The Silver Screen Surfer

Hollywood has adaptation fever. 

While some studios clamor for the latest best-selling novel and others race to secure rights to classic children's books, the hands down favorite production pastime is pilfering the comic book archives for the next blockbuster adaptation. 

This year's haul is headlined by Daredevil, X-Men 2, The Hulk, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Apparently a Spider-man enema was all Hollywood needed to erase memories of the Kilmer/Clooney caped crusader crap-fest.

The next wave of adaptations has already formed a line at the studio gates. The Punisher, Catwoman, Fantastic Four, Wonderwoman, The Phantom, Hellboy, and even Wolverine. 

And sequels to those. Lots of sequels.

If you listen carefully you can hear the franchises being born, and it sounds a lot like a slot machine paying out. If you have a $100 million production budget you can reach into any stack of old comic books and pull out a blockbuster.

That's right. For less than the price of twenty million cups of coffee, you can adapt a comic book and revitalize it for a new generation. Every month you'll receive large cheques in the mail from your comic book, as a show of thanks for your generosity. There are comics waiting to be adapted. Industrial Light & Magic employees are standing by to take your call.

And why stop at recycling comics into movies, when you can recycle comic book movies into new comic book movies?

Rehashing perfectly good movies of recent decades is a perfect example of art imitating life imitating art doing an impression of a fat lady cannonballing nude into a orchestra pit full of coleslaw. Which is to say that a tuba player somewhere is going to be horribly disappointed with what he sees.

They've been striving for years to put together a new Superman movie, but between the substandard scripts and the revolving door of directors and lead actors attached to the project, you can expect to see that movie completed in about 2025. 

Allow me to suggest the only possible solution.

Dear movie studio executives, 

I hear you are trying to make a successful new Superman movie, but you can't gain momentum with the project. Nicholas Cage turned down the role. So did that sissy punk from The Fast and The Furious. I don't think Frankie Muniz is busy next year, maybe you should ask him, in order to complete your hat-trick of rotten casting attempts.

Or you could use part of your planned billion dollar CGI budget to digitize some goddamn working legs for Christopher Reeves and put him in the movie. Everyone will pay to see that. Also, put Michael Keaton in there as Batman, and have Bruce Wayne buy the Daily Planet, and have him give Clark Kent a raise. And when Clark Kent says "Why do I get a raise, Bruce Wayne?", Bruce Wayne will give a little wink and say "Because you are so super." 

And then they will share a little laugh and then go out for beers. 

Sincerely, 

John Q. Moviegoer

I suppose people would complain that Reeves' legs "don't look real enough" almost as much as they've whined the same about The Hulk. Like you could possibly have a realistic depiction of a giant green man smashing up the countryside.

Unless maybe someone still has Lou Ferigno's phone number? No? Good.

Whether the comic movies boom or bust at the box office, the law of sticking to formula guarantees the adaptation train will roll on until every last comic book, from Groo to Green Lantern, has been done twice. Or at least until Kevin Costner casts himself as Aquaman.

Again.