Adaptations Part Two: Graphic Novels
What are your thoughts on your favorite graphic novel adaptation? What things were left out? Added in? Combined? Simplified? And if you helmed it, what would you have done?
Graphic novels already use the language of cinema to tell their action via images with the words being dialog, either spoken or inner.
A name that instantly pops up is Alan Moore who’s works have seen successful cinematic adaptions and who famously dislikes those adaptations. These include From Hell (2001), V for Vendetta (2006), and Watchmen (2009). The director of the latter, Zach Snyder, shot to fame with another graphic novel adaption, 300 by Frank Miller. Interestingly, this was a hard pitch despite the immediately apparent visual flair. To convince the studio, Snyder scanned pages of the graphic novel and added in some simple animations.
Whereas in any other case it would seem that making a graphic novel, or essentially a storyboard sequence, would be enough to prove a work is cinematic enough.
Other graphic novels that have been adapted into film: Wanted, Ghost World, Snowpiercer, 30 Days of Night, and many others.
Drop your thoughts.
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Next week: Games
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love this Michael Dzurak - great point about graphic novels being basically storyboards.