The last of my film adaptations for this week comes from a movie I loved (LOVED) as a child. I haven't watched it in many years, so I'm not sure how it holds up, but anything from the pens of Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, produced by George Harrison, has to have something going for it. Those who've never seen it, I recommend it. Imagine Monty Python doing science fiction, and you'll have some idea of what the film is like.
This adaptation is one of the few this week that I can actually compare to the movie, since I've actually seen the movie. And it's a pretty good version. The likenesses to the actors is good, though perhaps not great, but the narrative follows the film pretty faithfully. The static nature of the medium keeps some of the physically-comedic notes from coming across fully, but the puns and satire are there.
Adaptations are a tricky business. They're always going to be compared, be it favourably or no, to the source material, whether film or screenplay. And when they're adapted from the screenplay, sometimes there will be vast differences between what eventually ends up on the screen and what we see in the comic. Over the weekend I read the adaptation of the Howard the Duck film, and the creatures at the end are actually supposed to be monstrous ducks, rather than the insectoid creatures we see in the final film. Sometimes these differences are good, and highlight the freedom that drawing a story affords artists, but sometimes the differences are bad, and one can see why, in the final film, they would have been changed. I think the monster ducks were a change that needed to happen.
Not sure where we're heading tomorrow, but I'm sure it'll be interesting.
"And for the loser...a soggy death by drowning in a giant bowl of warm custard! Isn't that a scream?!"
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