(The Amazing) Spider-Man

Today I thought I’d talk about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider- Man.

Both are loose adaptations of Stan Lee’s original origin for the character, with elements of Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man influencing the latter.

Raimi’s film has all the quirks, interesting camera angles, and appropriate use of computer graphics, but Tobey Maguire falls short as Spidey for me, mostly because he’s such a boring guy. Spider-Man without jokes doesn’t feel like Spider-Man, and Raimi taking the character into the tortured hero realm defeated the purpose a little bit.

Marc Webb on the other hand casts Andrew Garfield in this role, and I’m not going to lie, he mops the floor with Tobes. I have to assume Garfield was probably cast after his performance in The Social Network, where he played an intellectual character. Webb said that he wanted Spider-Man to feel like an outsider, and modern, and praised Garfield’s role in helping redefine “the idea of what a nerd is.”

The character feels like someone you could know, but at the same time, he flies right off the page. The jokes are funny, the dynamic is there, from a fan standpoint, Webb’s movie is superior.

Where Webb fails is in his cinematography and overuse of computer generated graphics. Rather than cloak The Lizard in darkness to hide the fact that he looks basically like shit, Webb lets the audience take in just how awful the character looks in brightly lit close-ups.

Yikes.

The acting and the writing for the villain could have been better on Webb’s part too, but he’s more focused on our hero anyway.

Raimi, on the other hand, has always been better at writing villains, and even his best horror movies are pretty much known for his ability to make something appear scary or villainous.

Both stories are ripped right out of the comics, with Raimi adapting The Night Gwen Stacy Died and Webb adapting Lizard’s plan to make an army of super reptiles (yeah, it’s pretty stupid) from Amazing Spider-Man #6, and #45-46.

When I look at it like that I want to give the nod to Webb right there, for taking such a shitty story and doing so much with it. Raimi, on the other hand, adapts the two most iconic stories in the character’s history and manages to make what I consider to be a passable, but lackluster film.

Ultimately, I give the nod to Webb, because he does the best job at defining the character and making him likable, and considering the fact that the movie and the franchise pretty much depend on that. Raimi still feel likes the better director, but not the better fit for Spider-Man.

 

The Walking Dead Season 1

Today I will talk about the first season of AMC’s The Walking Dead, adapted from Robert Kirkman’s comic of the same name.

Walking Dead is one of those shows, like Dexter, that started strong, but quickly fell back on its own gimmick. In future seasons the pacing was ruined and as much action as possible is packed into each episode, which really softens the blows when they do come. This is possibly due to AMC’s attempt to appease its core audience, but also likely due to the shakeup in showrunners, as Frank Darabont was fired in 2011, a month into shooting for the second season.

The first season is adapted from the first six issues of Walking Dead, and the first episode, Days Gone Bye, is almost a shot-for-shot recreation of the comic book.

I found some nice comparisons from other blogs:

I recommend the black and white version of the pilot, because the lighting is so unique that it adds to the feeling of isolation in the opening sequence, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, they stuck to the script, and it actually worked pretty well.

From here they follow out the rest of the story from the first book, except at the end of the season, Shane, a villain from the first book, is not killed like he is in the comic. This upset some people, but it created one of the most compelling characters on TV for others.

Kirkman, who serves as an executive producer on the show, said that this is how he would have played it had he known the book would be a success.

Keeping Shane around kept a tension on the show that the zombies couldn’t create on their own, and it made his death at the end of season 2 that much more satisfying.

Another time the first season strays from the script is in the last episode of the first season, when the survivors come to a military complex working on a cure for the outbreak. Of course there is no cure and the man who runs the complex eventually decides to destroy the complex with our heroes inside. It sounds like a situation in a cheesy eighties movie, and it plays out like one too.

Another notable problem is the terrible southern accents, which are forgivable when you consider Andrew Lincoln’s Britishness (he’s married to the daughter of Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson!).

Ultimately though, the first season of Walking Dead is a strong season of television, and it’s involving enough to keep you watching into the later seasons to see what’s happening with the characters, even if you know the writing is going downhill.

