The Comic Book Film Adaptation

Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

Liam Burke

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781626745155
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Comics & Graphic Novels Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In the summer of 2000 X-Men surpassed all box office expectations and ushered in an era of unprecedented production of comic book film adaptations. This trend, now in its second decade, has blossomed into Hollywood's leading genre. From superheroes to Spartan warriors, The Comic Book Film Adaptation offers the first dedicated study to examine how comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production.Through in-depth analysis, industry interviews, and audience research, this book charts the cause-and-effect of this influential trend. It considers the cultural traumas, business demands, and digital possibilities that Hollywood faced at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The industry managed to meet these challenges by exploiting comics and their existing audiences. However, studios were caught off-guard when these comic book fans, empowered by digital media, began to influence the success of these adaptations. Nonetheless, filmmakers soon developed strategies to take advantage of this intense fanbase, while codifying the trend into a more lucrative genre, the comic book movie, which appealed to an even wider audience. Central to this vibrant trend is a comic aesthetic in which filmmakers utilize digital filmmaking technologies to engage with the language and conventions of comics like never before. The Comic Book Film Adaptation explores this unique moment in which cinema is stimulated, challenged, and enriched by the once-dismissed medium of comics.

CHAPTER ONE

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The Golden Age of Comic Book Filmmaking

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Adaptation studies scholars have long been sensitive to the manner in which the “choices of the mode of adaptation and of prototypes suggest a great deal about the cinema’s sense of its role and aspirations from decade to decade” (Andrew Film Theory 104). This sociological approach has proven productive as it allows one to move past the research quagmires identified in the Introduction, and interrogate the filmmaking or cultural environment that nurtured the development of a particular type of adaptation. It also allows one to consider the conditions that might have emerged when an adaptation proved popular or influential.

At the end of the calendar year, cultural commentators attempt to assess with newly discovered hindsight the major touchstones of the past 365 days. This process intensifies at the turn of the decade, and so it was on the eve of 2010 that many commentators looked back on the past ten years of cinema for trends and triumphs that could be catalogued and easily labeled for blogs and magazine sidebars. These critics did not need superhuman vision or aerial perspective to realize that 2000–2009 had been the “comic book movie decade” (Rogers). One could hardly miss the garish costumes, superhuman feats, and coordinated colors; but how did it happen? How did a largely maligned medium move to the center of mainstream Hollywood film production? This chapter will apply a contextual approach to address that question.

When interviewed for this study, Batman (Burton 1989) executive producer Michael E. Uslan described the post-X-Men boom as “The Golden Age of Comic Book Filmmaking.”¹ Although a number of reasons have been proposed for its emergence, they could generally be arranged along three lines: cultural traumas and the celebration of the hero following real-life events, in particular the 9/11 terrorist attacks; technological advancements, most notably digital film techniques, which allow the source to be recreated more faithfully and efficiently on screen; and finally contemporary filmmaking paradigms that favor content with a preexisting fan base and an amenability to franchise opportunities. The industry interviews for this study brought a fourth factor to the fore, which Scott Mitchell Rosenberg described as “a changing of the guard” among those who make films and most importantly those who greenlight them for production. In this chapter, the validity of these bodies of opinion will be considered. Despite the enthusiasm in the popular press for clear causality, no one culprit will be identified. Rather, by charting the context in which this trend emerged, one will gain a better understanding of the factors that fostered and shaped modern Hollywood’s leading genre.

“In the Shadow of No Towers”

During the 2008 US presidential campaign, Democratic hopeful, and eventual vice president, Joe Biden described Republican rival and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s policies as “A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11” (B. Smith). A similar assessment could also be made of the many cultural commentators who linked any-and-all shifts in the arts post-9/11 to the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and subsequent events. For example, Jeffrey Melnick’s book 9/11 Culture: America Under Construction explores the proposition that “9/11 has become the most important question and answer shaping American cultural discussions” (3).

Unsurprisingly, as the modern comic book movie trend gained momentum when Spider-Man (Raimi) broke box-office records in the summer of 2002, many commentators and filmmakers were quick to link the unprecedented popularity of comic book adaptations and superhero movies with post-9/11 sentiment in the United States. For instance, when asked why Spider-Man struck a chord with audiences, director Sam Raimi alluded to 9/11, explaining, “These are tough and scary times, and during these times we always look to stories of heroes to show us the way and to give us hope” (“Making the Amazing”). Jon Favreau was more explicit when asked, “Why do you think this period of time is so good for superhero movies?” The Iron Man (2008) director replied, “I think 9/11 … was a game changer. I think people were looking for emotional simplicity [and] escapism” (Huver). Similarly, in a paper for PS: Political Science & Politics, Hagley and Harrison contend that the “post-September 11 resurrection of the superhero genre, particularly in film, is a direct response to the feelings of helplessness and terror that Americans experienced in the days and years following the attack” (120). This position is also held by psychiatrist Sharon Packer, who believes that “interest in superheroes surged after 9/11, as Americans suddenly felt imperilled” (48), while comic creator Grant Morrison succinctly wrote, “Scary times and superhero movies go together like dirt and soap” (375).

