More Movie Stuff
Johanna over at Comics Worth Reading went and saw Surrogates. She gives a thorough review and now I kind of want to see it. So I’ll add it to the list. In case you’re wondering, the list looks like this:
I know, it’s a short list but movies don’t really do much for me. I generally like the movie once I’m there but all the work of getting inside, finding a seat, brushing arms with strangers, then staring at a screen just makes me really uncomfortable. Plus I have a weird paranoia of having to find the exits and if I don’t see at least two I spend the whole movie thinking about fires. What really sucks is a small theater with shared armrests, one exit sign and a scene with a building in flames.
Plus, these days all the movies seem to be based on books. So, I just read the book. I know comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. After all, movies don’t strive to be the book and books don’t generally read like they are movie treatments. But I get this feeling that Hollywood thinks that since graphic novels are visual then they translate directly to movie form and that’s just not right. In fact, good graphic novels rarely make good movies. It seems like bad graphic novels fare better because they kind of have room to grow – Wanted anyone?
The problem, at least to me, is that graphic novels are visual because they use artists. So you can’t just plop some movie star down in a frame, even a painstakingly recreated frame, and have it reach the same level of beauty and context that the artist did. So it’s better to just throw out the whole idea of recreating what an artist attempted. Sin City looked cool and all but, it looked like Sin City so I would tell people to just read it.
The other issue I have with movies is that sometimes, most times you need time. I know while reading Pluto I might spend a good five minutes looking at a picture, searching for clues. A movie will never offer me that time.
Still, movies can be exhilarating. I enjoyed the 300 more on screen. It was like watching moving paper and besides being visually stunning I actually got involved in the fight scenes which I had a hard time doing with the book.
What graphic novel to movie did you enjoy or not enjoy? What’s on your to-see list?
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