Some Filmmakers Just Don’t Get It

As I’ve talked about a lot (see here and here) Hollywood can’t seem to stop making film adaptations of comic books. What a lot of people don’t understand is how much effort goes into trying to adapt these properties and how many filmmakers have had their hands on a particular property. And when I see the results of some of these adaptations I have come to the conclusion that some filmmakers just do not understand the characters they are trying to adapt.

Before Christopher Nolan got his hands on Batman and created the brilliant Dark Knight trilogy you may not be aware but another more interesting director was going to reboot the Bat franchise. After Joel Schumacher’s disastrous two attempts at Batman films (which are themselves examples of a filmmaker not getting it) the character of Batman needed a complete makeover. And so Batman was being offered to some filmmakers who have very unique film styles in an effort to give the character a new lease on life. One such director was Darren Aronofsky.

Darren Aronofsky is a filmmaker famous for doing films like Black Swan, The Fountain, The Wrestler, films that are deep examinations about people’s minds and spirit. Not typical super hero fair. Which is why I am sure the producers of the Batman franchise thought he would be perfect for the job.  That is until you here his pitch for the project. Aronofsky envisioned a Batman without his millions of dollars of gadgets and was instead a poor orphan raised by a mechanic (Big Al instead of Alfred). While this seems like it could be an entertaining comic, it is not what should be developed for a big screen adaptation of the Batman property. Batman is the story of Billionaire Bruce Wayne devoting his life AND fortune towards fighting crime. That is the core of the character.

Speaking of Batman, let’s look at Tim Burton. Tim Burton was responsible for the excellent 1989 Batman film and its less than stellar follow up, Batman Returns. Now after the huge success Burton had with Batman Warner Bros wanted to offer the director a chance to direct another popular DC Comics property. In fact they wanted to offer Burton THE DC Comics property. They wanted him to direct Superman. The story of Tim Burton’s Superman Lives has become a great source of entertainment among fan boys. Despite the fact that the film was never made. Beloved geek director Kevin Smith did a draft of the script that initially was meant to retell the Death and Return of Superman storyline from the comics and ended up resembling nothing remotely similar to that story.

Producer John Peters wanted a version of Superman that did not wear the familiar blue and red costume, did not fly, and at some point needed to fight a giant spider (those were the actual notes Mr. Peters gave to writer Kevin Smith when the director/writer first pitched his take on Superman to the famous producer). Despite those initial notes, which completely destroy the property of Superman, the script just got more and more bizarre with fighting polar bears and gay robotic dogs. Preproduction artwork showed versions of the Superman outfit that had cybernetic parts attached to it, an S shield that could become fighting blades, and even a version of Superman that more resembled Frankenstein’s monster than the Man of Steel. The final blow to the project that just cemented the lunacy of project was the casting of Nicolas Cage who when photographed in the costume just looked ridiculous.

 

While part of me is happy neither of those two projects ever made it to the screen, sometimes we’re just not that lucky and a comic book adaptation makes it into theatres that is less than desirable. By that I mean, Jonah Hex. Jonah Hex is a DC Comics property about a bounty hunter living in the old west, the titular Jonah Hex. While the film adaptation of the character kept this aspect, they added another aspect to the character. Jonah Hex could talk to the dead. No version of the character in the comics ever had this ability and it was solely an invention of the film. An invention that was not well executed.

 

Similarly the film adaptation of Catwoman (which I explored in this entry) suffered from straying far from the source material. Instead of sticking closely to what everyone loved about the character, Warner Bros decided to invent a completely new character that had no relation to the comic book character. At least Jonah Hex was still NAMED Jonah Hex. In Catwoman they changed the character’s name from Selina Kyle to Patience Phillips. The story is not set in Gotham City. The character is NOT a cat burglar. And finally the character received their “cat powers” through supernatural means (which granted they did that same thing in Batman Returns), instead of just being a woman who likes cats.

"And sometimes there are no explanations."

As a filmmaker, I understand that sometimes when adapting a property from one medium to another, changes need to be made. But those changes should be in order to get as much of the character’s basics on screen while trimming away the fat. Making changes for the sake of change only waters down what made the character likeable to begin with. The reason why film studios adapt comic book properties is because these properties already have a built in audience. But if the film does not resemble the comic then the built in audience doesn’t matter.