I’m a moderately closeted geek. From afar you probably wouldn’t guess it, but I have a World of Warcraft paladin, own every Calvin and Hobbes anthology there is, and was broken hearted when I found out that Vegeta would not be part of the new live-action “Dragon Ball Z” movie.
That all said, it’s par for the course for me to adore comic book movies as any geek worth their weight in Hero Clicks figurines does.
Before we get into the inundation of comic book adaptations that’s to come (or, rather, that’s to continue in the pattern of coming), let’s focus on this summer:
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
The Dark Knight
The Punisher: War Zone
Wanted
Speed Racer
Indiana Jones
Hancock
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Talk about diluting the market…
Now, I understand that the summer is supposed to be full of action-y blockbusters that cost lots to make and have more car chase/gun fight/hand-to-hand combat/bomb-disarming/escape scenes than dialogue, but do we really need ten comic book movies in one season? At $11.75 a ticket (for an adult in NYC), can fanboys and girls afford to see all of these movies? Something just doesn’t make sense.
What’s more disturbing is that this seems to be a growing trend, with even the most absurd of characters getting their stories made into movies.
Think I’m kidding? Would you go see:
Antman
Whiteout
Tommysaurus Rex
Mort, the Dead Teenager
Button Man
The Ghouly Boys
My Sassy Girl
The Expendable One
The Return of King Doug
Shazam!
Namor: The Submariner
Largo Winch
Super Bad James Dynomite
Lucky Luke
The Surrogates
They’re all in various stages of completion,from having recently been optioned to being in some stage of production. It seems to me that rights to these comics (or graphic novels, as the case may be) are just being bought up and kept on ice until someone can’t come up with a more adventurous (and probably less lucrative) idea. After all, comic books already have a built-in fan base. But, c’mon… Shazam? Really?
When the comic book adaptation trend began, we had strong characters with widespread and long-running, cross-generational appeal; they warranted a movie (or three, or more, pending the case…). Superman, Batman, X-Men: those were movies I could get behind.
But when you’re remaking a remake of The Hulk, less than 5 years after the first remake one came out (and relatively flopped), it begs the question: have we exhausted our resources?
I’m going to venture and say… sort of.
The comic book industry, as those knowledgeable can tell you, is alive and kicking. While there are cyclical ups and downs (as with any industry), comic books have rolled with the punches and adapted as they’ve needed to (now embracing the online market that was once a major threat). There are constantly new characters entering the market, and therefore, providing new material for movies.
Two prime examples of people whose works should (and have) be turned into high-budget summer movies: Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller. Gaiman, who has yet to strike it big on the silber screen, with his Sandman series, created a character that deserves to be brought to the big screen.
Miller, on the other hand, has already found success in the market. Sin City and 300 were commercial successes, and The Dark Knight will almost certainly a monstrous hit. But does that mean we really need a Sin City 2? Miller’s works should be turned into big screen productions, and they have, but there comes a point when we should let successful sleeping dogs lie successfully. Whatever happened to the self-contained movie?
Maybe the problem is that we have too many resources. Perhaps if there were fewer comics to choose from, only the worthy would be selected, and they’d be released systematically, allowing the engaged audience to watch them, rather than throwing all the spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
The odds of that happening, though, are disappointingly slim-to-none.
But all hope is not lost, eventually (hopefully) someone will realize that it’s about quality rather than quantity, and these shenanigans will end, leaving us with worthy comic book movies.
All that said, here are some upcoming comic book movies I support, plan on seeing, and won’t see sequels of if they’re made:
The Watchmen
Thor
The Green Hornet
The Avengers
Jackie for AMP3pr.com
Share this Post