Comic to film: The do's and don'ts of adaptation

By Mark Rahner
Seattle Times staff reporter

MARVEL ENTERPRISES Dr. Octopus debuted in "The Amazing Spider-Man" No. 3 in 1963.

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Comic-shop owners don't have Spidey sense that tingles in their heads. It's something a little lower.

When Jim Demonakos saw the trailer for "Spider-Man 2" (opening Wednesday) ... well, we can't print his first, rather visceral, reaction. His second one: "I just got this feeling in my stomach, like I was watching the comic book unfolding on the screen."

The road from comics to film is littered with failures like Spandex-draped cow skulls on a frontier trail — as anyone who's caught a bootleg tape of 1994's laughable, unreleased "Fantastic Four" can testify. Not to mention "Judge Dredd," "Spawn," "The Shadow" and plenty of others. But in 2002, "Spider-Man" became the gold standard, not to mention the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time. Early reports, along with a thrilling trailer, indicate that the sequel could be an even greater success.

You'd think the formula for a good superhero movie is as hard to duplicate as the chemical cocktail that turned Barry Allen into the Flash. But with just a couple of exceptions, Spidey's parent company, Marvel, has gotten closer to it than any other.

Demonakos, who also organizes the Emerald City Comicon, explains, "These guys really have a handle on taking a character that you can be emotionally invested in and turning it into a movie." As for Marvel's biggest competitor, responsible for the increasingly putrid "Batman" series, the long-troubled Superman reinvention and the Halle Berry "Catwoman" flick reviled even before its release, Demonakos says, "It's like DC has some kind of mental block on making good movies."

It ain't Kryptonian rocket science. Our six rules for what flies and what doesn't:

1. Respect the source

	SONY PICTURES The bad guy in "Spider-Man 2," Dr. Octopus.

Studios: Don't buy the rights to a title just to change what made it popular. Last year's disastrous "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (DC) is the greatest recent case study. The jury's out on "Constantine," based on DC's long-running "Hellblazer" series about a blond English rogue of an occult investigator. Due in February, the film has been moved from the U.K. to Los Angeles and stars dark-haired Keanu Reeves.

A bad comic film is one that doesn't take the material seriously, Demonakos says. He cites the now-infamous story from "An Evening with Kevin Smith" in which the "Clerks" director details pulling out of the Superman project after consulting with clueless studio execs, including one who insisted on tossing in a giant spider because his daughter said they were scary.

Creators: Don't just sell the rights and fly off. "Comic-book companies are working directly with studios and getting comic-book movies right. Marvel's a perfect example of that," says Mirko Parlevliet, whose "Superhero Hype" Web site (www.superherohype.com) tracks upcoming comic flicks from their earliest stages. "Avi Arad is someone who directly is a part of Marvel, who works directly with the studios, not just letting the studio take a property and making a movie out of it. Marvel really watches what the studio makes out of it."

Arad, chairman and CEO of Marvel Studios, says, "It's about putting the right teams in place that understand the material, are passionate about the material and are therefore taking it very seriously. Hence it affects the way it's written, the way it's cast and, most important, finding directors who have a true belief in the material. Comic book is great literature. And it just makes it really easy for a visionary director, because you open a comic book and you've got yourself a storyboard right there."

2. Wait for technology to catch up to the hero

	ILM Technology: Ang Lee's remake used CGI to bring the Hulk realistically to life in ways that makeup never could.

When Mr. Fantastic stretched an elastic arm in that "Fantastic Four" movie, it looked like someone extending a glove on a broomstick. If you watched the 1970s "Spider-Man" TV show, it's easy to see how far computer-generated help goes to making web-swinging look natural in the current films. And as pumped up and painted as Lou Ferrigno ever got, he never looked as much like the Hulk as the CGI (computer-generated imagery) version in last year's Ang Lee-directed movie.

3. Cast right, not big

We'd have cast Paul Bettany over Reeves as "Constantine." It's hard to imagine anyone other than Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in "The X-Men." But Demonakos recalls, "The Wolverine casting was ridiculed online. He was too tall, not scruffy, a pretty boy. Yet when you saw the movie you're like, 'Dude, that guy is Wolverine!' "

	ATTILA DORY Casting: Pre-release, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in "X-Men" was ridiculed online. But he rocked.

Using lesser-known actors frees viewers from the baggage of other associations. Fans were at first unsure about "The Cider House Rules" star Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, but he clicked just like Jackman. Soap actor Christopher Reeve was perfect for Superman in the '70s. Michael Keaton is still debated as Batman, while fans are going wild over athletic Christian Bale ("American Psycho") as the new Dark Knight in "Memento" director Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" (due next summer).

4. No hero's stronger than a lousy costume

	Costumes: The bondage-queen red leather outfit worn by Ben Affleck in "Daredevil" was ridiculous. "X-Men" gets it right with cool duds.

The "Batman & Robin" suits with nipples, Daredevil's bondage-queen red leather, The Punisher's cheap-looking skull T-shirt. Some heroic duds have been just that. But some heroes benefit from a new tailor, according to Arad: "We are very careful to make what I call necessary changes. Especially when you move in the art medium. In animation, you can get away with a lot of flow and color and hair and all the kinds of things that in live-action are taking you out of the picture — unless you set up a world for it."

No exchange relieved tension over costume changes between comic and film better than this one from 2000's "X-Men": New-recruit Wolverine gripes about the team's black leather uniforms, and Cyclops responds, "Well, what would you prefer? Yellow spandex?" Says Parlevliet: "With 'X-Men,' when the costumes were first revealed fans hated it, but when they saw the actual movie and how [director] Bryan Singer handled everything, they just loved it."

5. The villain makes the hero

	MARVEL ENTERPRISES Doc Ock's mechanized tentacles would have been impossible to re-create without CGI. Conveying the character's motivation matters too.

In "Hulk," the heavy was Bruce Banner's dad (homeless-looking Nick Nolte) and his dogs — which included a giant poodle. Ahem.

The bad guy in "Spider-Man 2": Dr. Octopus (Alfred Molina), who debuted in "The Amazing Spider-Man" No. 3 in 1963. Doc Ock's mechanized tentacles would have been impossible to sell without CGI, but Arad says making villains plausible is every bit as painstaking. "Today you just cannot get away with world domination. I mean, you can get a little silly. It's OK, because a villain's agenda is always the toughest thing to figure out. Even James Bond every now and then, you look at the villain and go, 'Give me a break.' I see a guy in an interview kill six people. I try and figure out what happened when he was 4, 5, 6, 7. How did he get there? We're all born tabula rasa, so something happened."

6. Weak trailer = Kryptonite

The new Spidey trailer's scene of Parker leaving his costume in a trash can is wowing fans who know the classic "Spider-Man No More" story. "Constantine" skeptics are reserving condemnation based on its strong coming attraction; likewise with Dark Horse's "Alien vs. Predator" (August). But fans who've seen Halle Berry looking like something from a cathouse in "Catwoman's" trailer want to bury it in a sandbox.

"They're not too wild about what they've seen so far, starting with the costume," says Parlevliet.

"They didn't like it all, and that translated to them not liking the commercials and not liking Halle Berry. Who knows what the movie will be like?"

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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