There have been many recent superhero movies lately where the hero does not stay true to his comic counterpart. Mainly, I’m talking about the punisher here, whose big screnn outing was a sham… the punisher I know wouldnt play elaborate pranks on his enemies to shake their trust in each other, just so he could finally take revenge, no! The punisher i know would just wade in and kill all around him. Ditto many other heroes, such as elektra, daredevil… they move and act completleey unlike their comic counterparts. And the plotlines are so hackneyed… when there are perfectly good, basically storyboarded plots just waiting to be lifted from the comics!! So my proposal is this: If they wont make Punisher: Mother Russia (And they wont) then why not just use the plot? Its perfectly servicable (lone gunman gets drafted back into military to stage daring rescue in russian missile silo, with a killer twist and excellant dialogue) and would serve any hard-nosed shitkicking main character, not just Frank Castle. And I’m sure that now we arent going to get another elektra movie since they made such a bags of the first one, there are some great elektra tales that could fit the screen, albeit with a different lead character. Heck, if they’re going to waste the characters, why waste the plots too? Batman: The long halloween is an excellant murder mystery, with or without the bat. Heck, you’ll never see it realised on screen, why not re-write it without bats? Any other comic plots that could be re-written as movies with a different lead character?
They ought to take another crack at League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and stick to Moore’s original plot and dialogue.
But back to the OP…
The ideas behind COMMON GROUNDS, TOP TEN and even ASTRO CITY could be re-worked with entirely different groups of analogues and amalgamized superhero characters.
WATCHMEN’S plot might work if Nite Owl, Ozymandias, Rorschach, et. al., were essentially superspy operatives and a quasi-scientific explanation for Doc Manhattan’s abilities.
Warren Ellis’ core concept explaining the GLOBAL FREQUENCY could survive the exclusion/substitution of of Miranda Zero or Alyeph and a number of the operatives we’ve seen in the first 12 issues.
SUPERMAN’s origin is iconic enough to be radically reworked without any overt superhero references. In fact, a quasi-mystical approach to Superman might work even better than the psuedo-scientific one we’ve seen these last 60-odd years.
Someone else should take the core idea behind Marvel’s DAMAGE CONTROL and make an indecent amount of cash. You obviously don’t need to set it specifically in the Marvel Universe to make it work.
I have to disagree with the OPs assessment of the Punisher. Frank Castle when written well is actually a smart and clever bad ass. In the comics Frank has used subterfuge and just downright trickery to get the bad guys. Read some Punisher War Journal for examples. He isn’t all ‘shoot em up Frankie’.
The Name of the Rose was a Batman and Robin movie without Batman and Robin.
Kind of related–Have you ever seen/heard An Evening with Kevin Smith? He talks about a hilarious conversation he had with Jon Peters, who wanted to produce a Superman movie. Only he wanted to do it with no costume and no flying, and he wanted Superman to battle a giant spider. Smith eventually drifted away from the project. Sounds pretty ridiculous, but take out the giant spider* and Peters was basically describing Smallville, arguably the best version of Superman ever to make it to the small screen.
*The giant spider, of course, was used in a different Jon Peters production: Wild Wild West.
It’s funny mentioning lifting the plots from the Punisher for a movie.I always thought the Punisher was lifted from the Executioner/Mack Bolan pulp series of the 70’s. I waited for years for an Executioner movie (at one point Sly Stallone was mentioned for making one) but I figured it was just too violent
I think I know what you’re trying to say here, and I agree completely. The Punisher would have been a much better movie had he fought polar bears at some point. Do you know much about polar bears…?
The Incredibles could have been done as a family of James Bond-type spies, with few script adjustments. None of the basic characters would have changed, & Edna Mode would have been even more “in place”.
I wonder if…?
If it’s been done? Yes. Three times.
Only that they’re the most vicious killers in the animal kingdom!