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire was, in my opinion, a better work than it’s source text, Q & A by Vikas Swarup.

It’s by no means a perfect movie, and I’m not sure if I believe it deserves the status it has been elevated to, but I do believe it improves on Q & A, by being less obvious and overdone.

I can’t speak on the controversies about it’s social and political responsibility because I think that’s pretty much fucking crap. To be scholarly about it: art is art, it doesn’t have any responsibility to anyone; and if it isn’t art, then fuck it.

In the spirit of the last few weeks, let’s talk about its Oliver Twist elements.

First of all the protagonist, Jamal, is passive through most of the film and forced to enter into different circles, much like Oliver. He does eventually learn to take his life into his own hands, but he spend most of the movie having things done to him rather than doing things. Oh yeah, and he’s an orphan.

Ram on the other hand is much more hands-on, and in my opinion much less Twist-esque.

Also, Jamal, Salim, and Latika start working for Maman, who is pretty much Fagen, except he scoops out people’s eyes. It felt the most like Dickens during that time, and even includes them escaping and then eventually coming back to reckon with the problem.

It’s not just like Dickens though. The most important way it differs is that Jamal actually does move up in class, unlike Oliver who merely regains what was already his. This really is a rags to riches situation, though when we get there it doesn’t even seem like the money matters to Jamal.

Trains are a big theme in the film, and they seem to represent change, just as they’re said to in the novel. The first time the train comes the boys lose their mother, and they lose Latika later on too. But it also brings Latika back to Jamal, and it’s used to connect the boys from early childhood to their teenage years.

As I already expressed, I think that the adaptation is quite a bit better than the original. By abandoning the Forest Gump-esque references and absurdity and replacing it with a more believable story, we’re left with something that is more appealing. Sure it loses its humor and much of the subtext is lost as well, and I think that’s a shame.

Q & A might have more to say, and it might even be more historically or politically correct, but at the end of the day Beaufoy’s story is just better.

Dexter

Today I’m going to talk about the first season of the Showtime series Dexter, based on Jeff Lindsay’s novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter.

I though this might be an interesting topic because in the past the novel we’ve read have been longer than the adaptations, but in this case the series is actually much longer than the novel. Because of this, the series expands on the characters and their roles.

I want to focus on how the series appropriates to tackle deeper issues that don’t exist in the novel.

Both the series and the book are about Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who kills serial killers. Dexter begins to get clues from the Tamiami Slahers (The Ice Truck Killer in the show), a local serial killer that the police are after. Dexter isn’t sure of his connection, but through cleverly place clues, Dexter’s past begins to unravel.

In both mediums this leads to a confrontation between the killers where Dexter finds out that the Slasher is actually his long lost brother, Brian.

The novel ends rather abruptly, and it doesn’t work very well because all we find out is that Dexter has a brother and a dark past.

The series works around this weakness and delves in to how Dexter and Brian ended up killers after watching their mother get murdered and cut up in front of them.

The show sticks with the psychology, but introduces Brian at an earlier time in the story as Rudy, a prosthetic manufacturer who begins dating Dexter’s sister Debra in order to get closer to him. The TV show then hints at Brian’s darkness and delves into the psychology of the killer, and why Brian would be interested in prosthetic limbs, and why he cuts his victims up when he kills them.

Dexter’s past is also looked into by flashback scenes, and the question of whether or not Dexter has real feelings is a big part of the show.

Dexter is a blood spatter analyst as well, so blood comes in to play as a symbol here. Dexter prefers to save it, and Brian drains it and dumps it, preferring a cleaner kill.

Visual imagery is a big deal in the show and the way Brian wraps the body parts of his victims after killing them, and his obsession with amputated parts is one of the most interesting parts of the character.

Brian also has a thing for women with stump hands and likes to paint their prosthetic’s fingernails different colors just like his mother used to, which brings some Freudian ideas into the mix too.

The series appropriates to give a look into why the characters are the way they are, rather than just making the best of a decent idea like the book does.

