Here, Have Some Plot

(Return of the Revenge of the Geek Chorus)

 

Way back in 1989, my father took me to see Batman. I had yet to read The Dark Knight series, but I nevertheless watched, entranced, clutching my root beer to my bat-signal-emblazoned sweatshirt, as Michael Keaton aptly demonstrated the angst and mental illness of Bruce Wayne and his well-funded delusion of the Caped Crusader. Jack Nicholson played the Joker, white-faced, purple-suited villain, as he was meant to be played: obsessive, gothic, insane, deadly: the kind of man who had gleefully killed Robin and thousands of innocents.

 

It struck me at the time, the genius of how Tim Burton just dove into the story of Batman, not spending the first hour of the movie engrossed in an origins story, yet not assuming that the audience knew the story of the Dark Knight, either.

 

As I subsequently watched each new comic-book-based movie as it came to the walk-in, I realized that not every script-writer, producer, or director was capable of Mr. Burton’s feat, and that not every hero of my childhood was capable of leaping from the printed page to the silver screen with the dark grace as Batman. Only after some reading on the subject, some literature seminars, and some film studies classes, was I able to determine why I felt disappointed by attempts such as Spiderman, Batman Forever, or The Hulk. I was also able to pinpoint why those same characters transitioned easily into the medium of animation, the Saturday morning cartoon.

 

What it boils down to is that the different mediums of comic-book, film, and animated serial allow, and even require, different narrative styles and character development. When a movie or ‘toon disappoints, it’s usually because of a failure to effectively transition the key elements of a world from medium to medium.

 

For the purposes of this essay, I turned to A Short History of the Movies,  which suggests that most films follow a standard plot pattern. The first fifteen minutes of the film are introductory, allowing the audience to understand the character’s conflict, and giving some clues as to the type of movie world. Then the conflict escalates, engaging the audience. Over the next hour, there will be one to three more events which perpetuate and aggravate the conflict, until the only choice left is to resolve it. The climax of the movie is followed by zero to fifteen minutes of wrap-up. In short, movies exist to allow a snapshot of one particular issue in the movie-world. Even trilogies, like The Lord of the Rings, tell one story.

 

Contrastingly, comic books have much more flexibility in narrative structure, since their purpose is to provide a chronicle of a world, character, or a series of events. By their very nature, comics are ongoing tales. Rifling through my boxes, I can find comics that allow five-issue story arcs, stories that follow a character through a typical day-in-the-life-of, crossover stories, flashbacks, dreams, side-arcs, etc.

 

One notable exception to ongoing story arcs are mini-series, such as The Crow. This book had a limited run, and as a result, was able to transition easily to the cinema, since its original structure was so self-contained.

 

Cartoon serials, or series, serve as a cross between the structure of film and printed-page graphics. Like feature films, cartoon episodes tend to be self-contained, following a formulaic narrative structure. Although each episode may be self-contained, however, the series as a whole more closely relates to comic books in that it tells an ongoing, greater story, allowing for a leisurely establishment of people and place.

 

In addition to narrative style, adaptations require that thousands, if not millions, of pages and decades of character development be distilled to their essence. It requires a great deal of thought to take a character with as much history as, say Batman or Wolverine, and figure out what is essential to the character, and what can be changed, added, or subtracted to allow the character to move from the printed page to the dynamic world of television or cinema.

 

But all of this exposition, while useful, isn’t nearly as illustrative as solid examples and analysis of different comic-book adaptations. For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to try to limit my discussion to adaptations produced in my lifetime.

 

Let’s start with my introductory example of Batman (1989). The film clocks in at 126 minutes, yet in that short amount of time the viewer is introduced not only to Gotham City, but the characters and realities of Batman, Vicki Vale, and the Joker. What makes this film outstanding, is the manner in which this in done: Rather than begin the movie with a straightforward origin story, Mr. Burton allows the viewer to see what makes Batman tick through a series of flashbacks interspersed throughout the movie, and through the in-character investigations of reporter Vicki Vale. The world is established through integrated elements and sub-stories, and the film in more interesting for it. Even at the end, when Batman is forced to confront his origins, it is done as part of the greater story, not as a separate story from the conflict with the Joker.

 

Several other comic book-to-movie adaptations employ similar techniques, allowing the audience to absorb the world, rather than having it thrust upon them. Other examples include Superman (1978), Blade (1998), X-Men (2000), Daredevil (2003), and Hellboy (2004).

