4/23/07
Well folks, I'm back with the second in my "A day late and a dollar short" series of Versus reviews (well, it's more like a month late).
However, before the festivities begin I have something to get off my chest. The relatively few regular readers of my column can corroborate the fact that I am rather hard on the movies I review on it, despite the fact that I have recommended seeing all of them. There's a reason for that. I have been a fan of comic books nearly all of my life, and I applaud the abundance of movies based on comic books that have been made over the past few years. When they are done right, these movies show the wondrous possibilities of the comic genre to many moviegoers that would not even think about picking up a comic book. Of that group, a couple of them might be moved to pick up the source material and see how it compares to the movie, and they might decide to give other titles a chance. Given the fact that there aren't nearly as many new readers picking up comics as there was as recently as the early 1990's, this is by far the best method of getting people (especially younger readers) to buy comics.
Now, when they aren't done right, it can obviously have an opposite effect. Take the Hulk movie for instance. The major complaint about that movie from most moviegoers was the inconsistency of the CGI Hulk's size & appearance through the movie. That was not my major complaint. My gripe with the movie was the fact that they took the one emotional element away from the character of Bruce Banner that made the entire dynamic of the book: guilt. Banner was always racked with guilt due to the fact that he became the Hulk because he was trying to create a weapon of mass destruction with the Gamma Bomb. Because he was caught in the test explosion of that bomb, he became a WMD in his own right, and every life that his becoming the Hulk has cost him eats away at his conscience. Because they took that dynamic away, the film was a mere shell of what it could have been. Oh, and don't even get me started on the debacle that was Batman & Robin (because I had the good sense to not waste my money seeing it after what I'd heard about it).
Now, changing elements of a comic book story to adapt it to the big screen can be benign. They can even improve on the quality of the original concept. For a brief example, I was a big fan of changing the race of the Kingpin from caucasian to black in Daredevil so that Michael Clarke Duncan could play him. The difference was negligible, and the Kingpin went from looking like a cross between Don Corleone & the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man to looking like someone you really would not want to meet in a dark alley in Hell's Kitchen.
I could go on and on with even better examples, but I went off on this tangent for a reason. I have come to accept that not all stories made from comic books are going to be direct translations of their source material (unless you count Sin City, which only survived intact from comic to celluloid because creator Frank Miller co-directed the movie). That is what motivates me to write Versus columns. They're intended to give readers a fairly detailed comparison between the movie and its source material. Now, all that being said, let's get this party started!
Versus - 300 vs. 300
Even though quite a bit of time has elapsed since the release of the movie 300, it is nevertheless a real treat to be able to write the review on it for the Pulp Fiction website. It is based on the comic book of the same name created by Frank Miller, which was his interpretation of the historical confrontation between a force of Greek soldier led by King Leonidas of Sparta and a vastly larger Persian army. The movie, directed by Zack Snyder, is one of the few comic-based movies that actually surpassed the comic book while staying true to the spirit of the source material.
What the movie got right
I have to give major props to everyone involved in the making of this film. They took Miller's artistically sound but very to-the-point story and transformed it into a piece of work that (in my opinion) stacks up with epic movies such as Gladiator & Troy. For the most part, the art direction & storyboards were almost directly lifted from Miller's original artwork. Strong visual scenes, such as a Spartan soldier leaping with sword drawn at a Persian emissary wielding a whip, were translated seamlessly from comic to screen. The design sense of the characters and the CGI elements used in their surroundings are as breathtaking as Miller's artwork (and at times even moreso).
Miller's story, while visually stunning, came off as very rushed to me. The screenplay kept his story intact while focusing more on the interaction between Leonidas and his subjects. The book shows that all of them would gladly die for Leonidas, but the movie emphasizes that he would not hesitate to do the same for them. A secondary plot not originally in the comic involves Leonidas' wife, Queen Gorgo. It showcases her attempt to convince the Spartan High Council to send reinforcements to aid the badly outnumbered 300 against the Persians while contending with a Spartan diplomat that would just as soon see Leonidas fail.
The battle scenes were nothing short of phenomenal, combining the gritty sword-and-shield action of other epic movies with Hong Kong-inspired fight choreography. The battles drawn by Miller seem very tame in comparison.
I have to say, all of what I mentioned above would have been nothing without the performance of the actors in this film. Gerard Butler gives a fiery performance as King Leonidas, and brings an authority to the protagonist role that actually compares favorably to Russell Crowe's Maximus in Gladiator. The Persian King Xerxes is played with gleeful arrogance by Rodrigo Santo (Paulo from Lost), and put a nice twist on his final scene when his face is slashed by Leonidas' spear. In the book Xerxes has a blank look on his face, whereas in the movie he looks visibly shaken that he, a god-king, has been injured by a mere human. And finally, there is David Wenham (Faramir from the Lord of the Rings movies), who stands out in his role as the only survivor of the battle and the narrator of the movie.
Where it went wrong
I can honestly say I did not find very much fault with how this movie turned out. I had not read Miller's 300 until shortly before I saw the movie, but the only scene they left out that I think they should have included was the image of half the Spartan army doing one-armed push-ups while the other half stood on their backs taunting them with gems like "Are you liking this, Spartan?". Also, I was not crazy about the way the Captain's son was killed, standing around like a deer caught in headlights as he gets decapitated. Given the excellence in which the rest of the battle was choreographed, they could have at least come up with a more heroic & visually interesting way to meet his demise.
After the dust has settled...
This is a first in Versus history. I have almost nothing negative to say about his film. As long as you don't go into this movie expecting it to be an entirely factual, History Channel-like recreation of the actual battle, you will be floored by it.
