Based Upon the remake of the Novel by…
Hollywood is and always will be a goldmine of ideas, everyday, thousands of new concepts are hatched and yet only a select few are sustained. You see, although being that goldmine of ideas, Hollywood, or at least most of the major studios are not risk takers. They see a formula that works and they stick to it. It’s a safe business practice and Hollywood is as much a business as Microsoft. That being said, I for one could not blame the entertainment industry for playing it safe.
Hollywood currently has three safety nets, the sequel, the adaptation and the reboot.
It is the latter two which we are going to talk about today. During the last few years we saw the likes of Casino Royale, Spider-Man and Twilight. This 2009 we are seeing Watchmen, Friday the 13th and Where the Wild Things Are, to name a few. And as reports are coming in from around the internet, these adaptations will be continually coming our way in the foreseeable future.
So what is it about these adaptations and reboots that get people so stirred up? Does the existence of these films soil the image of their original incarnations?
Among these two fail-safes, the reboot has somewhat been free from the wrath of fanboys (barring some pockets of resistance here and there). But still, generally unscathed. Let’s take a look at two big reboots over the last four years, Batman Begins and Casino Royale. These two movies have suffered from franchises that have merely become the afterglow of their former glories. The Batman and James Bond films have degenerated into two hours that were nothing more than fan service, complete with clichés, gratuitous gadgets and cookie-cutter villains. Even the most ardent of fans have given in and said “we need something new”. In fact studios have still been pushing crazy concepts and one-shot ideas until someone smacked them on their heads and said let’s start from scratch. This smack signaled the calling of Chris Nolan and Martin Campbell, these two directors reinvigorated their respective franchises and opened them up to legions of new fans. Batman has never been darker and scarier and James Bond has never been more dangerous and sexier. And the old fans gobbled them up like brains in zombie holocaust. So much so that the highly anticipated sequels to Batman Begins and Casino Royale were even in the top 10 highest grossing films of 2008. A feat which the last two films of those franchises before the reboot weren’t able to achieve.
The Dark Knight if Warner didn’t reboot Batman in 1989
So reboots, when done at the right time or at least with the right idea can save a film. That is a belief that I strongly uphold. Go ahead, re imagine those films, make them relevant to MODERN society. Without the continuous development of ideas we still would have painfully slow internet access or black and white TV’s. Innovation is a key component of survival, true that I may be over-exaggerating when I compare cinema to survival, but I’m sure you get the point.
And now I present to you the other hot topic, adaptations. In March of this year a movie called Watchmen hit the theaters. The critics saw it as an ok movie, but the fans, oh my god did the fans shit on this movie. Perhaps no other movie this year polarized the casual movie goer and the fans so much. I myself thought the movie to be ok, it was boring at times but I felt that it sent the message loud and clear. The fans however felt that this movie was a travesty, a bastard child of a sleazy Hollywood mogul and the original piece where it came from. But that is where the problem lies. Those fanboys often fall into the trap of comparing the movie to the source material.
They should always remember that the movie is a SEPARATE entity from the original. The people who have been reading this book were very vocal about their disdain for the movie and I can’t get mad at them, after all it is their opinion. But what these people forget all too many times is the fact that the original is still there. It is still untainted by the lovechild. It’s not at all like that since the movie came out the source material magically disappeared off the face of the earth. If you don’t like the movie then fine, get your comic book, sit down and read it. Adaptations are well and good if they are complemented by equally distinguished writing and direction. Two good examples of that are Fight Club and Iron Man. These movies are based upon something else but what this had as compared to Watchmen was a director who knew what he was doing and a writer passionate enough about the source material. That is another problem with the adaptation and certainly it became the problem of Batman and Robin the last film in the series before Batman Begins. These adaptations have a huge fan-base and the studio execs know that well enough to exploit the names of these titles for profit (I’m looking at you Fox). What we have here is the fear of fanboys that their beloved properties will be raped by the higher ups from Hollywood, see: Dragon Ball Evolution. That movie had very little semblance to the source material and wash nothing but a cash cow for FOX. Now I sympathize with the fans, surely enough if someone makes a shit-turd of a movie from Ed Brubaker’s Criminal I would not like it maybe I would abhor it, but I would definitely cry about it. Because I know for damn sure that I will always have the original in my mind and the movie will just drift away in my memories.
Not Pictured: Akira Toriyama’s dignity
Please think about the possibilities when something is adapted to film. Fight Club was a little known book when it was released but when the movie came out the book gained popularity. And surely enough Chuck Palahniuk got another deal from a studio. And what was even amazing was that it had a very different ending from the book, it created a new identity, separate from the book it was based upon. But did people care that much? No. Why? Simply put, the movie was amazing. So it could happen right? Something could be taken and made better, it could be improved and in some cases surpass the original. All that is needed is patience and an open mind. The next Watchmen disaster is probably on the way right now, but we got to realize that there will always be another Fight Club waiting in the wings.
