A really quick post because I’m literally getting ready to head out the door for New York.
Just throwing out the question, but does anyone else think that the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie could have been animated instead?
I know I am perhaps jumping to some conclusions here seeing as the film isn’t even released yet, but I seem to have an affinity for comics done as animation rather than live-action. I feel animation retains more of what made me like the comic in the first place you know what I mean?
Sure live-action movies have been made of comics for years, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, all the usual suspects. Some have been good, some not so good. However, dare I say it, I would rate Batman: The Animated Series higher than say the Batman movie by Tim Burton. On a side note, that movie was far closer to the comic than the Dark Knight. That move (good as it was) was pretty much just a guy running around Chicago in a bat suit. Burton on the other hand, made Gotham out to be the dark, foreboding metropolis that its supposed to be.
That’s all I want to write for now. I’ll bide my tongue until the film comes out. Who knows, maybe it’ll change my mind.
I loved Batman The Animated Series.
But to answer your question:
The creation of Animation and Comics have similar obstacles, uniting the two in a realm where really every single thing needs to be accounted for and planned.
In Live Action, you’re working with elements – some of which you can’t completely control.
I liked Burton’s Batman for trying to keep in touch with the comic book style. But I also really liked the Dark Knight for making the story of Batman something we could see as really happening. And that’s what I always loved about Batman was that he could actually exist. No radioactive spider or alien ancestry necessary. I think the Dark Knight was a movie aside from just an interpretation of Batman. It was ultimately a social critique with Batman kind of as the side story.
And when I saw the Joker hanging upside down laughing maniacally, my brain flashed back to a similar scene from The Animated Series. The Dark Knight really was aiming to cut the cartoon out of the equation and reveal to us that this fantasy world is actually real.
So I think whether or not a medium is good for the film depends on what you’re trying to say with the film.
Comic books about heroes are a natural marriage because of how labor intensive comic book creation can be – the energy and concentration it takes to render these muscular bodies in perspective and with expression appropriately matches the content: stories about people who work really hard to uphold social justice.
Live Action gets tricky, because we’re showing people a medium they see everyday just by opening their eyes, so it’s naturally linked to realism and we naturally channel everything we see through it as aiming for realism.
So I guess it sounds like I prefer the Animated versions of comic books more than the Live Action, but I do appreciate the Live Action films as something independently good whether or not it really retained the feel of the comic book.