Outside View: A post-script on "Sin City", adaptations, and "Watchmen"

Last time I posted, I felt a bit like a jerk immediately afterward. Who was I, a neophyte to all things comic and graphic novel, to offer such critical analysis of Robert Rodriguez's cinematic attempt to adapt "Sin City," especially when he went out of his way to ensure that creator Frank Miller would get a co-director status? Especially when I can't even admit to having read the source material (something I hope to rectify soon, possibly this weekend if I can find a place with the latest reprints).

As a film geek, I still stand behind the statements I made: "Sin City" is not digital noir. It looks more a hyperkinetic polarizing extremist take on the genre. But, the more I've read articles, read interviews, watched and rewatched trailers, and seen comparisons (if you click any link today, please click that last one, though be warned of Not Safe For Work images), the more I come to realize that is precisely the intention. In my own obsession with the theories I've been ingrained with on adaptation in the cinematic world, I forgot the most important aspect of all: no matter what an adaptation does, it is never wrong. It stands on its own feet, mutually exclusive from any source.

It is with that which I say that I am truly looking forward to getting together with a big crowd of friends this weekend and (hopefully) enjoying the holy hell out of myself.

Let me further add that articles like this one and interviews like this one are really making me look forward to the upcoming "Watchmen" film even more. Greengrass sounds like he has exactly the kind of intelligence and insight that's necessary to helm such a daring and complex project. Reading those two in-depth pieces makes me want to hit the stores right now just so I can read the graphic novel.