It’s what makes the first season of the show interesting, and the subsequent seasons shitty.

 

Boy Called Twist

Boy called Twist is a strange little appropriation. It’s hard for me to call it an adaptation (yes, technically it is), because it seems to be mostly based on David Lean’s movie. And while it was inherently an appropriation, it only really worked for me when it was appropriating.

The rest of the movie was almost a shot-for-shot remake of Lean’s movie, swiping everything from camera angles to subtle nuances. We’re pretty much given the same scenes from Lean’s movie with no additional scenes from the book making it in. You could argue that Lean took it down to the meat and potatoes of the story, and BCT was just following form, but really Boy called Twist is just lazy.

I honestly think people expected it to turn out good because of the concept. It was dealing with “real   South African issues.” Except it didn’t. Not one damn bit. Other than the glue huffing and the brief criminal spree, which is the highlight of the movie, really it’s pretty much just ethnic Oliver Twist.

The budget was actually decent on this flick, but the effects and camerawork recall bad Sci-Fi Channel movies.

Jarrid Geduld is maybe the saving grace of this movie as Twist. He plays a tougher, less passive version of the classic character, which makes him a little easier to identify with. And he still has that “sadness behind the eyes” thing going.

Bart Fouche was also an excellent casting choice for Sykes. The neo-nazi biker thing really nails the spirit of that character.

The music was kind of weird because it sounded mostly like the Dave Matthews Band. I guess he’s from South Africa, so that’s alright, but not really…

To return to my earlier point, the best parts in the movie are when we see Twist being a kid and hitchhiking, stealing, and getting high. It’s the only time the movie’s setting serves its purpose, and the only time that the gimmick feels relevant.

I think just rewriting some dialogue would’ve went a long way here.

I didn’t like this movie because the mistakes it made were sloppy ones. The movie felt cheap, and not because of the budget.

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

I felt like really shitting on a movie, so I picked this one.

Let’s discuss why The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the worst adaptation of all time.

Alan Moore, the writer of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, ended up so disenchanted with how his work was treated by Hollywood that he is no longer credited for his comics in adaptations of them. This movie is a key reason why.

For those of you unfamiliar, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic set in Victorian-era England, featuring famous characters from British literature. These characters include (but are not limited to): Allan Quartermain (of King Solomon’s Mine), Wilhelmina Murray (of Dracula), Captain Nemo (of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Invisible Man. Of course we are given Moore’s spin on these characters, which recasts Quartermain as an opium addict, The Invisible Man as a rapist, and Mina Murray as the group’s powerless but none-the-less fearless leader.

The characters are brought together by British Intelligence. They do a series of missions until it’s revealed that they are actually working for the mysterious M, who is revealed to be Professor Moriarty (of Sherlock Holmes). So pretty much it’s a conspiracy theory and the League has to team up to take down the same people that brought them together. It’s more complicated then that, but let’s just take a look at how the movie interpreted these characters and their story.

In the horrendous movie, we are basically joined by the same group of people. The difference lies in the way they are portrayed. Quartermain is played by Sean Connery, with his typical Bond-swagger. No longer an opium addict, Quartermain is at the peak of his game, and takes over from Mina Murray as the leader. Mina is instead reduced to a solider on the team who can “vamp out” and turn into vampire Mina Murray. I guess the idea of a woman without super powers leading around men with her intellect didn’t sit right with Fox, so there we have our two key characters ruined.

And there is an addition to the team, an American named Tom Sawyer (Fox’s idea).

I could end the review now and you would understand just how shitty they did this book.

But there’s more. So the League is brought together, but instead of doing battle with British Intelligence in a classic spy caper, we’re just fighting Moriarty, who is involved in the story much earlier than in the book. Basically, it’s him dressed in this stupid mask that makes him look like Iron Man and Kano from Mortal Kombat had an ugly old-man baby. I think he might also have an Inspector Gadget claw for a hand or something. Anyways, it doesn’t really convolute the story, it just kind of loses it from there.

