You’re all nuts. I loved it.
Well…some’yall are nuts.
I don’t think it’s considered a classic because of the story. It’s visually stunning but it’s hard to really identify with characters and their situations when everything looks and feels so artificial. It was so stylized that it felt more like a parody or camp version of the film noir genre.
I like the Asian prostitute assassin’s action scenes in the 2nd act, Marv was interesting because of Mickey Rourke. I also liked the opening and closing scene with Josh Hartnett.
I feel like Zach Snyder was more successful in adapting Frank Miller’s work and the unrealistic, stylized cinematography worked to the advantage of the film because 1) we have an unreliable narrator who might be exaggerating what happened and 2) the way it looks gives it the feel of a myth or a legend as opposed to an actual historic account, as ironic as that seems.
I’m hoping the sequel to Sin City is good though.
It was a film adaptation of a graphic novel.
If you’ve never read a graphic novel (adult comic books) or aren’t a fan of them, I’m not surprised that you didn’t care for it much.
300 was another adaptation of a graphic novel, but they strayed more from the comic book feel of it.
I don’t know if criticizing it for looking like a parody of film noire is entirely accurate, but I can certainly understand why someone might say that. Many graphic novels are inspired by that genre, so a resemblance shouldn’t be surprising.
The following statement will sound ridiculous to some, but I think it rings true: if you hated Sin City, it was probably over your head, or beneath your lofty standards.
It wasn’t paying homage to anything, it was being its self.
Graphic novels and comics are a blend of literature and art, film adaptations of them are nothing new, but I think Sin City was unique in how it stayed true to the original form. This was made possible by CGI, and I hope we see more of it.
Sin City was 100 times better than all of those crappy Batman and Superman movies they have been churning out for the past three decades.
I expect someone to ridicule me for calling a graphic novel a form of literature, but you can find them being studied and discussed in many University level literature courses.
I agree with these statements.
Sin City was a spectacular achievement: a true comic book in moving pictures. It is more faithful to the source material than any print-to-screen adaptation I have yet seen (or heard of). The acting, with the exception of Michael Madsen, is top notch and pitch-perfect for the characters.
And oh! What characters! Each and every person has a backstory; some we see & hear, some we don’t, but everyone has a backstory. No one is a simple criminal or a simple thug or a simple priest… in fact, very little in Sin City is simple, not even telling right from wrong or good guy from bad guy.
And the narrative structure, bringing the end of the movie right back to the beginning, showing us that these aren’t stories that exist in a vacuum, they are interconnected, woven together into this dark tapestry that occasionally shows flashes of passionate color. It isn’t a believable “real” world, but is coherent, temporally oriented and most of all, interesting.
In other words, I quite liked it.
It was a garbage-plotted, boring-charactered, Jessica-Alba-fully-clothed, over-stylized, violent, shallow parody of true film noir. The machismo oozing everywhere was ridiculous. Of course I loved it.
This is a movie, not a Film. I don’t think it’s a matter of “getting” the thing, it’s just that Sin City’s particular style of entertainment isn’t for everyone. The performances were terrific, even if they weren’t always great. Mickey Rourke was my favorite. All involved brought the comics to the screen as well as anyone could have done.
I have just never liked anything Frank Miller did. Perhaps the only exception is that I liked some of his take on a much darker Batman… but even then I think I liked his Batman only as a reaction against the bubblegum Batman we see Adam West play in the 60’s Batman TV show. That Batman is just plain stupid on every level… made more stupid only by George Clooney’s benippled Batman. Frank Miller’s goddamn Batman would give those versions the solid beating they deserve and I appreciate that.
Anyway… Frank Miller just doesn’t seem to have a very wide/varied creative streak. He does his schtick well enough, but it only works for me as a parody of something I disliked even more.
These statements are incredibly arrogant, and deeply misguided. You have just stated that the “problem” is with people who disagree or don’t like this. That attitude is disrespectful and says much about you. it is not an appropriate argument for talking about a movie which is considered, at best, controversial.
Uh-uh. Aside from the fact that The Dark Knight alone is a masterpiece, there are several good movies at the least in both groups. And even at worst, they are fairly interesting.
…No, you probably won’t find many people in the Café Society who would say that.
No, for my statements on the movie:
Sin City was good, and fairly interesting for being quite unique. However, it had significant flaws. First, it’s not a single story - not even thematically. The three vignettes, while good on their own, don’t really hold together or create any kind of coherent plot. Nor are they even really thematically unified, in that they don’t . I despise this form of movie-making; I am not watching a television series but a movie, and I want to watch a movie. Meaning one.
Even apart from the triplicate nature, the movie has a rather self-indulgent tone. It’s not just over-the-top, but positively over-stuffed with characters hamming it up. On average, I’d say this film had perfect acting: specuifically, half the actors were lifeless and half jumped the shark with goddamn rocket boots. And too many characters just showed up with no explanation and no real identity in the film. They were just there, because it was necessary for the plot.
Finally, I didn’t much care for the visual asthetic. The film felt fake to me from beginning to end, because it was fake. The visuals were quite artistic and obnoxiously distracting. While it was an excellent translation of Frank Miller’s art, I also don’t think it was a good idea for a movie.
Which is not to say I hatewd it. In fact, I enjoyed the movie for what it was. But I felt, and still feel, no desire whatsoever to ever see it again. Nor will I pay to see a sequel. It was an intersting toy, but there’s no substance.
Sin City is the best comic book movie ever made. That’s not to say it’s the best movie ever based on a comic book. There have certainly been ones with better plots, richer characters, more nuanced themes. But Sin City is an absolutely brilliant cinematic adaptation of Frank Miller’s work, and it deserves massive kudos for that alone.
