Comic to Movie: Lost in Adaptation

Not long ago I was quite excited to see the movie adapted from the very good comic book, Wanted.  This excitement was spurned by a few non comic readers saying that the movie was great, and so I figured if they thought the movie was awesome then surely it must be a decent movie no matter how it represents the comic.  We watched it shortly after it was released on DVD, and what makes its inevitable suckage so much harder to swallow is the fact that the first 15 minutes of the movie are translated amazingly well from page to screen.  After these moments passed by however, the movie deviates quite a bit but still manages to hold its weight.  Where it really turns up the suck is in the last half, and if you can’t tell already there are going to be some SPOILERS in this post for both the Wanted comic and the “Wanted” movie, but I’ll try to keep them to a minimum.

The comic is written by Mark Millar, and as such is full of cussing, mature content, and some generally awesome observations of everday life.  It is drawn by the very talented J.G. Jones who presents extraordinary things in a very realistic fashion, and perhaps the greatest achievement of the comic is the excellent and these days all too rare synergy between writer and artist.  It also gets a bonus that it is not a continuing series, but a limited run of six issues, which lately are the only kinds of comics I can bear to read.  The premise of Wanted is surprising, it takes place in a semblance of the modern world, except that super villains exist and are a part of a super secret organization of villains that can do whatever the hell they want and get away with it.  The idea is that the villains finally decided to all team up and take out the heroes years ago, and have altered the world and history so that super heroes are only remembered as fairy tales and in comic books.  It almost borders on creepily plausible, but they don’t pull any punches when it comes to the villain concepts and that keeps the book grounded pretty strongly in the fiction genre. 

The story follows the son of the greatest assassin in the world, who is unaware of his father’s profession and is taken from his dull urban-office lifestyle and thrust into the shoes of a super-powered villainous master of crime.  It’s really well done too, but I wasn’t all that surprised when I first read that they were changing much of the premise in order to make it into a movie.  It was a shame, really, considering how many super hero movies there are now the comic as written could probably be turned into an equivalent quality movie.  Instead somewhere along the way they decided to scrap the entire thing, and come up with a story that is “more believable”.  The problem is, they didn’t do this at all, instead they’ve replaced what was an intriguing concept amongst comic books and written one of the most ridiculous plots a movie could ever have.  The movie takes place in the modern day world, but instead of super villains the group is a secret fraternity of assassins who kill people to save the lives of others.  That isn’t so bad, and I knew as much from the trailer before I even saw it.

As I said before, the first 15 minutes of the movie are pretty spot on and almost exactly what I was expected and what I wanted to see.  The whole thing falls apart when they introduce elements that are grossly LESS believable than the premise of the comic would have ever been, like the fact that the fraternity of assassins get their targets by reading the skipped stitches on some giant loom which continuously weaves strands of fabric.  They added some history about a mason-like order of weavers in the middle ages who started it all, and apparently knew binary and could read it when the loom messed up on its infinite string of stitching.  The names that came out of this binary loom o’ fate were supposedly people who would end up killing lots of other people, and thus had to be taken care of.  This is crap.  It’s less believable than the comic plot would be, and it’s 100x less creative as well.  Stir in some very cliche villain plot, and an attempt at keeping the huge twist from the comic in tact in the movie, and you get a film that doesn’t even succeed at being a good action movie.

Why does this matter so much to me?  Well, I tend to be extremely optimistic when it comes to movie adaptations, but Wanted has single-handedly put a strong fear into my heart about some upcoming movies that I desperately hope don’t suck as much as it did.  The first one is the supposed Cowboy Bebop movie, while I don’t really see the need for a movie because the anime was good enough on its own, I could see some merit in a flesh and blood interpretation of the characters.  I cannot, however, imagine the movie having ANYTHING to do with Keanu Reeves.  Unfortunately, this appears to be happening, and with him as Spike no less.  I’m a decent enough fan of Keanu, unlike most people, but that is one role I think he will absolutely murder.  My biggest fear is that the movie will come out, wreak to high hell, and soil people’s impressions of the anime who have never seen it.

Next, and certainly much higher on my list, is the Watchmen movie coming out in three weeks.  The first time that I read the trade I was dumbfounded and didn’t completely grasp the whole thing, but just a month ago I read through it a second time and have to say it definitely deserves the praise that it gets from almost everywhere.   It is such a masterfully created comic that I share many people’s fears that it could never be adequetly made into a movie, however I also see a great benefit in bringing the superb story and awe-inspiring visuals to the screen, and it could stand to be one of the best superhero movies ever made in the same way that the comic stands out.  I’m extremely hopeful about it, but again Wanted has proven to me how badly a comic-to-movie adaptation can be screwed up.