So here we have a story stripped of all of its meaning and message, with neutered Hollywood versions of its characters, pointless action scenes, and an awful soundtrack. Is the camera work or the acting at least decent? No.

This is almost like an anti-appropriation. It takes the source text and attempts to pretty much remove any meaning or thought, instead replacing it with mind-numbing action. This movie makes Fantastic Four look decent.

But the absolute worst thing about this movie, and the reason I’m including this rant in my blog, is that it actually turned people off from the source material. Because the comic was lesser-known when the movie was released, and because Hollywood rallied behind this giant piece of crap, it’s actually what most people think of when you say “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”

The only good thing this movie did was teach Alan Moore not to trust Hollywood, but that doesn’t really matter because they’re going to keep adapting his stuff anyway.

High Fidelity

Today I decided to talk about one of my all-time favorite books, and the pretty decent adaptation they made based off it: Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity.

I always liked this adaptation despite the liberties that it takes with its source text. But before we go into the changes, let’s look at what stays the same.

Our main character, Rob (from London in the book, Chicago in the film), owns a record store where he works with his two “friends,” Dick and Barry. Dick is a quiet introvert who enjoys “sad bastard music,” as Barry puts it. Barry is a loud, obnoxious rock n’ roller, played in the film by Jack Black.

The temptation with Black is to let him play himself, which he does to a degree here. But it doesn’t really hurt the story too much. In fact, it’s pretty believable that had Black not rose to prominence, he would’ve ended up a Barry.

But back to Rob. Rob has just broken up with his girlfriend Laura and he is reconnecting with girlfriends of the past, trying to make sense of his own inadequacies.

In the book, and in the film, he breaks the fourth wall pretty regularly. Not in a meta way, but more like a comic book character might. In the film this is achieved by cutaways and voice-over. In the novel it’s done fairly easily because the novel is in first person.

I think the way this movie breaks the curse of the voice-over is by choosing lines from the book that are actually insightful and witty. Seems like a pretty straight forward concept, but leave it to every writer ever to fuck that up.

So anyway, Rob and Laura stay broken up for most of the film until the climax where Laura’s father dies and she and Rob get back together because they are at point in their lives where they are too weak to go on single. Not exactly a happy ending, but it has optimism.

In the book Rob realizes that Laura is indeed the girl for him and goes about improving his lifestyle and maturing so that they can be together. He decides to go back to pursuing DJing as a career instead.

In the film Rob gets back with Laura, but then flirts with the idea of hooking up with another girl, before having maybe one of the best conversations from the entire film about romance, and get this, it isn’t in the book.

But that’s when it goes South. Rob decides to produce some punker kids records and they have a release party and Jack Black’s band plays a Marvin Gaye song, which is Laura and Rob’s song, to close out the movie in a typical Hollywood fashion. Yeah, it really is that “what the fuck?”

The soundtrack is one of the best parts of the movie. By choosing artists that are both relevant and obscure, we’re left with a good portrait of our three heroes, and it doesn’t feel dated (the book came out five years before the movie, which is like 15 years in the music industry). Sensitive Dick likes bands like Belle and Sebastian, Rob loves classics like Bruce Springsteen (who has a cameo in the movie), but is also in touch with contemporary artists like The Beta Band, and Barry loves the seminal stuff, and doesn’t have much respect for anything else.

Ultimately, I think the message stays very much intact, despite the strange ending. And even though he chooses some shit roles, I think Cusack is a great actor (or if not, then likable at least).

Pop culture junkies take note, you have to have a bigger purpose than referencing counter-culture to make a successful book or film, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still reference the shit out of it.

David Lean’s Oliver Twist

In David Lean’s adaptation of the Dickens classic, we are introduced to a slightly less controversial (or more if you consider the whole Fagan debacle), and slightly less powerful critique of poverty and social class. By cutting out some details and side stories, we are left with a greater focus on the meat and potatoes of the story, and that’s what makes moments like Nancy’s death so powerful.

