The Screengrab

Let it never be said that the European film industry is so arty that it doesn't know a cash cow when one comes rambling by.  In fact, Europe's reputation as a bastion of filmic integrity rests largely on the fact that, as a rule, only the best of their films are exported to the U.S.; we rarely see their big dumb moneymakers, which, in the Old World as the New, tend to be noisy action pictures, dopey romances and lowest-common-denominator comedies.  Regardless of the assumptions some people make about Euro-film, producers over there aren't banking on a new Pasolini to pay for their winter vacation.

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Adaptations of Marvel Comics have been doing great business at the box office for almost ten years now, from X-Men to Spider-Man to Iron Man.  And, just like in the comics, when one creative team doesn't find an audience, the big bosses at Marvel Films have been more than willing to try again with new writers, directors, and stars; Fantastic Four wasn't a critical success, but it made enough money to spawn a sequel; Ang Lee's Hulk was an ambitious letdown, but Marvel handed the property over to Edward Norton for a second chance; and The Punisher is being given another go-round despite two dismal adaptations so far.  The one Marvel superhero franchise that hasn't been talked up for a reboot so far has been Daredevil (and its even worse spin-off, Elektra).  That's probably because the original -- helmed by a hapless Mark Steven Johnson and starring an out-of-it Ben Affleck -- was such a piece of junk that no one wanted a second try at it.

That may be about to change.  20th Century Fox's co-chair, Tim Rothman, insists that the studio will be pairing with Marvel Films to produce another installment of the adventures of everyone's favorite blind lawyer/costumed vigilante; he's just not saying when.  Or who.  Or where, how, or perhaps most importantly, why.  In a cagey interview with IESB, Rothman says the deed will get done, but fails to name names, and cites a curious precedent:  "I think that the thing The Hulk showed...is that it is possible, that if you really do it right the audience will give you a second chance."  Exactly what was done right about Norton's Hulk reboot and exactly who gave it a second chance is unclear:  the movie was tepidly reviewed, and made almost exactly as much money as Ang Lee's famouse 'failure'.  But hey, the spirit is willing even if the facts are weak.

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Despite the fact that The Dark Knight has made roughly eighty-five kerjillion dollars on its way to breaking nearly every box office record since the dawn of motion photography, DC Comics -- and, by extention, their parent company Warner Brothers -- is widely perceived as the big loser in the battle of superhero movies.  Much as Marvel Comics did in the early '60s, Marvel Films -- the people responsible for Iron Man, Spider-Man and the X-Men franchise -- has largely trounced what it used to call its "Distinguished Competition".  Although both companies have turned their franchise characters into successful movies, Marvel's have generally been seen as more successful, more entertaining, more true to their comic book origins, and most of all, easier to get made.  While DC continues to farm its characters out to various studios, Marvel has consolidated its filmmaking power into its studio arm, ensuring a production continuity that provides another curious parallel to the '60s, when the more coherent continuity of Marvel's comics appealed to readers. 

This is a situation that Warner Brothers, who's been making movies even longer than DC has been making comics, is eager to change.  In an article in the latest Variety, Warner execs and DC bigwigs alike discuss what's being done to avoid the sort of missteps that have led to their being thought of as the second-tier player in superhero films.  From greenlighting unprofitable tripe like Catwoman to dragging its feet on potential blockbusters like Wonder Woman and Justice League, DC's film development players have made a number of high-profile mistakes (let's not even speak of the botch-job that was the making and marketing of Superman Returns) that have led them to be seen as failures despite having put out the biggest blockbuster in four decades.  

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Marvel's recent forays into the world of superhero films have been dynamite.  With the Spider-Man franchise more or less held up as the gold standard of super-action, the X-Men movies still holding up strong despite the disastrous third installment, the recent Iron Man film reminding everyone of how much fun comics are supposed to be, and even the Hulk reboot carrying with it the perception of success even though it basically matched the box office numbers of its unfairly vilified Ang Lee predecessor, it's easy to forget they're plenty capable of super-duds.  The 2003 adaptation of Daredevil is one of Marvel's few notable duds (the less said about the Elektra spinoff the better); a lukewarm lead performance by Ben Affleck, a morally and technically confused plot, and uncertain direction by Mark Steven Johnson were largely to blame.

Still, for comics fans, the character has a lot of life to give, and most devotees of the comic -- particularly of the so-called "Born Again" plot arc of the 1980s, with its stark religious imagery, sense of moral atonement, and brutal, noirish crime elements, all of which were present in the 2003 movie but ineptly handled -- would be more than willing to give a chance to a potential remake.  And while there's nothing official in the works, according to Geoff Boucher, proprietor of the L.A. Times' genre-driven "Hero Complex" blog, if a remake ever gets made, it may benefit from an infusion of a much more dynamic, enthusiastic and charismatic lead actor in the person of Jason Statham.

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As more and more movies are made from comic books, the issues of creator's rights will increasingly pick at the film industry.  With Marvel and DC products, it's generally not an issue -- not only are most of the creators long dead, but the characters themselves are corporate properties, held by two huge companies and not beholden to any single artist or writer.  With independent comics, however, the issue grows much more complex.  Some creators will be happy simply to sell the rights to their characters and stories for the kind of huge paycheck that only Hollywood can write; others will insist on being involved, to one degree or another, in the production of any film based on the characters they created.  Frank Miller represents one extreme; displeased at the prospect of what liberties the movies would take with his characters, he decided to learn the film business himself so as to be able to exert maximum control over his properties in 300  and Sin City.  (Although he didn't create the Spirit, he's taking a similarly proprietary approach in the creation of that movie.)  Mike Mignola represents perhaps the oppisite end of the spectrum:  always fiercely protective of the Hellboy character from the time it first appeared in Dark Horse Comics, he has learned when it's proper to let go of his creation in order to see it succeed on the big screen.

