Powers: Adapting Comic to Screen - In recent weeks, speculation with the Powers film adaptation has been running rampant. To squelch the proverbial fires of the rumour mill, Film Squash had the opportunity to sit down and exchange a few words with Michael Bendis, creator of the comic, and the production team of the film to shed a bit of light on the project.
When asked about certain tropes Bendis would like to see in this screen adaptation of his comic, he responded reminiscent of old Superman (Fleischer, 1941): "I think a lot of us remember the super-imposed flashes of optimistic news paper headlines in those shorts. This relationship with media for the superhero genre is a long-standing trope. In [Powers] we included reporters on television running along the bottom of the pages, underneath certain scenes, in order to establish parallels and contrasts. Really, what I'm saying is that I'd love to see these images of television reporters included in the film. Whether it's superimposed like the old Superman shorts' headlines, or in a more innovated fashion that pushes the boundaries of the genre, I’d like to see something that establishes this among film’s long standing superhero genre."
The production team of this film, however, had even more to say: "While graphic novels such as Watchmen (Snyder, 2008) exhibit close up and personal violence which earns them their R rating when adapted to the screen, Powers does not include violently graphic images. Powers demonstrates what Scott McCloud explains to be “blood in the gutters” in his textbook, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. There are very simple fight scenes that merely depict a man falling while a fist is raised by another character. The use of onomatopoeia rather than the stylized lines of motion discussed by McCloud also suggests that Bendis prefers motions frozen in time, leaving the reader in full control of imagining how the blows are executed. Bendis uses a red tint within the frame in order to demonstrate the violent nature of the scene; however, the reader is expected to fill in the blanks of the fight. McCloud notes that 'to kill a man between panels is to condemn him to a thousand deaths' (69). The violence of Powers is left to the imagination of the reader; characters are alive in one frame and dead in the next, they’re killed in the reader’s imagination. These techniques can be adapted to the screen. Bendis’ style allows the film maker to withhold gore and maintain a rating below R, thus expanding his possible audience while staying true to the comic. Of course, these techniques, specifically dark colour tints (which Bendis colours his fight scenes with) and implied murders, are tropes of film noir."
No comments:
Post a Comment