Many strips made the transition to film, some well and some badly.
Of course they always have to change something.
Some have been done with modest changes and some very dramatic - adding and subtracting characters, changing settings, and doing things that seem really unrelated.
So what would it be like if the movie treatment was really wrong for the strip.
Blondie, done like Dog Day Afternoon - The mailman goes off the deep end and tries to rob the stamp counter. Just then neighbor kid Elmo flushes a rubber ducky and water overflows everywhere. The mailman is thwarted and can’t escape so he takes Blondie hostage. Mr Dithers comes to try and browbeat him into giving up. Daisy the dog is sent in but bites all the postal clerks. The neighbor suggests distracting him with a sandwich but Dagwood refuses to part with it. …
Dilbert, treated like a new generation for Star Trek - The office is now in space, and every stupid move the boss makes blows up parts of their ship, which he seems oblivious to. Instead of having a bridge for all the action scenes, the meeting room is where most action happens. Wally is now a metal C3PO droid, with no change in character, except he has oil in his coffee cup. Dogbert talks like Yoda.
Luann like Bourne Identity - As a double agent in Russia, all she can think about is Aaron Hill, who is now head of the Swedish delegation to the UN. Her brother is a cardinal in Rome. Her mother runs guns. …
‘The Hulk’, done as ‘Stuart Saves His Family’: “Dad, you’ve got anger issues, and it’s time we talked about it.” (Flashback to Stuart’s 8th Birthday party, when his father Bruce became enraged at the hired clown and threw him through a wall)
Warren Ellis’s ‘Orbiter’, done as a live action movie, with the opening shuttle landing scene intact, and extended to five whole minutes. Also with twenty minutes dedicated to the ‘cleanup’ during the initial investigation.
‘Cerberus’, done as a six-part franchise, with each film running 150 minutes.
For some reason, I’m seeing Ziggy as some sort of silent European art film- the depressing day-to-day failures and bizarre situations of a small man, who is optimistic to the end, but for some reason cannot change his fate. We are all Ziggy. He is us.
Wait, wait, do mean that Dennis would represent communist sympathisers sabotaging American prosperity? Or that he would demonstrate the effects of capitalist idealogy on the young?
How about Mary Worth as a Stanley Kubrick horror film? Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall slowly go nuts in that big empty hotel, as Mary tries to soften the blow with some good old fashioned advice!
Of course, The Girls in Apartment 3G has Pedro Almodovar written all over it! Subtitles actually improve the dialogue.
Gil Thorp cries out for the Wes Anderson treatment, with Bill Murray as the crusty, football-hating dad of Milford High’s star player.
And the four words we’ve all been waiting for: David Lynch’s Gasoline Alley.