OPINION
OPINION
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MR NOLAN, DO NOT GIVE FANBOYS
Sounds like a perfect title for an article in a site meant for fanboys to voice their opinions on the Batman movies, huh? If you dig murder threats, that is. So, before you nice people hire the snipers, ninjas, etc., let me elaborate on it.
Of course, one of the main reasons why movies based on comic books end up sucking is because the studios didn´t listen to the fans. Batman fanboys kept telling WB “Batman is a DARK, GRITTY and COMPLEX character!” and the studio still went on and made the two-hour toy commercial that was BATMAN & ROBIN. The superhero movies that get the most praise from fans, such as SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, X2, SPIDER-MAN 2 and of course BATMAN BEGINS are equally appreciated by critics and average moviegoers. Fans care deeply about these characters and know what has made them resist the test of time and remain popular and relevant.
So, all this seems to point out you can’t go wrong with a superhero movie if you just give the fans what they ask for, right?
Wrong.
Unfortunately, just as fans are the greatest defenders of the integrity of a comic book character, they can also be pretty hard to make understand a simple fact: THE MOVIE IS NOT THE COMIC BOOK. It’s impossible, for ten million reasons, to simply take monthly comic books that have been published for decades, that have had a number of different writers and artists with different takes, that reflected themes and tendencies of those particular times, and just put them panel by panel, word by word on the screen. Even if you pick a particular favorite issue of graphic novel or whatever that could, in theory, be replicated closely, you’ll still piss off a number of fans for whom that’s not the particular story or take that deserved to make it to the screen. Plus, as a filmmaker brings this character to the screen, just as any red-blooded comic book writer or artist will have their own take and interpretation of the mythos and will want to add to the legend, so will film writers/directors. Part of the reason why these characters have lasted so much is exactly that they’re flexible enough for you to constantly find new angles on them and still retain their essence.
Most of all, it won’t work as an adaptation if it doesn’t work as a movie. As much as it follows cues from the comic books, it has to work as a story with a beginning, middle and end (and maybe a couple loose ends or a cliffhanger for a sequel) that’s going to be told within the two hours or so that the movie will last. It has to feel as a whole.
This brings me to the most recent comic book movie installment playing in theaters: SPIDER-MAN 3, a movie I found enjoyable, that I don’t think deserves the somewhat extreme backlash it’s getting from some fanboys – which brings us to another typical fanboyish attitude, no middle grounds or gray areas, if it doesn’t rock, it sucks. Yet, it definitely didn’t measure up to the excellent SPIDER-MAN 2. And it’s not because it had less elements from the comic books, it actually has a lot of them. One of the biggest criticisms on the movie is that it was overstuffed with too many characters. Which brings me to Venom.
Fans who followed news and articles on the Spider-Man movies know that director Sam Raimi never liked Venom. I myself can’t blame the guy on that, I don’t get his huge popularity either, to me he’s more a cool image than anything else. Nonetheless, the character is very popular and has a lot of fans. It’s also well-known that Avi Arad pushed Raimi to include Venom in the third movie, for no other reason than to satisfy fanboys who love Venom. The director had a storyline already planned that didn’t include the character, but he decided to compromise and include the character to please his fans. Not having any attachment to Eddie Brock as the built, older guy from 616 continuity, I didn’t mind the casting of Topher Grace and I actually got the idea that he was the darker version of Peter, what he could have become without Aunt May and Uncle Ben’s example to guide him, etc. Once the guy becomes Venom, though, I can’t think of a less interesting, more dull villain on the big screen. Could the character have been more interesting if he was brought to the screen by a director who was a fan? Maybe, who knows, but the fact is, you can tell Raimi doesn’t care about the villain. At the end of the day, his appearance feels forced and does’´t satisfy either Venom fans or those who, like me, don’t care much about him to begin with.
So here´s the thing, ignoring the fan’s will has caused a lot of damage to movies based on comic books, but to throw things the filmmaker isn’t passionate about or that don’t fit the movie storyline just because there’s a fan request for them can be equally a problem.
Let´s say Nolan couldn’t care less about some popular Batman villain, like, say, Bane (I’m speaking HYPOTHETICALLY, okay, I have no idea how Mr. Nolan feels about the character!). But there’s a fanboy clamor out there to include Bane in a Batman movie. Nolan has a great storyline in mind, but one in which Bane doesn’t fit. Then WB goes to him and say, “Mr. Nolan, the fans are asking that you include Bane, it doesn’t matter if you (HYPOTHETICALLY) couldn’t care less about him or he doesn’t fit your storyline, the fans want Bane, put Bane in the movie”. The result, very likely, would be like Venom in SM3: a throwaway character that feels like he was pushed into the movie as a marketing thing, not a true creative decision – then again, hardly anything could be worse than the quasi-mute mongoloid from BATMAN & ROBIN, but still…
So, if you overall feel that Nolan is doing a great job with the Batman franchise – and most fans seem to believe so – you have to deal with the fact that he may not share all the same fanboy fetishes and obsessions regarding the world of the character as you do. And you have to accept that his job is not to just put the comic book pages on the screen. It’s to translate them into something that respects the core elements of the Batman mythos but at the same time feels like a movie.
Nobody can please everyone, and those who try end up pleasing no one.
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