"just a comic book..." (sigh). The film directly credits the FROM HELL graphic novel as it sole source.
It's a 600-page graphic novel, meticulously researched, with a section of footnotes about 100 pages long. Its scripts have been published separately. The Hughes Brothers are big Alan Moore fans, but did not have nearly the knowledge or sensitivy required to successfully translate the work to the screen. (I think that of all modern film-makers, only Peter Greenaway would be capable of the task.)
The graphic novel is a serious piece of literature, with far-reaching repercussions about the state of the modern mind and the state of the serial killer and the echoes of history. It's got grand themes and far-ranging ideas and thought-provoking, horrifying, beautiful things to say. The movie is cheap thrills in comparison.
Just because something's in the comic form doesn't make it less significant, more simplistic, or less than a film. In this particular case, my opinion which will probably never be swayed, is that the film is a bastardization of the original work, that never got near the spirit of the original.
The Dead Zone, otoh (to bring us back on subject) is a great example of taking a work, and spinning it out to create a different variant of it. One of my favorite touches on the series is that they try as often as they can to incorporate direct quotes from the King novel as dialogue.
It's a 600-page graphic novel, meticulously researched, with a section of footnotes about 100 pages long. Its scripts have been published separately. The Hughes Brothers are big Alan Moore fans, but did not have nearly the knowledge or sensitivy required to successfully translate the work to the screen. (I think that of all modern film-makers, only Peter Greenaway would be capable of the task.)
The graphic novel is a serious piece of literature, with far-reaching repercussions about the state of the modern mind and the state of the serial killer and the echoes of history. It's got grand themes and far-ranging ideas and thought-provoking, horrifying, beautiful things to say. The movie is cheap thrills in comparison.
Just because something's in the comic form doesn't make it less significant, more simplistic, or less than a film. In this particular case, my opinion which will probably never be swayed, is that the film is a bastardization of the original work, that never got near the spirit of the original.
The Dead Zone, otoh (to bring us back on subject) is a great example of taking a work, and spinning it out to create a different variant of it. One of my favorite touches on the series is that they try as often as they can to incorporate direct quotes from the King novel as dialogue.
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