What is it about Comic Book adaptations for the big screen that seem to go horribly wrong? This is an especially pertinent question to ask considering that this was literally the summer of the superheroes. We had X-men 2, The Daredevil, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Hulk (The Incredible part got lost somewhere along the way). In the past we had adaptations of such diverse works as Alan Moore's From Hell, as well as a whole slew of interesting but flawed Batman and Superman movies. Although I am generally of the opinion that great books when translated to celluloid generally end up less than transcedental, the track record when it comes to comics is startlingly poor.

In order to look at why they seem to be adapted badly, we perhaps have to look at the nature of the comic book itself. The Comic form, for all its recent entrance into the mainstream thrives in a sense on excess. Its major appeal in its early days was as a form of wish- fulfillment to adolescent boys. Of course, since then its has matured and evolved greatly, but ultimately comics tend to give us the unattainable especially in the form of the protagonists superhuman powers be it great strength, the ability to fly, or well, the ability to shot laser beams out of one's eyes. These powers, if one were to think about it carefully, often bends the limits of credulity, but of course to be fair when we read a comic or watch a superhero movie, we are not looking for an explanation of how it is possible, but are content to believe the fantasy. After all, in a sense do we not read them in the first place in order to escape the sharply defined confines of reality?

But therein lies a problem. This love of excess is well and good and works perfectly fine within the medium, but at the hands of effects mad Hollywood producers, that excess can sometimes, well to put it bluntly sometimes seem excessive. When so much heed is payed to creating the feel for the comics such as in the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen for example, the results can be a canvas painted with with all the right colours, looking almost like the original, but severely lacking in depth. I for one believe very strongly that too much effort was paid in the Batman movies to make everything exactly like the comic - from the Batmobile, the Batwing, the Batcave and so on. They spent so much time ensuring that the Catwoman looked like the Catwoman and the Penguin and Poison Ivy looked the part that they seemed almost to descend into cheap imitation. I guess the point is that Hollywood producers face an overwhelming pressure, at least in their minds, from fans to stay faithful to the original, and thus tend to produce effects laden pictures with poor plots (if any at all), little real character development (after all the fans already have a fixed idea what the characters are like) and card board characters out of actors heavily made up to look like the real thing.