What I most enjoyed
about the Marvel characters, and especially Spiderman, was the sense that no one was taking
themselves too seriously. Creator Stan Lee’s
goofy hyperbole seemed to seep into the strips themselves and no fight was complete
without a series of daft, ego-deflating quips.
There were serious moments, such as the death of Peter Parker’s girlfriend,
Gwen Stacey, and the ostracism of the teenaged X-Men but the tone was otherwise
light-hearted. Most of the film adaptations, and particularly the first
Avengers film, that have stayed true to this original spirit but attempts to
move beyond this template have proved problematic.
A recent example is
James Mangold’s ‘Logan’. This is not obviously a superhero film: no one wears a
costume, there is a lot of swearing and extreme violence and it is loaded with allusions
to (some explicit, some less so) to child abuse, racism, institutional cruelty,
genetic experimentation and strict border security enforcement in the U.S.A of the
near future. This is an increasingly mechanised and dehumanised world in which driverless
trucks hurtle along country roads and in which monstrous corporations drain and
poison the land, and keep the populace hooked on corn syrup.
Of course comics,
like all art forms, have always reflected the times in which they were made.
But since the 1980s and the advent of mainstream comics written for the ‘mature’
reader (see ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and its multiple children) many
well-established characters have been used to explore politics and society in a
more overt manner. But ‘Logan’ is saddled with a lot of issues that weigh
heavily on its simple frame and this is exposed at the end, when it is reduced
from a version of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ (with mutants) to a formulaic
superpowered hero versus diabolical villain tale.
It’s the same
problem that besets the Batman films (admittedly from the less frivolous DC
comics group), especially ‘The Dark Knight’. The idea of a sociopathic egotist
setting off bombs for no other reason than to cause chaos is frightening and powerful
because it is plausible. The Joker’s
fanaticism is just as frightening as the fanaticism of the fundamentalist as it
is equally empty and detached from reality. However, Bruce Wayne’s response, to
take on this extremist by dressing up as a bat and using a variety of
bat-related weaponry, causes the film to lose all credibility.
Because Batman
is a deeply serious character (he is obsessed with revenge after he witnesses his
parents being murdered) but also very odd-looking (those pointy ears), he only really
works on the page, where the artist is able to give him a sense of grace and
menace that no film-maker has so far managed to do. In the comics, Bruce Wayne wears
a light fabric that allows him to move freely as he swoops through the air and
his cowl adds mystery to his features because it somehow whitens his eyes and
hides the pupils. Much of the drama in the
artwork is due to the depiction of his long billowing cape which swirls around in
the panels and often frames the character in interesting ways. In the films, he is stiff and awkward-looking in
various forms of moulded body armour; in the comic, he almost appears to change
shape from page to page, depending on how he and his cape move. Despite many attempts, he is a character who
does not easily translate to live action film, and like ‘Logan’ his big screen
escapades usually resolve in some type of simple battle.
The reader might
think I am expecting too much of stories that feature two-dimensional fantasy
figures. But if a film-maker (or studio) chooses to move beyond the established
parameters of a genre and explore complex, multi-layered issues that go beyond
the simple ‘hero versus villain’ plotline, shouldn’t the resulting film resist
a neat resolution? And if a character is
so stylised in its original form, shouldn’t the film version work to present
something wholly different from the other, simpler superhero creations?
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