With the debut of the new
box-office smash, The Avengers, it
brought to mind a noticeable trend that has been occurring in the world of
cinema recently. It isn’t hard to notice
that movies based off of comic books and graphic novels have become one of the biggest
fads to show up on the big screen. With
as popular as they have been over the past decade or so, it is almost difficult
to believe that it all started in the US as early as the 1930s (and very late
1920s).
Back
in the day when comics were mostly read as a part of newspapers in “The
Funnies” section or in magazines, the world of cinema was starting to really get
its foot in the ground as it entered “The Golden Age of Hollywood.” Here are some great films that were based on
some incredibly popular strips:
Since these movies seemed to be such a success, it didn’t
stop movie production teams to continue these creations well into the
1940s. During this time, the focus of
comic-related films began to change to feature comic books, along with the
usual comic strip. The first film based
on a comic book, rather than a strip, was the 1941 hit, The Adventures of Captain Marvel.
With the advent of this new genre of film, it becomes
easy to see where the main area of concentration lies: superheroes and their
multitudes of adventures. This was
probably because as years and decades have progressed, so have the abilities to
go around plot points (that were previously impossible to film) with the use of special effects.
A great example of such a plot point that would require
the use of special effects is the hero’s ability to defy gravity and fly in the
sky. In the movie, The Adventures of Captain Marvel, filmmakers actually created a
dummy made out of paper mâché in the likeness of Tom Tyler. This dummy was then attached to four pulleys
that were connected to each shoulder and calf.
These pulleys were attached to a wire that was held at two different
points on different sides of the camera view so that the dummy could move
across the screen.
The 1940s saw a plethora of great superhero films that
made use of such impressive effects, the most notable being movies from the Batman and Superman franchises. There
were also films of Captain America
and Spy Smasher. One of the seemingly few exceptions to the
“superheroes only” rule was the movie Congo
Bill. Comic strip-based movies also
continued to do extremely well at this time, with a bunch of Blondie films along with Red Ryder and Joe Palooka.
While some of the major superhero franchises continued
with one more film or so, the world of 1950s American cinema started to
experience a decline in the number of movies based off of comics. One series that continued to provide
installments over the years during this decade was the Jungle Jim comic strip series.
If the 1950s were starting to make comic fans
thirsty, then they would have absolutely suffered during the drought that can
be considered the 1960s. The only
superhero lucky enough to have a feature film during this decade was Batman.
Other than that, there were no films based on comic books that appeared at
the box office. Contrastingly, a few
movies that were based off of comic strips made it to the big screen. However, the few that succeeded in this task
didn’t do so well with the critics. An
example of such a film is one that was based off Dondi.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that the world of
comic-based American cinema saw another boom.
Captain America and Superman had another film, Spiderman and Wonder Woman had made their movie debut, and movies based on horror
comics (like Tales from the Crypt)
started making their debut as well. Even
though many of these movies premiered on TV instead of the big screen, one
should not count them out of the history of comic-based cinema entirely.
Seeing how this genre of film seemed to flourish
during the 1970s must have motivated the filmmakers of the 1980s to continue
the pattern. Quite a few Superman movies were created, along with
The Incredible Hulk and the horror
film, The Swamp Thing. Other films that debuted at this time were Sheena and Red Sonja, both which ended up flopping dreadfully at the box
office.
When investigating the
history of movies based off of comic books, one can easily see how the trend is
steadily growing as the decades progress.
This is definitely the case when viewing the rise in the number of movies
released from the 1980s to the 1990s, which have practically doubled. It was also during this time that a bunch of Batman movies were released, as well as
almost an entire series of Teenaged
Mutant Ninja Turtles films. One
aspect of this genre in the 1990s that proves to be incredibly fascinating is
the fact that a great deal more comic-based films were released that were not
centered around superheroes. Such movies
include Richie Rich, Timecop, and Virus.
If the leap in the number of
movies from the 1980s to the 1990s could be considered astonishing, then the
jump between the 1990s to the 2000s could cause heart attacks, for the number
doubled yet again. The 2000s also kept
up the same pattern as the previous decade: even more comic-based films that
were not about superheroes were created.
Such great examples would be 300,
V For Vendetta, and Constantine.
With the advent of
computers, it becomes relatively easy to see why the number of films being
created/released doubled in the last couple of decades. With the use of computers comes the ability
to create a vast range of special effects and computer graphics that were
previously unheard of.
For instance, the 2000s
brought on the advent of the “green screen film.” Even though the use of a green screen had
basically become the standard in the making of special effects by this time,
these “green screen films” are incredibly impressive. This is because of the fact that in these
productions, the actors would act most or all of the film in front of a green
screen, while the background would be created later by computers. Comic-based films of the 2000s that used this
method:
Actually, Sin
City, has been regarded as one of the first films, (along with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,
Japanese film Casshern, and French
film Immortel) to use this method of
filming. It was definitely a reason for praise
when another film like this would be created.
It isn’t extremely difficult to see how computer
graphics have improved over the years.
Just from the films mentioned above, the prowess of computers, as well
as the green screen, has made its mark on the world. When watching these movies, it is incredibly easy
to find oneself lost in the thrill of the story and completely forget that the
backgrounds do not actually exist in this world; only through a computer.
Movies based on comics have only continued to be
fad even at the beginning of this current decade, the 2010s. Not only does this genre of film continue to
rise in popularity, it has also inspired a plethora of people to begin reading
comic books and graphic novels.
Another aspect that makes this genre special is
the fact that while creating the films, the directors already have the
beginnings of art direction (while they might not have had that with
novels). For instance, Zack Snyder, the
director of Watchmen and 300, claims that he basically used each
panel as a part of the larger storyboard that would be used to film the
movies. When viewing those movies, it is
easy to see that he kept true to his word.
It’s crazy to see how far the comic-based movie
genre has come since it’s advent in the late 1920s. A genre that was already pretty popular in
its own right has now become a new fad, to the point where at least 2 new superhero
films are being released every year to be that big summer blockbuster. One can only hope that this trend continues,
for comic books have certainly taken the viewer to extraordinary places that
they might have never thought of before.
If you all have the time, this video proves to be
incredibly interesting. It’s always a
great thing to hear how others would rank these movies.
References:
Wikipedia and it's timelines of films based off of English-language comics/comic strips
IMDB
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