Archive for April 20th, 2012

Fantasy Casting Call: Director Edition

April 20th, 2012 by Susie

The Avengers is only a few weeks away!  I’m super excited (and already have tickets for opening weekend).  I think Joss Whedon was the perfect choice to direct.  He knows how to direct dynamic action sequences without losing sight of character arcs, and can handle a large ensemble without having one or two characters dominating while the rest get lost in the shuffle.  And he always brings the funny.  So in honor of this excellent director/comic pairing, I thought I’d try matching up comic books I want to see adapted with the directors that should do the adapting.

Maus as directed by Julie Taymor.  Maus is a masterpiece.  It’s the only comic to win the Pulitzer for literature.  And it’s probably unfilmable.  But if it ever is, Taumor is probably the only director who could pull it off.  I know her last comic adaptation, the Spider-man musical, didn’t work out so well, but Maus is far more in her wheelhouse.  Most of her work both on screen and stage has dealt with death and or tragedy.  She often uses masks and puppets to create moving and effective imagery, dealing with some of the darkest aspects of the human experience.  Maus is a holocaust survivor’s story as told by his son.  The Jews are depicted as anthropomorphized mice and the Nazis are cats.  Masks are a running motif throughout the comic.  Maus isn’t really a project I see movie producers clambering to make happen, but I’d be fascinated to see it.

Y the Last Man as directed by JJ Abrams.  In YLM a mysterious plague kills every male person and animal on Earth except for one man and his pet monkey.  The comic follows the last man on earth as he and a few companions travel through the ruins of society (the loss of half the world’s population overnight, caused some serious chaos) trying to figure out what happened.  This is complicated by the fact that he is the most valuable commodity on the planet, and is pursued by numerous governments and organizations.  JJ Abrams is one of the most successful television creators in recent memories.  He has a hand in such diverse projects as Lost, Felicity, Alias, and Fringe.  He’s recently had big screen success with Super 8 and the Star Trek reboot.  He’s got the chops when it comes to action, as well as suspenseful conspiracies (aside from pretty much all of the later seasons of Alias).  What he’s really good at is getting you really invested in characters in the midst of some crazy circumstances, and while the premise of YLM was great, what made it a must read were Yorick, Agent 355 and Dr. Mann.

Death as directed by Neil Gaiman.  Technically I’m cheating here.  At one time Neil was set to direct an adaptation of his comic Death the Time of Your Life.  But it seems to have fallen by the wayside.  I would love to see it revived.  Gaiman’s Death is one of the most original and compelling characters to come out of comics in the last twenty years.  And if anyone can get an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s work right, it’s Neil Gaiman.

Fables as directed by Peter Jackson.  Fables is a big story, it’s been running for over a decade and more than a hundred issues.  There are hundreds of major characters and thousands of secondary characters.  I actually don’t want to see a direct adaptation (although I think Jackson could handle it).  The Fables universe is expansive.  I’d like to see an original story set in the Fables universe, featuring some of the less used characters (like what creator Bill Willingham did in the Fables novel Peter and Max).  Jackson have proven that he can create fully realized fantasy worlds.  And he’s done darker stories.  I think he can balance humor, magical elements of the series, while not shying away from it’s creepy side.  I know he’d give us a fairy tale that didn’t reek of Disney.

Runaways as directed by Joss Whedon.  What?  You didn’t think I’d let Joss get away with directing only one comic book movie, did you?  Runaways is one of my all time favorite super hero comics (though the kids in Runaways aren’t traditional super heroes).  With a bunch of sarcastic, smart, angsty, pop culture reference making teenagers with superpowers at its center, Runaways felt like a spiritual successor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Whedon was such a fan that he wrote an arc of the series after creator Brian K. Vaughan left.  Joss is the only choice to direct in my opinion.  It must happen.  But I’ll be generous and let Joss finish up promoting the Avengers, film  the next two films in the Big Damn Serenity Trilogy, and the Dr. Horrible sequel, and and Goners, and finally give us the long promised Ripper tv series, before he starts work on Runaways.  I’m nothing if not considerate.