<TOP>4/13/07
Versus - Ghost Rider vs. Ghost Rider: The Road to Damnation
Finally, the Rock(head) has come back...to Long Beach! Three weeks is a long time to be gone, but it was for a worthwhile cause. I went there for an intensive training program for my new job at a company called Victaulic, and I now know more about pipe couplings, fittings & valves than any normal human being should know. I also got the chance to venture into Philadelphia to try an authentic Philly Cheesesteak sandwich (for the record, I liked Pat's better than Gino's).
So, after my triumphant return (and two weeks worth of decompression time), it's time to get caught up on my column writing and deliver the first Versus column of 2007 with the first comic-related movie of 2007, Ghost Rider, directed by Mark Steven Johnson and starring Hollywood's comic book-fanboy number one Nicolas Cage as motorcycle stuntman Johnny Blaze. There isn't really any Ghost Rider comic book storyline that perfectly mirrors the movie, so I'll be using Ghost Rider: The Road To Damnation by Garth Ennis & Clayton Crain as the basis of my comparison.
What the movie got right
To start with, it took many years of on-again/off-again comic continuity and combined them into a relatively easy-to-follow origin tale. Ghost Rider is a character whose popularity has waxed and waned, often because of inconsistent handling of the general premise, and the movie storyline has taken most of the elements that work for the character without all the ridiculousness. I mean, in the 1970's he was a member of the Champions for God's sake! Also gone in the movie is the presence of Marvel's over the top devil-surrogate character, Mephisto. This movie has Johnny selling his soul to the one & only Biblical lord of lies, Satan, referred to as Mephistopheles.
The origin of Johnny's becoming Ghost Rider remains very much the same. He makes a deal with the devil to save the life of a loved one. In the movie he makes the deal to save his father from dying of cancer where in the comics, it's his girlfriend's father. Despite the tweak, the result is the same: The cancer is cured, but the father doesn't know that and ends dying in an attempt to make a supremely dangerous motorcycle jump. Johnny's soul now belongs to Hell and he has nothing to show for it.
In the comics origin, Johnny's soul is bonded to a demon named Zarathos by Mephisto, but Johnny eventually managed to wrest control of that power to become Ghost Rider and avenge any wrongdoing that happens around him. The motivation of the movie Ghost Rider takes its cue from Garth Ennis' repurposing of the character as a bounty hunter for hell, capturing demons that walk the Earth and returning them to hell. Enter the devil's son, Blackheart (ably played by Wes Bentley of "American Beauty"), who intends to retrieve a contract for 1000 souls stolen by the previous Rider (played by obligatory codger/mentor Sam Elliott) to wrest control of hell from his father.
One thing that not even the harshest critic can fault is the incredible special effects in this movie. If anything, the police chase sequence showed a willingness to push the envelope (not hard, considering the vanilla approach most Ghost Rider writers have used in the comics) along with an action-packed chase that actually surpassed the awesome chase sequence in "Batman Begins".
This next bit is going to fall in both the "right" & "wrong" columns, and it is the casting of Nic Cage as Johnny Blaze. This fits the "right" column for this reason: it finally gave Nic Cage the opportunity he has been clamoring for, to play a superhero in a movie. This may seem like an innocuous desire, but I have four words for you that will change your mind: Nicolas Cage as Superman. If that seems unlikely to you, just imagine the horror fanboys across the country felt back in the 90's when we heard there was a strong possibility that Cage would indeed play the Man of Steel in a flick directed by Tim Burton. Thankfully it fell through, but we should never forget what could have been.
Where it went wrong
That last statement was rather unfair of Nic. I like the majority of his work, and I will say this about the casting of Cage for this movie: it showed an honest attempt by the moviemakers to give the celluloid Johnny Blaze a definitive personality. I like Cage's work a lot. When he is firing on all cylinders, Nic is unstoppable. I recommend checking out "Face Off" by John Woo if you want to see Nic in all of his scenery-chewing glory. Unfortunately, this movie script has Johhny Blaze coming across as a combination of Evel Knievel, David Blaine & Elvis Presley with more PG-Rated quirks like a jelly-bean habit and an unnatural love of old-school cartoons. True, this is more personality that Blaze was allowed to show in the comics, but it tended to overshadow what they did right, like his David Blaine-like propensity for taking stupid chances with his stunts. They did not exactly play to Cage's biggest strengths as an actor with this script.
Something else that came out of left field was the fact that Johnny's childhood sweetheart, Roxanne Simpson (the lovely Eva Mendes), was given the occupation of reporter. That is by far the most cliched occupation for a comic book character I have ever seen, and it was a master stroke of laziness by the screenwriters in an attempt to give Roxanne a non-personal reason for contacting her old flame.
Spoiler Warning (skip the spoiler)
I think the thing that irked me the most was the ending, specifically Johnny's decision to keep the powers of the Ghost Rider after his soul has been released from the contract. The character worked in the comics because he had this unshakable bond with the devil. It gave him a reason to keep using his powers for good despite the fact that he would end up in Hell eventually, a plight he is actually in the midst of suffering at the start of The Road to Damnation. In the movie, he has no good reason to not give it up. It could be argued that his being the Rider prevents Mephistopheles from drafting some other poor schmuck, but he's the freaking devil! It's not like he could just get someone else anyway (although it might be a good setup to introduce the Daniel Ketch version of the character in a sequel).
After the dust has settled...
As usual, I am very hard on this film in the "wrong" column. Ghost Rider was, overall, an enjoyable movie experience, and it is worth your time to go and see (although this column on it is so after the fact that you might not be able to find it). It was about as enjoyable as the comic The Road to Damnation. Until recently, the character had a bit of a cult following, but the movie is bound to make the character more appealing to more people (although the Jackson Hewitt tax commercials that popped up in conjunction with the release of the movie probably killed that momentum a bit).
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