"Ten minutes you'll be smoking in hell!"
Looking through Empire's previews of coming seasons of films over the last couples of years has been a relentlessly depressing affair. There will come a point sometime in the next decade when there will no longer be a comic book or comic strip that a film hasn't been made of.
I'm not the type of person who dismisses out-of-hand an entire genre or movement of films - I give everything, regardless of its background, a chance. But with these I just cannot summon an iota of strength or excitement. Does the world really need another Batman film, for instance? Didn't we just redo the Batman series a couple of years ago and now they're doing it again? And The Incredible Hulk? Why do we need ANOTHER of those, wans't it only 4 years ago that Ang Lee did his version?
I'm sick and bloody tired of comic book adaptations, I just don't get along with the damn things at all, and now there's more of them than ever. Normally I wouldn't mind them too much as long as there was plenty of something else to see - it's the same reason that I normally don't care about remakes. I actually don't understand why people get so upset about remakes, especially when it's along the lines of, "It's a disgrace! It's ruined the legacy of the original!"
No it hasn't. The original is still exactly the same as it always was, some crummy rehash isn't going to affect its quality or standing one way or the other. I digress. Like I said, I wouldn't mind all these comic book adaptations so much if there was much of anything else to see - but there isn't, really. The great and the good of Hollywood are largely too busy with remakes, franchise-building or comic book adaptations.
What I wouldn't give to see Werner Herzog and the late, great Klaus Kinski let loose on a Hollywood movie shoot. There are just not enough mavericks around these days, not enough borderline lunatics prepared to almost put their lives on the line to ensure that their vision translates to the screen in EXACTLY the way they imagined it. Not enough maniacs who start shooting at fellow cast members because they're playing a card game too loudly whilst he's trying to rehearse.
You don't even really get any stars or directors even taking a chance these days. But then, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez try something slightly different with their directorial and distributorial approaches and what do they get? Practically no-one goes to see the damn films and they end up getting released separately, practically rendering the entire experiment pointless.
So who is to blame? The filmmakers or the film watchers? Whoever is to blame, I still can't help but wonder what would have happened if Kinski had have ended up taking that role on Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Harrison Ford would probably have had to change one of his famous lines.
"Kinski. Why did it have to be Kinski?"
I'm not the type of person who dismisses out-of-hand an entire genre or movement of films - I give everything, regardless of its background, a chance. But with these I just cannot summon an iota of strength or excitement. Does the world really need another Batman film, for instance? Didn't we just redo the Batman series a couple of years ago and now they're doing it again? And The Incredible Hulk? Why do we need ANOTHER of those, wans't it only 4 years ago that Ang Lee did his version?
I'm sick and bloody tired of comic book adaptations, I just don't get along with the damn things at all, and now there's more of them than ever. Normally I wouldn't mind them too much as long as there was plenty of something else to see - it's the same reason that I normally don't care about remakes. I actually don't understand why people get so upset about remakes, especially when it's along the lines of, "It's a disgrace! It's ruined the legacy of the original!"
No it hasn't. The original is still exactly the same as it always was, some crummy rehash isn't going to affect its quality or standing one way or the other. I digress. Like I said, I wouldn't mind all these comic book adaptations so much if there was much of anything else to see - but there isn't, really. The great and the good of Hollywood are largely too busy with remakes, franchise-building or comic book adaptations.
What I wouldn't give to see Werner Herzog and the late, great Klaus Kinski let loose on a Hollywood movie shoot. There are just not enough mavericks around these days, not enough borderline lunatics prepared to almost put their lives on the line to ensure that their vision translates to the screen in EXACTLY the way they imagined it. Not enough maniacs who start shooting at fellow cast members because they're playing a card game too loudly whilst he's trying to rehearse.
You don't even really get any stars or directors even taking a chance these days. But then, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez try something slightly different with their directorial and distributorial approaches and what do they get? Practically no-one goes to see the damn films and they end up getting released separately, practically rendering the entire experiment pointless.
So who is to blame? The filmmakers or the film watchers? Whoever is to blame, I still can't help but wonder what would have happened if Kinski had have ended up taking that role on Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Harrison Ford would probably have had to change one of his famous lines.
"Kinski. Why did it have to be Kinski?"