I want to start off by talking about John Howard Davies. I feel like Davies perfectly captures the innocence, but also what Mr. Sowerberry describes as the underlying sadness, in Oliver. Davies manages to make us sympathize with a passive, slow witted protagonist, and that’s charm.

Robert Newton is about as hateable as they come, and makes the perfect villain. He never feels very cunning, just brutish, which really helps the audience dislike him.

And Michael Dear was just ugly enough to play a character named Noah Claypool.

I think what I’m trying to say is that all of these actors are very physically interesting looking. They fit their bizarrely named counterparts all too well at some points.

It was nice to cut down on some of the characters, though I feel like Rose was a pretty important omission.

On that note, the ending was a little Walt Disney, but with the twist of somebody being hanged beforehand. I’m not sure I really liked it too much, but it did feel happy, and I guess that counts for something.

The thing that bothers me the most is that the movies feels a little too much fun at some points. Scenes like the boy dying in the workhouse were key to setting a darker tone, but the movie doesn’t seem as concerned with that. Instead we’re left with a neutered, but faithful to the characters, adaptation. But being faithful to the characters doesn’t make it faithful to the cause, and I’m afraid the message is a little bit lost in all of that.

Freaks and The Fly

David Cronenberg’s The Fly is an appropriation of an adaptation. Where the original adaptation of The Fly follows the short story of the same name, Cronenberg uses to send a very different message.

Cronenberg portrays the side effect of the transporter accident as a gradual end for our hero. The fly aspects become a metaphor for disease, and so does the entire movie. It becomes more about testing the love between Veronica and Brundle, rather than about correcting the mistake itself.

I’ve always liked the dream sequence for Veronica, and how it’s never really resolved (well, till the piece of shit sequel). Rather than being used as a shock ending, it becomes more like a terrifying inevitability, and I think that sets the tone for what kind of movie it is.

The important thing to remember is that as this disease slowly mutates our charming, witty protagonist, it is against his will. Rather than being a Godfather type story where the main character is paying for his sins, Brundle is portrayed as a good person that something bad happened to, just like real life. How’s that for a concept?

Tod Browning’s Freaks is an appropriation, but also an adaptation. See the difference? Fly = Appropriation of an adaptation, Freaks = Adaptation that appropriates.

Anyway,now that we’ve got that out of our system, let’s look at what it appropriates.

It’s interesting that the message of the movie is that the “normal” people in the movie are cruel, and the Freaks are not, but at the same time the Freaks are exploited by the director just by being in the movie. In the end they are also the entire reason the movie is classified as “horror.”

In “Spurs,” the story it was based off of, the main character is still a midget marrying a normal looking person, but that’s about all that remains.

I like that this movie definitely implicates the audience, but it also implicates itself. By having a name like “Freaks,”  and featuring actual deformed people playing the roles, it feels cruel, but we are dealing with a movie about the cruelty and ugliness within, so maybe that just makes the story more compelling.

A Face In The Crowd

When I discussed Ghost World, I mentioned the advantages of having the writer of the source text write the script. This is another example of that working out excellently.

A Face in the Crowd was Andy Griffith’s big break, and it’s easy to see why. Griffith shows more emotion and range in this role than in the entire rest of his career, and it’s hard to see why he wasn’t used that way more often.

When Budd Schulberg set about adapting this picture, he made two big interesting changes from the story. Lonesome does not die in the movie like he does in the story, and he conquers television in the movie as opposed to radio in the story. This might be because of the visual aspect of the story, but it also might be because of television’s increasing influence in the 1950s. Though the story was published just four years before the film, television’s role was significantly altered between that time.

Marcia’s character was similar to her character in the movie, but dialed down. This makes her actions in the final scene that much more shocking. You almost forget how capable she is as a character.

The decision to let Lonesome live with his sins is a lot more cynical, despite the fact that he doesn’t die. It’s implied that his career won’t even take a big hit, and I think that shows real forethought from the writer and director.

I thought the movie was better than the story in just about every way, but it helps that the cinematography was great. I wish they’d given Griffith more roles like this in his career.