In an interview with Comics2Film regarding the new Hellboy 2:  The Golden Army movie, which opens in wide release this weekend, Mignola discusses the differences between the comics and the film, the trust he came to develop with director Guillermo Del Toro when it came to creating the look of the movie, and how he had to learn when to let go of his own beliefs about what the movie should be and how it shouldn't be necessary for there to be major divergence between the two.  "The first film was a loose adaptation, but it was coming off my work, and it was basically taking the Hellboy universe that I had created and translating it into del Toro's world.  The second film, we chucked that idea after about eight hours because even in the first film, that character is already veering away from the world I created in the comic," says Mignola.  "I know in the first film, he was making conscious decisions to try to suggest certain things that I do in the artwork...I'd love to think that he got some of that from studying my comic, but I think he's just a very careful craftsman."

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Hey, all the cool kids are doing it.  With Andrew Osborne posting his favorite films of the first six months of 2008 last week, and Paul Clark doing the same only yesterday, who am I to drop the ball?  This list, already heavily revised just since last week thanks to some illuminating July 4th viewing, will no doubt undergo serious revision before anything on it makes it to a Best of 2008 list; living in a city where first-run movies are hard to come by unless they're American and released by a mainstream production company, I've come to reply quite heavly on home video releases, film festivals, and other avenues of distribution that make assessments of this sort quite difficult so early in the year.  That said, here's what's flicked my switches so far in a year that follows one of the best in recent memory.

My top five:

1. WALL*E - They say that the studio system is dead, and that the releasing company no longer tells you anything about the quality of the film.  That's true to an extent, but Pixar is a glorious exception to the rule.  The computer animation studio has hardly released a single film during its entire existence, and their latest, concerning a robot whose job is to clean up the detritus of a dead world, has raised the wrath of conservatives while managing to be perhaps the greatest movie Pixar has yet made.  Especially daring because it largely abandons the clever dialogue of previous releases, it instead gives the eyes a feast like they've never seen before throughout its long periods of silence.   An astonishingly successful film with heart, spirit and intelligence, proving that great art can be commercial.  Or vice versa.

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Yes, it's All-Lawsuit Day here at the Screengrab, your one-stop shop for bizarre Hollywood litigation.  And they don't come much more bizarre than the case of Adams vs. Marvel, Paramount, the story of which comes to us courtesy of a trade magazine called Photo District News. 

Here's the skinny:  the Adams in question is one Ronnie Adams, a Los Angeles-based freelance photographer (as he calls himself), or paparazzo (as his detractors would term him) who was in the employ of the JFX Agency last summer when he took some illicit snaps of the filming of what would become the blockbuster hit Iron Man.  Marvel and Paramount, of course, would be the movie studios who produced and distributed that very movie -- in which one can see, for about three seconds of screen time, a fake newspaper headline under which is a photograph strongly resembling one that Adams says was his.

That's where it gets strange, because Adams -- who was, as do all paparazzi, taking pictures of a closed set, an activity of extremely dubious legality that is only not prosecuted because of the difficulty of enforcing the laws against it -- is suing Marvel and Paramount for unlawfully infringing his copyright and engaging in unfair competition against him.  Paramount had seen the illicit snaps on an entertainment website and demanded that they be removed, seeing as they constituted...well, a copyright infringement.  That's nothing new, of course, so the reat twist comes in when Marvel used the snaps in the film itself without compensation.  So, what Adams is actually seeking is monetary compensation from the companies over the use of photos he wasn't allowed to take in the first place.  It's not as if his case is without merit -- if true, it means that Marvel and Paramount were indeed using something that kinda sorta didn't belong to them -- but Adams is making a claim based on what is, technically, an illegal activity, which isn't something a judge is likely to want to admit into precedent.

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We're not too cool to admit it:  what with all the Marvel Films pictures coming out, and the Iron Man movie being so universally well-recieved, and the movie franchise taking a smart, fan-friendly approach to continuity and all, we here at the Screengrab are actually starting to get a bit nostalgic for the days when comic book adaptations really, really sucked.

Not that they don't suck now, at least on occasion.  It's just that now, when a superhero movie sucks, it sucks in a big, expensive, ambitious, spectacular way.  Back in the day, they sucked because they were made by hacks who spent about eight dollars on the whole production and farmed out most of the work to their nephew who used to work in a group home.  Don't believe us?  Take this, Robert Downey Jr., you smarmy sophisticated so-and-so:

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With Iron Man looking to be a runaway success, Marvel Comics' film production arm is naturally looking to capitalize on the box office take to move ahead with production on future superhero franchises.  So what comic book superhero is next for the House of Ideas?  How about...all of them?

In its quarterly earnings report, Marvel discloses (among other things, including that it made enough money this year to buy Stan Lee a Silver Surfer-themed iron lung) that it's in the process of developing a boatload of new multimedia projects for release in the next four years.  In addition to a plethora of video games, TV shows, animated series and direct-to-DVD animated features, Marvel Film -- the company's in-house production unit -- has scheduled for release The Incredible Hulk, an Iron Man sequel, a Thor movie, a Captain America solo adventure, an Avengers team picture, and, of all things, a feature film starring perennial sad-sack second-stringer Ant-Man.  (We're hoping that this one sticks to the current comics approach to the character and plays as straight-up satire.)  In addition to all of that, Marvel has two licensed properties set to release in the next year:  a Punisher sequel, entitled War Zone, is releasing through Lionsgate this Christmas, and an X-Men prequel, entitled Wolverine, drops a year from now through Fox.  All that, and no Dr. Strange?  I guess no one wants to take on the supreme challenge of out-acting Peter Hooten.

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