By “material,” you mean dialogue, don’t you? Answer: No.
Sin City is a remarkable adaptation. If you think that it hasn’t undergone significant change on the way to the screen, it’s incredibly successful. A graphic novel and a film are extremely different ways of conveying action. You can look at Sin City and marvel at how panels of almost entirely monochrome, full contrast artwork depicting impossible geometry are recognizable in 3D compositions. But it’s not just “Ooh! Let’s set up this shot and have actors read the speech bubbles.” “Okay, let’s move on the next panel.” This is a movie. There are camera directions. Very often, you’ll see several panels reproduced in one camera motion. I was very impressed with one particular reveal of That Yellow Bastard taking a shot, but there are many instances all through the movie where there are fluid movements referencing several panels. Effing brilliant!
The comparison to Harry Potter is a bit inane – it being prose and all. I can’t speak to what I want out of an adaptation of Harry Potter, since, in my opinion, it’s rather poor prose (based on what I could get through of The Philosopher’s Stone,) but generally, if a book is worth adapting, you want to preserve the dialogue wherever possible. Naturally.
Prose is a bit different, in that visual composition isn’t often a part of the art. The only example I can think of where a book made use of artful visual composition and was later adapted for film – I was sorely disappointed, because it would have really worked on film, but they omitted it altogether. (A scene in The English Patient where the character Caravaggio sneaks into a house to steal something, strips naked, and is caught in the headlights of an arriving car just as he lays his hands on the goods, perfectly recreating a painting by his namesake, dramatic point-source lighting and all.)
It seems to me that, the way you’re arguing, you’d consider The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a better adaptation than Sin City. After all, they “adapted” the hell out of it.
Oi! As someone who has hundreds of hours of 1930s and '40s detective drama and listens to it constantly, you’re liable to get my dander up with a crack like that.
“I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.” <–That’s how people are supposed to talk, buddy.
This film exposed a lot of people to Miller’s work who wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, and surely got a decent number of people to go buy it. I hadn’t read the graphic novels before and loved the film.
It boggles my mind to think that a comics fan is actually complaining about this good adaptation which is also a way to get people to read comics that don’t involve dudes in spandex.
I think you all are missing something very deep about the OP.
Here:
See, bubastis has stumbled upon the magic formula. He’s found the exact ratio of source material that should be changed to make fans of the original happy, while also presumably appealing to a larger audience. It’s one-third! Who knew?
I just couldn’t disagree more.
It is the RARE movie when you can hear a character say, “I just kept beating him until I was beating chunks of bone into the floorboards” and have it sound completely reasonable. To make a movie where you can pull that off is a tremendous feat.
I thought that the dialogue – and finding guys like Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis who could pull it off with the necessary combination of gravitas and eye-winkery – was inspired.
Sin City- Shot for shot adaption = Critical praise.
Psycho- Shot for shot adaptation = Critical mauling.
If I wasnt so familiar with Sin City, I would have enjoyed the movie, albeit winced at a few moments of cheesy dialogue and unrealistic guy-gets-pumped-full-of-holes-and-patches-it-with-bandaids action.
Jesus, its only my opinion! I would have liked something a bit fresher! I would have liked if I didnt see action beats coming a mile away, or be able to talk IN SYNC with the actors. Christ on a bike!
Bad analogy. If Miller had redone his Sin City comics with the same panels and dialogue but a different artist, you’d be much closer. Adapting a work to a new medium always presents challenges, and if you can transfer it over without losing the spark that drew fans to it in the first place, you’ve done a good job.
Agreed. We’re saying your opinion sucks. If you’d made a post that dropped the Psycho remake analogy and just said “Sin City was kind of dull for some of the hardcore Miller fans who’ve read and reread these exact stories; I wish he had written some new stories for the film,” then you’d have a much stronger point.
I think most of the folks on this thread are being too hard on you, but I still disagree. The ultimate question about the quality of a movie is “Was it a good movie?” That question does not change if it’s an adaptation vs. an original screenplay. When you realize this, you understand that the “too much change”/“too little change” game is a waste of energy.
If DOOM had been adapted verbatim, all done in first person, no dailogue, shot-by-shot as it was when you played it, would that have been a success? No! Granted, as it was, the movie sucked anyway… Looks like I’ve lost this time. Curse you dopers!! A pox on thee!! I’ll be back!! You’ll all suffer!!!11
DOOM doesn’t have a strong narrative, interesting dialogue, or beautiful sequences, not really: it’s got a claustrophobic feel, satisfying sound-effects, and fast action.
Other than the fast action bit, those are precisely opposite characteristics from what Sin City GN have.
Your analogy fails in several relevant areas. Your opinion about the movie? Nobody can argue iwth it. But the quality of your analogy is something worthy of discussion, which is, I presume, why you posted it on a discussion board.
A video game is unlike a comic in that it puts gameplay in front of narrative. Movies and comics are alike in that telling a story through visual images is a high priority, often the highest priority. Thus, some comics, especially ones for which a distinctive (and already highly cinematic) visual style, can do well as films if they are strictly adapted. Sin City was such a comic, IMHO. The transition from comic to film still changes the product enough to keep both interesting.
Other comics, such as most superhero stuff, cannot and should not be so strictly adapted. It’s very rare that a comic is so visually interesting, or its dialogue so unique, that it needs to be reproduced exactly on the screen to maintain whatever was interesting in the story and characters in the comic.
If you’d made a post that dropped the Psycho remake analogy and just said “Sin City was kind of dull for some of the hardcore Miller fans who’ve read and reread these exact stories; I wish he had written some new stories for the film,” then you’d have a much stronger point.