However, there are many who balk at this 9/11 analysis. David Bordwell challenged this argument on his blog (later collected in the book Minding Movies), opening his account by sardonically writing, “More superhero movies after 2002, you say? Obviously 9/11 so traumatized us that we feel a yearning for superheroes to protect us. Our old friend the zeitgeist furnishes an explanation” (“Superheroes for Sale”). To better understand what part, if any, post-9/11 attitudes played in the production, promotion, and ultimate success of comic book movies, this section will interrogate whether the 9/11 argument is as all-conquering as Favreau suggests, or as spurious as Bordwell believes.

Do Comic Book Movies Serve a Ritual Function?

To demonstrate the popularity of comic book adaptations, one might simply point to their box-office success, as these films achieve blockbuster status around the world. However, what often goes unrecognized is the disproportionate takings of these adaptations domestically (i.e., in North America) compared to overseas, particularly in the years immediately following 9/11. In modern Hollywood, big-budget films tend to gross a large majority of their box office overseas. Anomalously, in the period from 2002 to 2008, the most successful comic book adaptation produced each year, with the sole exception of the Spider-Man franchise, accumulated the majority of its gross from North America, with the 53.2 percent domestic gross of The Dark Knight (Nolan 2008) typical of the trend. This may seem like a narrow majority, but the differential becomes more revealing when it is compared to other blockbusters released during this time. In the same seven-year span, the most successful non-comic book derived film released each year grossed significantly more at the international box office with no exceptions. This period included two sequels to The Lord of the Rings, two sequels to Shrek, and new Indiana Jones and Star Wars films, with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Verbinski 2006) typical of this pattern with only 39.7 percent of its $1,066,179,725 gross coming from North America—a reverse of the trend found in comic book adaptations.²

Furthermore, comic book film adaptations are at odds with wider tactics that de-emphasize “national, regional, or historical specificities” (Hutcheon 147) in a bid to attract international audiences. If anything, comic book adaptations have increasingly traded on their status as a US entertainment, a development at least partly expedited by 9/11 sentiment. For example, many elements of Spider-Man were augmented to tally with post-9/11 attitudes such as the sequence where New Yorkers come to the hero’s aid on the Queensboro Bridge. Similarly, in the sequel Spider-Man 2 (Raimi 2004), the protagonist’s Forest Hills neighborhood is festooned with US flags absent in the first film, which was largely shot before the terrorist attacks—an anecdotal example of the nationalism that permeates this particular stream of Hollywood filmmaking.

FIG. 1.1 Similar shots from Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. In the first film, largely produced before 9/11, the hero’s Forest Hills neighborhood contains no flags, but the second film outfits each home with its own US flag.

As will be more fully discussed in the next chapter, in the first eight years of the twenty-first century the comic book adaptation developed from a trend into a full-fledged genre. During this time, the films resisted two tendencies of mainstream production. They generated more box-office interest domestically than overseas and continually accentuated their national identity. These two countervailing characteristics suggest that comic book adaptations uniquely tally with US filmgoing interests. However, is this enough to propose that these films serve a ritual function for their most devoted audience?

Before investigating the ritual function of comic book adaptations, it is important to identify the audiences that most often attend these films in the US. Although filmgoing in the US is particularly prevalent among young people (Theatrical Market Statistics), post-9/11 comic book adaptation audiences tended to be evenly split between the four sectors commentators use to analyze attendance (male, female, over twenty-five, and under twenty-five). This development surprised Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo when he analyzed Daredevil (Johnson 2003) early in the trend: “Despite comic book origins that would suggest the picture would play mostly to young males, Daredevil’s audience was actually split evenly between the genders and between those over and under the age of 25” (“Daredevil Hits”). Superman Returns (Singer 2006) continued this pattern with a relatively even split among the sectors, prompting Gray to note following the opening weekend, “57 percent of moviegoers were male and 63 percent were over 25 years old” (“Superman Returns Solid”). Such statistics suggest that the comic book adaptation has wide appeal within the confines of mainstream American cinema’s youthful attendance.

