The Revenge Of Movieman!!!
Its not like this hasn’t happened before: 1978 saw the start of the Superman films in the form that we know now, whereas Tim Burton’s wonderfully dark vision brought Batman back to the big screen in 1989, although it then suffered a horrific fall from grace as a result of Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin (1997).
However, this new rush of comic book adaptations is mainly down to the success of X-Men, and the arrival of the man who prompted Marvel Comic’s revival, Avi Arad. Marvel had attempted to sell their comics at the cinema throughout much of the nineties, with easily forgettable flops like The Punisher in 1990, and Captain America in 1991. Arad had a vision to push Marvel’s superheroes into the 21st century, a vision made possible only by the kind of special effects that started to appear in the mid-nineties.
And so, X-Men was reborn and Marvel had their long hoped for revival, leading to not only the second X-Men instalment (and, by the looks of it, at least one more) but to other comic adaptations. Last year’s Spider-Man was 2002’s bestseller, with one sequel already planned. This year we have already had Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck, also with at least one planned sequel and a spin-off movie, and look out in summer for The Hulk, directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee.
And the list doesn’t stop with summer: look forward to Iron Fist, starring Ray “Darth Maul” Park, Ghost Rider, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man and a new Superman sequel – although finding an actor to take on Christopher Reeves’s role is proving difficult for the men at Warner Bros.
So as Marvel are on a roll with the X-Men and their other heroes, and with DC Comics fighting back to reclaim a piece of the action with Superman and Batman, the superheroes look set to reign over the big screen for the foreseeable future, creating a whole new breed of cinema-goer: the comic fan who goes just to pick out the glaring errors in the films.
This trend haunts any film adaptation from another media. Avid fans of Lord of the Rings are constantly reminding us of how annoying even small changes to the plot can be when they reach the big screen. But should this really matter? The point of a film adaptation (along with creating lots of money) is to give the original subject a new lease of life. Comics are selling better now than they have for years, while JRR Tolkien’s family must be rolling in cash. More importantly, audiences are happy, as shown by the critical and commercial success of many of these films. So forget the cynics who love to hate this genre, and get down to the cinema to relive your youth – or someone else’s if you are too young to remember it first time round.
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