupid. They're intelligent people, and whenever we're not discussing comic book movies we see eye-to-eye on pretty much every topic, which is why I'm dumbfounded at their stubborn mindset about comic book movies.
What does it matter if Hugh Jackman is six foot one, if Spidey shoots webbing out of his wrists rather than a device he invented, or if Paul Newman's character is named Rooney instead of Looney? If it makes for a better and more believable film, then I don't see the problem, as long as the spirit of the character is remembered. Changes can hurt a story, sure, like making Matt Murdock a failed lawyer or changing Dr. Doom's motivation for hating Reed about a petty love triangle, but it comes down to seeing what works and what doesn't. Judge the changes on how they service the story that's being told, not how closely it follows the events laid down in a comic book that changes its own history like Nicolas Cage changes girlfriends.
Anyone else have these kind of discussions? What're your views on this?
