Greg Rucka is the author of ten novels including the Atticus Kodiak series and two novels and a long-running comic book series about British spy Tara Chace. He has written hundreds of comic books including long runs on Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Wolverine. He is currently writing Detective Comics, which does not feature Batman but rather Batwoman, a character Rucka helped create. Next month a new series “Stumptown” about an Oregon-based private eye will debut from Oni Press.
saw it Saturday. it was okay, and as Rucka says, it was a perfectly reasonable movie adaptation...
...but that's a big part of why it was just okay. given the film's $5.1M opening weekend and the glut of comments on this thread, i'm going to assume nobody cares enough to be bothered by the lack of spoilers.
the first thing i noticed was that there were a lot of chicks. having never been to Antarctica, i couldn't tell you how accurate the comic was, but one thing it stressed was the low ratio of women to men, and how that affected the social dynamic.
ironically, the one place in the story where there was another chick besides Stetko, they put in a dude. i swear, movie makers make Glenn Beck look like a hippie liberal--god forbid you cast a strong female lead and a female co-star. movie audiences won't know what to do!
they also chickened out on Stetko's backstory. i swear, George Lucas's neck has taken over the whole industry. you can't have the protagonist just straight out kill someone in a movie--it always has to be self-defense. the other guy always has to be going for his gun. Stetko's backstory in the comic made her simultaneously stronger and more vulnerable: stronger because her actions were her choice, and more vulnerable because her actions were arguably the wrong choice. there's depth there that the movie chooses to reject.
there were other things. for instance, how the hell did Price get out to Vostok? teleport? Stetko has to virtually shanghai a pilot to get her out there before the storm hits, and Price just shows up with no means of transportation--he has to hitch a ride out with Stetko and her pilot, for chrissake. the hell, man. they even chickened out on Stetko's frostbite--in the movie, she lost the last two fingers on her left hand instead of the first two on her right.
overall, it was a decent location-based thriller, but that's all it was. it lacked the strong and interesting characterization of the source material--which was, to me, what made the comic good.
That's too bad, though I expected much worse when the trailers were marketing it like a horror film (and the multiple year delay didn't help ease my concerns). I might catch a cheap showing next weekend.
ViquiV
STAFF
Santa Monica, CA
SEP 09, 2009 07:00 AM