Form Fitting

Recently I gained an insight on what I’ll refer to as comic book storytelling, though the insights cleaned also apply to a wide variety of genres -- sci-fi / fantasy / action / etc. -- and forms of media -- pulps / comics / television / video games / etc.

The insights were the result of watching -- or rather, attempting to watch -- a recent genre film that for the purposes of this discussion we will say is based on a comic book.

I’m being deliberately obscure here because the filmmakers -- creators / cast / crew -- labored under honest intent:  They were genuinely trying to make the best film they possibly could.

Knowing how difficult it is to get any project off the ground, I don’t want them or their film to feel slagged upon; they tried their best and it just didn’t gel, but they should be lauded for making a genuine effort, not taking the easy way out of so many amateur / semi-pro / no budget / low budget filmmakers who knowingly crank out crap they try to pass off as satires or -- even worse -- homages to crappy old B-movies.

Creator, if you aren’t swinging
for the fence every at bat,
why even suit up?

The film was heavily CGI dependent and almost everything was shot against a greenscreen, but the effects ranged from adequate to good and there was nothing there so jarring that it detracted from the story.

The greenscreening felt more problematic, primarily because not all actors know how to perform for greenscreen, and despite clever CGI tricks, the characters never seemed to really inhabit the locations they appeared in but rather seemed superimposed over them.

Irritating, but not a deal breaker.

The real problem lay in the story itself, how it unfolded, how it followed formula, and how the performers never managed to breathe life into it.

This is because in the end,
the filmmakers weren’t making a film.

They were making
a live action comic book
(or whatever actual media it was).

Here’s the thing about comic strips and comic books and stage plays and musicals and animated cartoons and video games vs films and TV shows:  We tolerate a lack of realism we never accept in live action films.

This is not to say there aren’t stylized live action movies and TV productions, but by and large they’re either rarities or, in the case of TV comedy and variety programs, viewed as more akin to theater than film.

From its very inception, filmmakers vied over The Illusion Of Reality versus The Reality Of Illusion, but in truth both points of view were easily dominated by the default style of filmmaking around the world:  Naturalism.    

From the very beginning, film documented what happened in front of the camera lens.

True, with editing and various visual tricks one could make the audience believe the hero’s reaction in one shot was in reaction to a shot of a tiger made months earlier and in a different location, or that an image painted on glass so that actors could walk behind it represented an actual building and not an optical illusion.

As a result, even the most fanciful films strove to convince us that what we saw unspooling before our eyes actually was happening!

The stage expects us to play along with the actors, and pretend their highly stylized settings / costumes / behaviors represents the real world.

Comic strips and books are just lines on paper, folks, as mi amigo Scott Shaw! likes to point out.  Superman and Mighty Mouse in the same work is wholly acceptable because the audience understands what they are looking at is pure artifice and not reality.

Ditto animated cartoons and video games.  Despite many of them attempting to look as lifelike as possible, the audience understands they are not real.

As a result, those media allow their makers to get away with creative murder.

Drop an actual anvil on an actual mouse from the top of an actual skyscraper and you end up with a smear of gore and fur.

Drop a cartoon anvil on a cartoon mouse from a cartoon skyscraper, and not only do you bypass the issue of what it takes to physically lug 150lbs of metal up to the roof of the building, but the result is a funny sound effect followed by the cartoon mouse being mashed as flat as paper only to pop back to normal a second later.

As a result, the aforementioned stage plays / cartoons / video games / etc. are allowed a lot of leeway in how they tell their stories.

And for the purpose of this discussion, that means lots of short cuts and shorthand.

You’re allowed in comic book storytelling to have characters say and do things that would never pass muster in a naturalistic story.

Villains can be more villainous, dialog can either be lengthy exposition while swinging a fist or a terse outcry that encapsulates what would require careful character development in a film or TV show.

Audiences recognize that as part of the unique style of comic book storytelling and while they might get a chuckle over it, they nonetheless accept it for the sake of the story.

The film I watched felt like a comic book being enacted literally onscreen, not a film story in and of itself.

As a result it range false despite otherwise acceptable levels of technical quality.

The deficiencies leapt out at me more so than other movies I’d call in the comic book style of storytelling only because they were so markedly apparent.

Most films that we call comic book movies (and again, I’m talking about a storytelling style, not the literal source material) are wholly slavish to the wrong medium throughout.

They just feature gaps and weaknesses that should be plugged and strengthened in adapting the material to film.

I feel sorry for the makers of this particular film.  They tried and failed, but better that than not trying at all.

© Buzz Dixon