Movies and Comics

Today some of us had a discussion about comic book movies. It was between myself, another comic book fan, and a non comic book reader. When both the other fan and I expressed our disappointment at the second X-Men movie it was unsurprising that our other co-worker enjoyed the movie and even made a remark about us comic readers being picky (and yes the third movie was even worse but we had been talking about Nightcrawler and got on the topic of his introduction into the world of film). It's only natural I suppose, we do after all have higher expectations of the movies going in... but part of it struck me as funny. After all aren't we the ones who continue to read comic books that constantly rehash the same old stories over and over again? And if they're written well we most likely enjoy said story all over again.


I mean sure, the movies have a lot of discrepancies... but really, so do the comics they originate from. Yes, in the X movies Rogue is jailbait (disappointing male fans everywhere I'm told) but so what? Does it really matter that much - is it really that people want to see an exact story form the comic books - or is it that they want to see their interpretation of the comic? Personally I could care less about the changes made to Rogue's character (although I thought they were stealing somewhat from Kitty Pryde's story when the Hellfire Club was out to get her, but only a bit). However I'll admit I've never been a fan of Rogue and thus have little interest invested in the character. When they changed Nightcrawler in the second movie though - I was pissed. So many people thought he was great in the movie (from what I can tell this came mostly from the opening scene in which he wasn't even acting under his own volition) but I couldn't stand his character. Why, you may ask? Well it's quite simply because of how much I love the Nightcrawler character. I felt gypped during his movie appearance. I don't know about everyone else but I always thought that while religion was a part of Kurt's character, that it wasn't the sole focus of his existence. I always hated the small point in time where he was crazy religious. Seriously I hope they fired whomever came up with the priest collar + spandex costume. To me Nightcrawler will always be this fun loving swash buckler who grew up in a circus raised by gypsies. X2 seriously let me down with that character interpretation.


My point here is that for those of us who have some sort of emotional attachment to certain characters and storylines it's hard to accept something deviating from out own vision.


I wish screen writers would realize this. If they stuck more closely with the comics themselves they'd probably do a lot better with the actual fans as opposed to just trying to make a buck. They'd also still make money in the process as in order for these stories to become popular enough to make it to the big screen they had to be popular with the readers first. If the actual characters and stories weren't worth anything in the first place why would anyone be making a movie out of it? I mean it's not too hard - the whole thing is already story boarded for heaven's sake! At the very least throw a What if? or Elseworlds into the title... that was us comic book fans don't expect the characters we've come to know and love and maybe we can enjoy the movies as much as the uninitiated viewer.