Okay, you’ve got an immensely popular book that has a dedicated cult following on one side, and Hollywood on the other. Invariably, the story that was so popular in the book is re-written for the big screen. To me, this is utterly nonsensical. We all know they do it, we expect it, we just hope they don’t massacre the more important key plot points in the process. But usually they do. We hope the casting director doesn’t screw the pooch, so to speak, and cast the wrong people in the roles we love. But again, they usually do.
For instance: Hellblazer, a story of which I have often been in the middle of the cult following. Keanu Reeves, who I distinctly do not hate, was utterly wrong for the part. I’ve ruminated on the absurdity of casting directors before, and it’s a point that Hollywood really should pay heed to. This isn’t the ’50s, and we don’t go to movies just to see a star any more. Just because Keanu Reeves was great in Speed or Point Break doesn’t mean he’s going to be a major draw playing a modern-day British sorcerer with a nicotine habit. It’s time you realized that Point Break was a major draw because it was a good story, and because Reeves fit the role he was playing. But even worse, infinitely worse than the casting lunacy, was that they based the movie in Los Angeles, and made John Constantine an American. The problem with this is that California’s culture isn’t old enough to pull off the Gothic elements of the Hellblazer story. You walk around London and you feel the age of the place, you sense the despair of so many millions of ancient lives still lingering long after their deaths. Walking around L.A., with its sunshine and palm trees and trendy clubs and art deco and modernity just falls short on the effect. It cannot successfully tell the story of John Constantine. And so, the movie, though a successful one at the box office, fell far short of what it could have been.
What Hollywood sees, of course, is Keanu Reeves raking in another big take. They don’t see the fury of fanboys everywhere, or they choose not to see it, because the fanboys still paid to see the movie. I did. But if the movie had been any where nearer to what I might consider authentic, I would now own the DVD too. As it is, I do not. Stick that in yer ear, Hollywood.
I know sometimes Hollywood does what it does for budget concerns. But really, Keanu must have gotten in excess of ten mil for Constantine, ten mil that could have been spent shooting on location in London with an actor more suited to the part.
Lately, there have been some directors and some movies that have strived to be as faithful to the original story as possible. The Lord of the Rings movies, for instance. Or the Harry Potter movies. These movies put a premium on casting the right person in the right role and then became dedicated to telling the story as it should be told. And they’ve been rewarded. Honors have rained down on them, money, acclaim, awards…but did Constantine get any thing? Nope. It did well enough at the box office. But it could have been art! Constantine could have been a best picture nominee if they’d only tried!
Among the unfaithful movies of Hollywood: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or any number of Alan Moore adaptations. Even the Watchmen, which the director proclaimed would honor the original story religiously, shied away from the one plot point that made the entire story make sense. In the end, it was a good movie, but unfortunately flat. Lacking.
In Hitchhiker–granted a story that probably wouldn’t have gotten a nom from the Academy, but still–the entire story is rearranged and restructured to make the Hollywood ending, to include an element of a love story. The HHG2TG books sold over 15 million copies before Adams (the author) died in 2001. Do you really think this is a story that needed changing? That’s really what’s so aggravating to me. They take perfectly perfect stories and “adapt” them with their arcane, devious and moronic methods to be something less than they were, in order to…what? Certainly not to create a work of art. To make money? Well, of course to make money, but art would make money too, so it can’t be that. I’ve got it: they’re idiots.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was a movie that was kind of like the comic series: it’s not really any one’s favorite, but it’s entertaining and usually delivers some worldwide or universal scourge that we all must be saved from. As a movie, it really wasn’t actually all that bad. Right up until the end. The cast was fine, I don’t have any real gripe about the casting…but like The Watchmen, they bailed at the end. Maybe they needed to wrap it up within a minute or two, I don’t know, but they essentially threw the whole script down the toilet with that ending. Read this: there’s no story without Galactus. The threat of Galactus, the imminence of his arrival, the doom hanging over all our heads and then…what? A cloud? That’s the threat? No. Galactus is an elder of the Universe, almost an entire different element unto himself. You can’t just crap out on Galactus, sorry. Fanboy won’t buy it. And don’t you tell me that vague shadow was Galactus, no. And even worse–even worse–they had the audacity to suggest that if the Surfer got really emotional that he could vanquish Galactus. No. That was a travesty possibly even greater than Constantine. It turned a decent movie into garbage. Garbage!!!
