(no subject)

[learnedax]

Friday new_man and I went to see Constantine. It was, well, sorta ok, if you forgot about the comics.

I would have been happier with a choice other than Keanu, but he actually wasn't too bad at playing the stone cold non-reactive guy. He was basically decent.

Now, I don't have a real problem with filmmakers changing the character and backstory of comic characters, because it's the nature of the comic medium that different authors do different things. This is especially true of JC, because his personality has always varied quite a bit. However, it does kind of bug me when someone starts off with a rich, interesting character or story and tosses out major parts of it without really filling the void with anything. For instance, John is half dark, caustic rogue and half quirky British guy. It's a big blow to make him an American, but it might be alright if you made him distinctively New York, or distinctively LA. It would clearly be a different take on the character, but at least you wouldn't be taking something away without replacing it.

It's a little bit annoying that they streamlined the myriad weird things that go on in John's universe into almost exclusively Heaven v. Hell weirdness, but I can understand that in the context of the story they wanted to tell, which was all about demonic issues. There were some other problems (Lucifer was lame lame lame, John's powers (which were pleasantly vague) were more Sixth Sense than Hellblazer, seeing John as a kid was just embarrassing), but the core "you're a guy hated by all sides and doomed soon to hell" essence was decently well done.

There was really just one other major problem (beyond it just not being better): they turn John into a good guy. He's not doomed to hell because he's a bad guy, he's doomed to hell because as a troubled teen he tried to kill himself. That really sucks the life out of the character. They made him into a warrior for heaven, who's only doomed to hell on a technicality. He's still a jerk on the surface, which is good, but ultimately he's a good guy, which is bad.

Oh, well, there's a reason we only paid matinee prices

Comments

Re: I agree, yet

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Having said this, film can compress a lot of things and pay homage to backstory for fans without padding the story (the last Harry Potter installation was impressive at this).

Hm. Mileage varies, I guess. Because I think the latest HP movie was horrendous at it, in that they overdid it. They spent time on the homages that should have been spent on actual development of the secondary characters, or on making the main story comprehensible.

The X-Men movies are probably a better example of it being done well. While I think the Spiderman movies have an even more richly developed world, I don't think of that as homages. Part of the point of Spiderman is that Peter is really just this guy, and the world is a lot bigger than Spidey himself. So, much of that development is actually playing to the one of the main themes, rather than acting as an in-joke for the fans.

Re: I agree, yet

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's an in-joke nearly so often as it's good world development. Having a film without tunnelvision does not mandate lots of diversions; in fact, using scenes for multiple purposes at once (developing character, moving the plot forward, adding background detail) is, I think, a critical aspect of film adaptation. Almost every interesting story is about more than just this one important protagonist, but filmmakers frequently focus in too tightly to see that.