It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s time for our weekly discussion post, where you determine the topics.
As usual – talk about whatever you like as long as it’s related to movies, TV or Screen Rant itself.
Apr 8, 2009 by Vic Holtreman
Open Discussion – April 8, 2009
TOP GALLERIES
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‘Walking Dead’ Season 3 Preview Reveals The Prison & Michonne [Updated] 
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@Vic Point taken. But I still feel there are very few films that scream – ‘never should have been made’. I hear people callin every other film that.
An example – ’3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain’. Every last copy of that movie should be burned.
@ Richard and Ken
Yeah I was really disappointed with who they chose to kill off TSCC last week. I’d like to see the series continue.
I was equally as disappointed to see what happend to Dahpne’s character TWICE on Heroe’s. She was great eye candy for the show. Hope to see her in other stuff in the future.
just a little bit of venting on my part here….
I agree on the Firefly wishes/dreams but since Nathan Fillion has Castle doing well and Josh has Dollhouse in the works, methinks it is just a pipedream. It was a good universe and Josh had a great place to tell stories and a good cast to make it fly and boy they had that chemistry, just like The Wonders in That Thing You Do!, they just had it…..damn those Fox folks! (mustave been the same guy who axed The Lone Gunmen)
My personal gripe is that there is all of this fiction out there to make good movies out of and the studios are simply too damn lazy to read a book and visualize a possible motion picture out of it. I find that it’s no damn surprise that so many graphic novels are being made and greenlighted for films because the story boarding is already done for them, so there’s a great way to skim off the top. I hate to say it, but not every comic book or graphic novel needs to be translated to the screen.
I could also do without so damn many remakes or rehashing of old 60′s and 70′s series….what’s next a redo of F-Troop?
One modest proposal, how about some intelligent crime movies based on Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr’s/Burgler books? Or someone who won’t make a complete travesty of a Carl Hiaasen novel.
Yah Mandarr, and it was just out of nowhere right?? LMAO
It’s not like it happens during some epic firefight and during some great heroic moment, it was like one second this character is there, the next second this character is dead, and it was like “wtf?”
What the heck happened to Molly on Heroes?
piratedan,
The 1987 film Burglar starring Whoopi Goldberg
was based on lawrence blocks ,
The Burglar in the closet.
and she played Bernie Rhodenbarr.
I never read the book .
I dont know how close it was to the book,
but I enjoyed the film.
@Gary
They borrowed the burgler concept and that’s about it. The espionage angle, the gender, the job setting and story itself bears no resemblence to the actual story. The stories are a nice change of pace where the burgler has to become the detective in order to stay outta jail. Usually the stories deal with murder and Bernie happening to burgle the wrong place at the wrong time.
@ Gary X2
my bad, I had that cross wired with Jumpin Jack Flash (why did I do that?) I guess it shows how memorable Burgler was I guess. But yeah the concept holds true, gay best friend (Bobcat Goldthwait), bookseller by day, secodn story woman by night. She has to solve the crime to save her own bacon and NY Cops on the take. They reversed genders on the primaries just because I suppose.
Yeah Ken I definately wasn’t expecting that character to go out like that. It was as if the character was caught by a stray bullet.
What’s up moviefans?
I was hoping you guys could help me understand a certain perspective.
I LOVE superhero flicks and in my heyday I was a complete comic book geek, well at least for the few I liked. And like many others, when ‘Blade’ inspired filmmakers to take a second look at the market for comic-book-films it was an exciting time (and has been ever since).
Even though, I’m sure many die hard fans would agree that 75% of these movies don’t do justice to the source material, I never imagined the day that I would be able to watch Spider-Man swinging through skyscrapers and clinging to walls, Wolverine scrapping with Sabretooth, Iron Man rocketing through the sky or the Batman being driven to the edge by the Joker (again).
For any comic book fan, surely their stories have never come more alive.
That being said, the only thing that I can’t stand is when source material is betrayed, ignored or arbitrarily changed and the changes do not make for a better film. Great examples are the X-Men films, all of them and Spider-Man 3.
In those films plenty of pertinent storylines were ignored and others were made up – none of that writing gave us better pictures.
My question is, then, why do many complain when things are changed in out comic book adaption, or any for that matter, games, cartoons, heck even board games are being adapted (again). But, when other out-of-the-world changes are suggested you support them?
Example given: Vin Diesel. I admit I am extremely biased, I think he started out pretty much talentless and has gained a little a long the way. From what I have seen, the directors of his films (i.e. Steven Spielberg) determine the quality of the performance we see. The best performance I’ve ever seen from him, none of his fans seem to mention: ‘A Man Apart’. I have never seen more depth than that in any character he has ever played. But I largely attribute that to the director.
Can we at least meet at some common ground on the agreement that Diesel is no ‘great’ actor and his physique is why he is usually casted?
Why do you guys think that he CAN and SHOULD play iconic comic book character like Dr. Doom or Venom?
1.) They are both complex characters, requiring an actor being able to showcase depth in order to be portrayed accurately. (Liam Neeson for Doom anyone?)
2.) Diesel looks NOTHING whatsoever like the characters and in no natural way can he possibly ever.
So…. why would he be a good choice for maybe the only chance we would have at seeing the two villains portrayed the RIGHT way?
On another note: why is it cool to change the races of comic book characters from Caucasian to something else? But, and I’m certain, that is Spawn, War Machine, Blade or the Black Panther was portrayed be a Caucasian actor people would be in an uproar.
Necessary Disclaimer: This is not about any kind of racial discrimination; this is about the question of adhering to source material. To make that clear: I am ‘African-American’ an absurd label in and of itself but I am also a comic book fan and I don’t understand the mentality of changing a characters race. That does not ‘make it work better on screen’.
An example I think I might have given already: Steve Rogers, I find it meaningful that he has blonde hair and blue eyes — Hitler’s idea of perfection, fighting Hitler’s ideas. Albeit a rumor but there were plenty of people that were excited at the idea of Will Smith playing Cap or Beyonce playing Wonder Woman…. ridiculous (that’s my opinion of course).
I hope you guys can help me better understand this outlook.
HK, first of all, do you really think it’s a great idea to cite A Man Apart as Vin Diesel’s best role? Because that movie was almost universally panned by every critic around, lol. I enjoyed it, but it’s only because I’m a sucker for revenge films.
Anyway, I completely agree with you on the race issue. You can look at the Will Smith as Captain America thread to read my opinion on that completely, but I am Asian and if they would change the races of any character to Asian, I would be against it unless they were Asian to begin with. A good percentage of the people who will be watching that movie will be fans of the comics. Why let them down by changing too many things? It’s not like they can’t find any white people who can act who can play the role… As long as the person can act, it’ll be much better if he can also at least look like him/her.