While not subscribing to the ritual analysis of genre, Altman articulates the stance adopted by scholars such as John Cawelti, Leo Braudy, Will Wright, and Thomas Schatz: “By choosing the films it would patronize, the audience revealed its preferences and its beliefs, thus inducing Hollywood studios to produce films reflecting its desires…. Far from being limited to mere entertainment, filmgoing offers a satisfaction more akin to that associated with established religion” (“Semantic/Syntactic Approach” 682–83). Post-9/11, critics often credited comic book adaptations with serving three interrelated, ritual functions: nostalgia, escapism, and wish fulfillment.

Nostalgia

In his response to 9/11, collected in 2004 as In the Shadow of No Towers, Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman borrowed icons from early comics such as Bringing Up Father, Hogan’s Alley, and Little Nemo in Slumberland in which the city was portrayed as a playground rather than a graveyard. Such a nostalgic response is not what one might have expected from the alternative creator, but as the New York-based Spiegelman explains in the collection’s introduction: “The only cultural artifacts that could get past my defenses to flood my eyes and brain with something other than images of burning towers were old comic strips; vital, unpretentious ephemera from the optimistic dawn of the 20th century.” Many responses to 9/11 were similarly filtered through a nostalgic lens, with Melnick explaining that it “is not surprising that following the terrible attack filmmakers would express instant nostalgia for the recent past” (128).

Eclipsing Little Nemo and The Katzenjammer Kids, the mythic status comic book characters such as Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man have achieved through decades of adaptation has ensured they enjoy wide recognition. Although the audience research for this study was carried out in Ireland, a similarly nostalgic current was evident. For instance, a 36–40-year-old non-fan at a screening of Thor (Branagh 2011) described how he would like to see future Marvel Studios productions because they “bring back childhood memories,” while a 50-plus-year-old non-fan at the same screening described how she read Thor as a child. Unsurprisingly for a European audience, this nostalgia was particularly evident around The Adventures of Tintin (Spielberg 2011). For instance, one 21–25-year-old comic fan wrote prior to the screening that he expected, “A fun cartoon that can take me back to being a kid,” while a 31–35-year-old respondent stated “I had read Tintin in my youth, and I would like to read it again for nostalgia.”

Adaptation studies scholars have often pointed to the nostalgic appeal of film versions of childhood favorites, with Linda Hutcheon comparing them to nursery rhymes in that “like ritual, this kind of repetition brings comfort, a fuller understanding, and the confidence that comes with the sense of knowing what is about to happen next” (114).³ Thus, many comic book adaptations, such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four (Story 2005), and Superman Returns, could have benefited from the nostalgia Melnick detected in post-9/11 US entertainments.

However, Deborah Cartmell charts how adaptations will often go further to satisfy “a nostalgic yearning for a sanitized version of the past” (26) by removing elements from the source that might be considered “unpleasant.” A number of post-9/11 comic book adaptations actively partook in this process, striving to provide audiences with a rose-tinted version of the fictional and real-world past. For instance, in modern comics Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor, had become a more complex character, even ascending to the presidency of the United States. Superman Returns, produced at a time when a divisive real-world president was first elected under a cloud of doubt, opted to use the simplistic super-criminal version of the character that harked back to the Golden Age of Comics. Furthermore, the modern film heavily cited the 1978 adaptation Superman: The Movie (Donner) through music, casting, and production design, yet included none of Lois’s pointed questioning of authority figures.⁴ These amendments helped mitigate the darker elements of the source(s), catering to what Cartmell identifies as a “nostalgic yearning.” Martin Flanagan describes a similar strategy at work in Spider-Man, which references Silver Age comics that “anchor the narrative in a register of sincerity that holds at bay more modern ironic tendencies” (147).⁵

While some comic book movies provide their audience with a comforting nostalgia attributable to the long-standing, cross-generational popularity of their characters, these films were also part of the “architectural nostalgia” Steven Jay Schneider identified in post-9/11 US filmgoing. Discussing this phenomenon, Schneider notes that “some audiences went so far as to boo scenes of the New York City skyline absent the twin towers in Zoolander,” while audiences cheered their appearance in Glitter (39).

FIG. 1.2 Images of the Twin Towers and other similarly evocative cityscapes in Spider-Man and Batman Begins.

US comic creators have always had a strong connection with city living, particularly New York. Spiegelman locates the birth of newspaper comics to “about a hundred years and two blocks away from Ground Zero” (No Towers). Similarly, Duncan and Smith point out that since the earliest days of the form, “virtually all of American comics were created by a couple hundred people in the New York metro area” (ix). Consequently, whether the city charter says Metropolis, Gotham, or Star City, all comics are thought to take place in New York, with Batman editor Dennis O’Neil explaining in the Bat-bible, “I’ve long believed that Batman’s Gotham City is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November.” The parallels are also evident in the film adaptations where Superman is clearly seen flying over a New York skyline replete with the World Trade Center in Superman: The Movie. The Marvel Comics characters of the 1960s (e.g., Fant...