I also happen to think it’s a great fucking movie (even if stripper Jessic Alba doesn’t actually strip).
For the record, I’m quite a fan of comic books. But good comic books don’t automatically make good movies (and vice versa). They’re two different media. Being faithful to a good comic book doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie. You need to have somebody who can translate a comic book into a movie.
I freakin’ loved it. This movie made as much an impression on me as Kill Bill’s unexpected mid-movie anime scene.
This was one of those movies that I loved loved . . . while I was in the theater watching it.
By the time it was released on DVD, however, I found that I had no vivid memories of any specifics. The DVD was out and I thought “Oh yeah, I loved that movie! That would be a good one to have in my collection.” Then I never got around to making a purchase because my emotional connection to it was already getting cloudier and cloudier.
The DVD was out a few months, a year, two years, I’d see it on the shelf in the store and think to myself, “Oh yeah, I loved that movie . . .”
To this day, I still haven’t seen it a second time and I now remember almost nothing from it (except that I loved that movie . . .). It’s entirely possible that when I watch it again someday it will all come rushing back to me.
I know many of Frank Miller’s and Alan Moore’s works adapted for films have been marketed as “based on the graphic novel,” but isn’t the film being discussed an adaptation of a series of comic books? The Hard Goodbye (the story with Marv) first appeared monthly in Dark Horse Presents, a monthly anthology comic book. The other stories that were featured in the film were a pair of monthly limited series comic books: Sin City: The Big Fat Kill, and Sin City: That Yellow Bastard.
I very much love comic books although I think referring to graphic novels as adult comic books or vice versa is acquiescing to the popular belief that reading “comic books” is juvenile. I think it was Alan Moore who said graphic novel was just a marketing term that fans latched onto in order to justify a hobby they felt insecure about.
Some of the comics I’ve enjoyed range from superhero stuff like JLI, Batman, Supreme, and Promethea, to the indie stuff like Flaming Carrot, Phonogram, and Grendel.
Nnd I thought the film version was better for it in my opinion. 300 was also a comic book that was later collected and advertised as a “graphic novel.”
Daredevil, when Frank Miller was writing and illustrating it, was obviously influenced by film noir, crime novels, and Will Eisner’s work. I don’t know how it would translate directly to the screen, word for word, but the material itself never felt like parody or camp.
The movie 300 seemed to have more natural dialogue or maybe it was the delivery of it by the actors. Two particular scenes I thought were better in the film. The first being the confrontation between Leonidas and the Persian messenger. The second being the meeting between Leonidas and Ephialtes.
It wasn’t the influences that made it seem like a parody to me, it was the execution of it.
It sounds pompous.
I think the visual design is what made the film interesting, and that was achieved by trying to recreate the scenes exactly as they appeared in the comic book. However, I think that trying to make film adaptations look just like the comic book or graphic novel can be a pitfall if you don’t understand the nuance of the story or spirit of the source material.
Take Watchmen for example. Zach Snyder had many of the characters or scenes look just like their comic book counterparts, making the film look almost like a comic book. But what works in the comic book medium might not work for the screen. For example, Moore and Gibbons portray Rorschach as tall and speaking in an inhuman or very strange voice according to the world balloon styling. In the film Rorschach is shorter than his peers and it’s obvious he’s just trying to put on a tough voice. So there’s not as much surprise when we find out he’s a short little guy.
To be fair though, Snyder took some liberties as well, with the story and design. But I feel that part of the reason the film failed was because of his devotion in trying to recreate the exact look of the comic book.
I would say that Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight, alone, was better than Sin City.
Lemme ask ya: would you consider The Three Musketeers to be a novel? How about Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities?
I would agree they are novels despite them being previously serialized in magazines but I would also agree they were books as well. I wouldn’t consider books, and all that it entails from anthologies to autobiographies, to be “adult novels”.
I think you’re getting a little too defensive of Sin City. It’s so obviously and openly inspired by, and to some extent parodying, film noire that it’s almost impossible to miss. I’m sure it was “being itself”, but “itself”, in this case, is something that heavily borrows from other media.
I must admit I haven’t read Sin City, but a lot of the style of the film is exactly what I’d expect from Robert Rodriguez - heavy style and a hell of a lot of inspiration from other films. I can’t say how much of that is his influence and how much he just found the perfect work to adapt for the way he makes films.
Edit time ran out. My last post should say…I wouldn’t consider novels to be “adult books.”
I think you’d agree that there is a category of fiction called Young Adult fiction, often abbreviated as YA. It follows then that there must be a category of “adult fiction” and thus “adult novels”. The thing is, the singular “adult” is, in our culture and vernacular, silent, unspoken.
IMO, any form of written or printed story, even one augmented by or consisting solely of pictures, that is coherent, once presented as a singular entity for consideration, comprises a novel of some sort.
Marvel and DC occasionally label their superhero stories such as Spider-man or Batman as graphic novels despite it being at times no different in tone from their regular monthly superhero line. For example The New Mutants graphic novel by Claremont and McLeod, or a JLA graphic novel by Mark Waid. To say the graphic novel is an adult comic book is inaccurate.
The content of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen didn’t change once it was collected as a graphic novel or trade paperback. Yet Watchmen #4 wouldn’t be considered a graphic novel.
The collected Justice League of America in graphic novel format by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee wouldn’t be considered an adult comic book.
And as with Peter Pan or 1984, they are both novels, and both books, regardless of distinguishing them as children’s literature or adult literature.
Sorry about the multiple posts but I’m not used to a forums with a 5 minuted window for editing posts.