Wednesday, March 04, 2009

I saw something online today that said Megan Fox is in 'final negotiations' to star in two comicbook movies, 'Fathom' and 'Jonah Hex'.

While I've nothing against Megan Fox or the above two properties, can we please slow down on the comic book movies?

Here's the deal. I loves me some comic books and on the whole I believe that comicbooks making it to the silver screen is a good thing. Not only do the fans get to see some amazing movies with the old favorites like Spider-Man, Batman and Superman, people who've never picked up a comic in their life are getting to see that comics aren't just 'silly little stories' designed for kids with movies like 'Sin City'.

However, the problem with comic book movies is that the people making these movies rarely give a shit about the source material. Studios are buying up comicbook properties left, right and center because the 'market' is showing that comic book movies are 'hot' right now.

The downside of this Comics = Cash mentality is that the focus is on quantity rather than quality. Right now, Hollywood believes a movie will make money simply because it's based on a comic book, regardless of quality... and once a few really bad movies get made and box office takings inevitably plummet, that's the end of comic book movies…not because the last comic movie was a total stinker, but just because 'People don't want comic movies anymore'.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I read an interview with Zack Snyder, the director of the new Watchmen movie where he said that when he was first approached about making the movie, the first draft of the script was about Rorshach going to Iraq to fight in the 'War on Terror'…which is the rough literary equivalent of buying the rights to 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and turning it into 'Bring it on 3'.

So let's slow it down, shall we?

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