Sorry to break up my train of thought. I was writing my last entry in a cafe before a meeting, and suddenly realizing I had only a few minutes to dash to my appointment, I had to abruptly end what I was writing. This also means I will probably re-read what I wrote and shake my head at its lack of revision. Not that I do much revising on my blog.
So, picking up...
3. Room for creativity? Adaptations of existing works seem to suffer on two fronts. On the one hand, they require sufficient fidelity to their source material that fans will be satisfied. On the other hand, the need to appeal to non-fans can pull characters in odd directions. Although it is kind of unfair for me to judge a movie I have not yet seen, the reviews I have read for the recent Green Hornet movie lead me to believe that it suffered from a little of both, particularly the latter. But sometimes, too much devotion to the source material can be its own problem.
I wrote before about my concerns about a possible Shadow reboot, and one frustration I had was that it seemed likely the movie would include snippets of both the radio and pulp Shadows. He would have to be invisible and have his costume and fire guns all the time. Each of these seems like a necessity because it is a detail fans recognize. Problematically, these details come from two canons (this strangely sounds like a religious argument), and they do not work well together.
Of all the existing Shadow movies, I actually have a soft spot for the strangest of the lot, 1938's International Crime. It is not a great movie, but it is an interesting contribution to the Shadow mythos because it takes the character in a different direction. In it, Lamont Cranston is mainly a radio show host whose on-air persona is The Shadow. In that capacity, he exposes criminal activities, making it hard for (the mainly white-collar) criminals to hide. The story has my attention because it takes what I know about The Shadow--he is a "costumed" crime-fighter--and interprets it in an entirely new way. The fact that Cranston uses a radio to expose criminals feels like a clever nod to the character's tenure in radio drama.
Few movie adaptations of classic characters get to be so creative. Sure, the occasional TV series gets translated into an uncomfortably formulaic action movie or comedy, but developing a knowing take on the existing stories is a different kind of adaptation. To use another example, I love Neil Gaiman's graphic novel Marvel 1602. It tells the stories of various Marvel Comics heroes in an alternate scenario, where they are in early 17th-century England. It is clever, exciting, and rewarding for fans. It can also be appreciated by non-fans. If only movie adaptations could follow this route.
To be fair, I have nothing against movie adaptations. I tend to get excited whenever I hear about a new adaptation of a classic character. I just also tend to become skeptical, then cranky, very quickly. The best thing about a movie adaptation of a pulp character, to me, is that it will lead new fans to discover the great stories that built the character. The worst thing about a movie adaptation is that it not every pulp character makes a good movie character. Sometimes, the charm of a character has as much to do with the author's prose as with the character concept. Too often, I feel like movie adaptations miss that point.
No comments:
Post a Comment