Just in case you were tempted…
…to waste part of your hard earned money and weekend by venturing out to see Constantine - and seeing as how my membership of CRACCA has been ratified - I felt it was my duty to say “Careful Now” and “Down With This Sort Of Thing“.
Here’s a round up of what the reviews had to say about it:
Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian: “Keanu Reeves must be taking some kind of super-strength Botox to look like this. It is beyond anything as vulgar as bad acting.”
Francis Lawrence in The Independent (not online yet): “Dismal satanic hokum… To Hell with it.”
“Jamie Russell on BBC Online: “Constantine’s incoherent plotting ruins the comicbook’s frazzled, hard-bitten edge.
James Christopher in The Times: “The philosophy is carefully pruned from the D C Comics Hellblazer strip. But I would seriously question its point.”
Daniel Etherington at Channel 4: “You wouldn’t take the Batman character and dress him like a giant rabbit, so why abandon almost everything that made John Constantine an interesting and surprisingly deep comic book character?”
If those among you who have never read the comic are still considering it, here’s further disincentive to go and see this “film”. In the comic, John Constantine is a blond cockney, modelled on, of all people, Sting. In the movie, he’s a dark-haired American modelled on, of all things, a shop dummy. In the comic, he uses his wit, charm and sometimes sheer dumb luck to escape his predicaments. In the movie he has a crucifix that fires magic bullets.
I also see from IMDB that Garth Ennis, one the writers of some of the finest Hellblazer (the comic in which Constantine appears) stories, got a writing credit for the movie. I hope he enjoys the money.
In summary: Hollywood hates you.
Posted on March 18th, 2005 at 10:53 am
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Actually, I wouldn’t be too critcal of Ennis, as it’s entirely possible that none of his ideas appear on screen, but the bizarre processes of WGA arbitration (see Goldman etc for how it works) mean his name could stay on it, despite it bearing no resemblance to anything he did.
I do recall reading somewhere that the original plot for the movie was based on the Dangerous Habits storyline, so it could be that Ennis wrote a treatment based on that and then had nothing more to do with it.
I’ll admit I am being unfair on Ennis, him being just about my favourite comic writer. I imagine he’s pretty disappointed about what’s been done in his name. There’s been talk of adapting his Preacher series for the screen but you’ve got to wonder how much hackery would have to go on to get that story released.
After this I’m not holding out much hope for Watchmen, Paul Greengrass in the driver’s seat or not. Look out for Dr Manhattan as a bright orange midget and Rorschach as a mild-mannered family man.
I agree, I think he gets the credit for story rather than script; it’s based almost entirely on Dangerous Habits.
In my nightmare Watchmen, Keanu Reeves is Dr Manhattan. ‘I’m just a puppet who can see the strings. Woah.‘
You want real horror? V For Vendetta is (at time of writing) *going ahead*. Steve Moore’s been approached to do the novelisation.
My money’s on Vin Diesel for V and Halle Berry for Evey.
The forthcoming film version of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy has apparently removed all references to religion and God - despite that being the whole point of the bloody thing - to avoid pissing off stupid christians in the midwest.
So, how about a version of Preacher where all the references to God are removed?
For that matter, how about a version of the New Testament without Christ?
Actually, V For Vendetta has James Purefoy as V and Natalie Portman as Evey. The website is here and, the involvement of Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers aside, it’s not setting off the alarm bells yet.
James Purefoy? For fuck’s sake. The identifying characteristic of V is that we never see his face. It’s the central mystery of the story. Is Purefoy going to be happy to keep a mask on for 100 minutes of screen time? Just like Stallone wasn’t in Judge Dredd?
Or is he just contributing the voice? Or is a studio exec wiping his arse with yet another Alan Moore masterpiece?
And the involvement of Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers isn’t setting off alarm bells, Nick? I bet they set it in an America that has been taken over by the Taliban. Or robots that talk bollocks.
Grrrrr.
Ah. That’ll teach me for running away at the gob. So, according to Purefoy, he’s going to keep the mask on throughout the movie? We’ll see.
I still think they’re going to struggle to get a talky, psychological thriller set is a dystopian future Britain past American execs and worse, test audiences.
Oh yeah, I don’t doubt they’re going to struggle, but from what I can see, they at least seem to be starting from the right place, and while I don’t think the film will be anything like as good as the original it doesn’t, at present, look like it’s going to be unforgivably bad.
“In the comic, John Constantine is a blond cockney”
A Liverpudlian cockney? Now I’ve heard *everything*.
Shit.
I stand corrected.
“Born in Liverpool, England, Constantine’s childhood was a difficult one.”