The really good news is that there are some making the attempt. The aforementioned Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson, for instance. Why did he win the award? Hm. I wonder. Was it because he took a really marvellous story and retooled it to fit 93 minutes and to add the element of a love story? Er, no, it was actually because he made the books real. He brought the story to life. That, my friends, is art. Art is rewarded. Mediocrity is not. Marvel, now that it owns its own studio, is staying more honest to their own characters. Although Marvel is obviously capable of mucking things up, as evidenced by the way they’ve sodomized their own series’. I’m still hopeful that they’ll at least keep things real. In the end, that’s all I care about anyway. If you’re going to adapt a movie from a story that I love, just keep it real.
Hollywood Faithfulness
Okay, you’ve got an immensely popular book that has a dedicated cult following on one side, and Hollywood on the other. Invariably, the story that was so popular in the book is re-written for the big screen. To me, this is utterly nonsensical. We all know they do it, we expect it, we just hope they don’t massacre the more important key plot points in the process. But usually they do. We hope the casting director doesn’t screw the pooch, so to speak, and cast the wrong people in the roles we love. But again, they usually do.
What Hollywood sees, of course, is Keanu Reeves raking in another big take. They don’t see the fury of fanboys everywhere, or they choose not to see it, because the fanboys still paid to see the movie. I did. But if the movie had been any where nearer to what I might consider authentic, I would now own the DVD too. As it is, I do not. Stick that in yer ear, Hollywood.
I know sometimes Hollywood does what it does for budget concerns. But really, Keanu must have gotten in excess of ten mil for Constantine, ten mil that could have been spent shooting on location in London with an actor more suited to the part.
Lately, there have been some directors and some movies that have strived to be as faithful to the original story as possible. The Lord of the Rings movies, for instance. Or the Harry Potter movies. These movies put a premium on casting the right person in the right role and then became dedicated to telling the story as it should be told. And they’ve been rewarded. Honors have rained down on them, money, acclaim, awards…but did Constantine get any thing? Nope. It did well enough at the box office. But it could have been art! Constantine could have been a best picture nominee if they’d only tried!
Among the unfaithful movies of Hollywood: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or any number of Alan Moore adaptations. Even the Watchmen, which the director proclaimed would honor the original story religiously, shied away from the one plot point that made the entire story make sense. In the end, it was a good movie, but unfortunately flat. Lacking.
In Hitchhiker–granted a story that probably wouldn’t have gotten a nom from the Academy, but still–the entire story is rearranged and restructured to make the Hollywood ending, to include an element of a love story. The HHG2TG books sold over 15 million copies before Adams (the author) died in 2001. Do you really think this is a story that needed changing? That’s really what’s so aggravating to me. They take perfectly perfect stories and “adapt” them with their arcane, devious and moronic methods to be something less than they were, in order to…what? Certainly not to create a work of art. To make money? Well, of course to make money, but art would make money too, so it can’t be that. I’ve got it: they’re idiots.
The really good news is that there are some making the attempt. The aforementioned Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson, for instance. Why did he win the award? Hm. I wonder. Was it because he took a really marvellous story and retooled it to fit 93 minutes and to add the element of a love story? Er, no, it was actually because he made the books real. He brought the story to life. That, my friends, is art. Art is rewarded. Mediocrity is not. Marvel, now that it owns its own studio, is staying more honest to their own characters. Although Marvel is obviously capable of mucking things up, as evidenced by the way they’ve sodomized their own series’. I’m still hopeful that they’ll at least keep things real. In the end, that’s all I care about anyway. If you’re going to adapt a movie from a story that I love, just keep it real.
Keep it real.