Zap! Boom! Bang! Those exclamations might seem commonplace to the average comic reader, but how about KaChing!
These former colorful tales of daring heroes who face dastardly villains have been turned into box office and ratings gold by movie and television studios. With nearly 200 costumed crusaders gracing our silver screens, that makes for a large chunk of change for nearly every movie studio on planet Earth, maybe even Krypton.
Zap! Boom! Bang! Those exclamations might seem commonplace to the average comic reader, but how about KaChing!
These former colorful tales of daring heroes who face dastardly villains have been turned into box office and ratings gold by movie and television studios. With nearly 200 costumed crusaders gracing our silver screens, that makes for a large chunk of change for nearly every movie studio on planet Earth, maybe even Krypton.
According to most, the first comic book to be adapted was “Batman.” It was originally turned into a 1960s television show and later a feature film starring Adam West. So, how is it we have jumped from the world of corny one-liners and ridiculous bat gadgets to the dark, brooding, caped crusader and potential Oscar nominations? The world of graphic novel adaptations is an interesting one. They give us journeys of human spiders, aliens and regular guys in bat suits.
However, this genre may have reached its peak in super stories. Studios are looking to the lesser-known graphic novels, because apparently the originals aren’t enough to clutter our theaters.
Some of those lesser-known graphic novels include “Madman,” “Black Hole” and my personal favorite, “Button Man.” These aren’t the only ones though; in fact just today I noticed that another studio had picked up the rights to some “X-Men” copycat.
On top of these barely known comic book heroes there are also the secondary heroes from companies like DC and Marvel. There are already plans to make nearly every comic book character they have created into a Hollywood movie icon. All the way from Ant Man to X-Men, the comic book characters are getting a makeover. For some of the studios that own certain comic book franchises they are now mashing the characters of hundreds of comic stories in an estimated two to three hour film.
Case in point: “Justice League” and “The Avengers.” DC Comics and Marvel plan to release movies based on these super teams, because as “Spider-Man 3” or “X-Men: The Last Stand” have told us, more characters means better story, I mean more money. Like my previous column about 3-D compared to 2-D, too many studios are substituting story for visuals. In the case of these “super friends” they may be sacrificing a story line for multiple characters and crazy battle sequences.
The fact is Hollywood, that we like our heroes lonely. If they were fighting together there is a level of teenage added to the equation. “I can’t join with you, I work alone!” Come on Batman get over yourself. Now if you were paying attention you would have noticed that I brought up the new adaptation of “Watchmen” which, you guessed it, stars multiple characters. So, why do I believe this would work and any other incarnation of team of heroes would not?
First of all I don’t know that it will work, but the source material is so strong that it already has great potential. The problem is that though it isn’t hundreds of different stories it is still a very large graphic novel. Some have suggested it should be made into a mini-series not a film, because in general films of this content don’t usually go over three hours and that isn’t near enough time to cover the complexity of this story. So, I think the film has great potential but could be another fantastic flop or super smash.
In general I enjoy these films and was particularly happy with “The Dark Knight” and its success. On the other hand, a final message to Hollywood: just because the Bat can fly does not mean the Lantern will glow, the Norse god will thunder, or even that the Ant Man will shrink to success.
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