 

In fact, X-Men is an excellent example not only of narrative adaptation, but of world and character adaptation as well. With hundreds of characters to choose from, the writers took a small group of key characters, and began to adapt them to the silver screen. The writers were successful in identifying the essences of the characters in question, and allowing that to show while still allowing for on-screen interpretations. Take the character Wolverine, for instance: in the comics, Wolverine wears yellow spandex and originated with Alpha Flight, yet does not in the film. However, the key elements remain: the claws, the mysterious past, the pointy hair, the bad attitude, and the healing factor.

 

To elaborate on the narrative adaptation of X-Men, the film begins with a short monologue on genetic mutations, and its possible consequences. The audience is then thrust directly into story, where we see mutations first manifesting. Quickly, the movie establishes a conflict, then follows the standard of escalating circumstances until the movie resolves itself through the defeat of one of the main antagonists, and his subsequent incarceration. The film wraps up with hints of more to come, but the current story arc is resolved, at least for the time being. At no time is the modern equivalent of a chorus employed, chanting things like, “Humans feel threatened by mutants. Magneto survived the Holocaust and was forever marked by it.”

 

Not all comic-book based movies have successfully transcended their original medium, however, due to the aforementioned narrative differences. In comic books the creator has months, if not years, to establish a character, the background of the character, etc., in cinema, only a few hours exist to establish the main conflict, the character, and the world. In response to this, it seems that some producers feel compelled to spoon-feed audiences information on the world, history, and characters.

 

One of the worst examples of this is The Hulk (2003). A character I’ve always liked, super-duper CGI[i], and a smuggled root beer, what couldn’t there be to like? To my embitterment, there was a great deal not to enjoy. The first hour or so of the movie was a rehashing of the origin of Bruce Banner and his transformation into the Incredible Hulk. Only then did the conflict, between the government and Dr. Banner, come into play. To my mind, that was a waste of an hour of my life, which I will never get back.

 

I found Spiderman to be disappointing for similar reasons: Rather than incorporate the origins story through a series of flashbacks, such as in Daredevil, this movie also spends the first hour expositing the story of “How Peter Parker became Spiderman.” My sister, who does not read comic books found the set-up helpful, if not exciting, but it made me want to walk out of the theatre. If she hadn’t been with me, I would never have lasted to the inter conflicts of Spiderman, and his external conflicts with the forces of evil, characterized by the well-played Green Goblin.

 

Additionally, the character portrayal in these movies was weakened by the narrative styles. It would have been far better to have shown who Spiderman was, rather than to tell. An excellent example of character portrayal can be found in another film, with the characterization of Daredevil, if not Elektra.

 

Elektra provides a good show of how NOT to adapt a character. While in the comic books she is a highly-trained, questionably-stable (Aren’t they all?) assassin, capable of giving anyone a run for their money, in the movie, Bull’s Eye takes her without any effort at all. Lost are the gritty attitude and the extreme fighting skills. Instead, the audience is left with a poor-little-rich girl capable of some one-on-one kung fu with a blind man in a park, but who can’t handle herself in any real situation.

 

Speaking of poor character adaptations, don’t even get me started on what happened to Batman after Tim Burton left. The WORST interpretation of Robin I’ve ever seen, I kept hoping that the Joker would come back and off him, even if Chris O’Donnell was supposed to be Dick Greyson rather than Jason Todd. Oh, and the nipples on the suits? Applegeeks just says it all.

 

Bat-nipples aside, some of the devices that work so poorly in movies, work quite well in cartoons, such as a lengthy establishment of a character’s motivation and origin. Again, that’s because, like the original books, cartoons are a series, rather than a stand-alone. A whole session is available, rather than a mere two hours. Excellent examples of ‘toon adaptations include Justice League, X-Men, and Teen Titans.

 

So view wisely, my friends, keeping in mind that a connection with the pen-and-ink character may not serve you as well at the drive-in. Although there are excellent adaptations out there, there are just as many disappointments.

 

On a final and unrelated note, I’d like to thank Ron Perlman for his outstanding performance as Hellboy. Thank you, Mr. Perlman, for playing a character who’s appealing on a human level. Hellboy is the only superhero that I think is cute. Not handsome, or sexy, but cute. Cuddly. And I do appreciate the irony.