Which movies have made the most successful transition from their written form, be it comic book or novel, to the big screen? This is my first shot at an article, true-believers, so be kind if you would.
We're blessed to live in a golden age of CBM's, with their frequency and quality increasing every year. I can remember sitting in my buddy's room as a kid, playing a little D&D, and coming up with our own fan casts for movies like the X-Men, never really thinking I would see it realized. I mean sure, we had the Superman movies, but a comic like X-Men? We wanted to see people like Mel Gibson play Wolverine, Grace Jones play Storm, Dolph Lundgren as Colossus, and Yul Brynner as Prof. X (this was the mid-80's mind you). So we waited, and waited, and waited for an X-Men movie, and FINALLY we got our wish...or so we thought.
Now don't get me wrong, I was as geeked as the next comic fan when "X-Men" came out. However, as happy as I was that it was finally made, and not a bad movie overall: it just wasn't what I read growing up (damn FOX!!). This is my example of a not very successful leap to the silver screen, in the sense of a pure, source material-driven adaptation. It made gobs of money, but was it really what we fan boys really wanted to see? Not so much.
Recently there has been a lot more movies that are more accurate representations of print, not just in the comic world, but in fantasy as well. These have been done "right," being very close to what was seen on the page, or in the mind's eye in the case of novels. My top 5 print-to-film adaptations are as follows:
5. Iron Man
Although some minor changes were needed to modernize the story & settings. "Iron Man" got the spirit of Tony Stark's journey into the superhero world pretty well, appealing to the masses as well as the fan-boys.
4. The Harry Potter series
Very close to the novels, yet at three hours long, these movies still leave out too much from the books. Relationships get glazed over, memorable scenes omitted, delted altogether or left on the cutting room floor (Dumbledore's funeral, for example. I couldn't wait to see how they did that on screen, but it never even made it into the movie).
3. The Lord of The Rings trilogy
See comments for # 4. But still a visual spectacle, spot on to what I saw in my mind's eye from the pages of Tolkien.
2. Watchmen
Were there any changes, really?
1. 300
Leapt off the graphic novel's page...literally!! 'Nuff Said!
Let me know what your thoughts are.
Nemesys - There can be only one!!