In all fairness to Hollywood, plenty of movies get made with source material other than comics. Sometimes it's old television shows or video games. Toys, board games, or other movies. Occasionally, the material is from books, mostly pulpy vampire or legal dramas... But mostly comic books.
Am I complaining?
No. I love comics and I love a well executed comic book movie. But that is the major difference between me and those Hollywood studio execs. Or between me and general audiences for that matter. They don't really care for the comic books themselves.
I'm fine with that, actually. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and comics are definitely an acquired taste – Just like all art that isn't totally spoon fed to the participant. Sorry, that was a cheap shot. What you may have taken away from my comment is that comic books, just like music, theater, literature, sculpture, and, yes, movies, are art. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the graphic novel, despite that fancy name, is high art. Most titles are, and always have been, commodities meant to be rapidly devoured with a new course served up as quickly as possible. But among the trash, there is perhaps 10% of the material that really shines. Sometimes that material can be a series, sometimes it can be the story but not the art, sometimes it can be the character premise, but not the story, or just the art. And on the rarest of occasions, the whole package will be great.
Just like movies. So it would seem that comics would be the perfect source material for movies. More times than not, though, that hasn't proven true. Which is why I seek to liberate the movies from their comic book source material.
To explain how, and why, I first need to follow what I'm sure will seem like a tangent to you, but trust me, it'll come back around.
There are two terms I dislike, mostly because of their current misuse. Please stop using the term fanboy for any person who has a nerdy hobby or is slightly more fanatically about some aspect of pop culture.
Have you ever met a fanboy?
They are borderline dysfunctional. He doesn't just like something a lot. In fact, he doesn't even love it... All he has is the compulsion to purchase every painted die-cast miniature figurine at the comic shop, even though he already owns two dozen others that are also exactly the same. His office desk will be decorated with toys, not just a few items from his youth there to remind him of simpler times, but junk he just purchased off eBay last week. He's memorized the entire cannon of a title, but won't understand any of it, like an ape quoting Nietzsche (A Fish Called Wanda reference.)
You get the point.
Although the term fan boy has been around since the early 20th century, its resurgence came in the 1990s when comic book editors began to feel the creative oppression from these sad individuals' demands. Fanboy is the derogatory form of Marvel Comic's term of affection 'true believer'. In Japan, the equivalent term is otaku. In the United States, otaku has come to be a general term for anyone who is a big fan of anime and manga, just as fanboy has lost most of its negative meaning.
Fanboy is kind of like the word fetish. Now of days, a fetish is described as any slight affinity for anything. When it is applied to sex, it's usually for anything kinky. Guess what? A fetish is a compulsion which without sexual arousal and/or performance is impossible. As I understand the meaning fetishes are not kink. At best, fetishism is kind of sad, and at worst, well... Think the Tooth Fairy. No, the other Tooth Fairy... That's not the Rock... The serial killer from Red Dragon.
I'm an adult (sorta) and I recognize that word meanings evolve. Now, here is where I'll start to connect this with my topic on source material. The term fanboy has evolved to quickly encompassing anyone who really likes video games or comicbooks or scifi and zombie movies. But the original fanboys, those troubled souls, are still out there.
My theory is that these freaks command a much greater influence than they should over the use of source material in movies. It's a theory, but I have evidence, which I'll save for part two of this post.
