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Sin City
- Thread starter Mark
- Start date
So now that I'm up in Canada and have working television again, I've been catching up on a lot of late-night shows, and have seen Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, and Benicio Del Toro plugging Sin City. I've gotten to see clips each time. The three clips I've seen are:
So that's what I've seen.
And I've come to the conclusion that I am so very not the target audience for this movie, and not in the way I originally thought.
Originally I was being an old sissy and complaining about the graphic violence, which is really a turnoff for me these days. This is paradoxical, because I love good fight choreography, but I really don't like graphic violence. I think it's possible to have one without the other, and I think that the latter is often used when they can't get the former, and that's disappointing for me.
(For the record: Haven't seen Kill Bill. Looked at the commercials, went "She can't hold a sword," and figured it was going to be splash, rather than flash. Asked a friend who saw it later if I should see it anyway, if I'd been wrong about my assessment. He said, "Nope, after awhile, she's just chopping away, and it's not really that well done, fight-wise. It's only worth seeing if you want to see the blood spray in a cool way." So there we go.)
But having seen these clips, which didn't have any graphic violence in them, I realize that my issues with this movie are so very personal that it would be an exercise in self-abuse to go see it. It boils down to the following:
1) I'm a big fan of dialogue and writing
2) I'm not impressed by setting
I imagine I'll get flayed, but from the clips I saw, the dialogue in this movie sounds awful. That's not a slam on Frank Miller. That's not even really a slam on Rodriguez, although it possibly should be. This is a movie adapted from a graphic novel, and if I had to guess, I'd guess that they're being really really true to the dialogue (and caption-text voice-overs) from the graphic novels. Which is a wonderful kind of homage, a great project of transformation, and a fantastic way to create a movie that'll impress the people who loved the graphic novel and the people who don't care about dialogue, while turning off everyone else.
In a graphic novel, every inch of space counts, and how you spend that space focuses the entirety of your story. Dialogue literally gets in the way of setting in a graphic novel -- if someone's pithy comeback takes two lines instead of one, that's less space in the panel to show the world that line is being delivered in. And if someone's line of dialogue takes one line and a teensy bit, then you have decisions about how to shrink the dialogue box, what to reveal behind it, and so forth. I'm sure comics experts can provide more formal terms for all this stuff, but it's there, whatever it is. And if you pop those lines over into a movie, you need to account for that by modifying the lines. You've lost the space constraint and gained the time constraint -- in a graphic novel, if you're good enough, you can get away with having somebody deliver an extremely long and coherent line of dialogue (or internal monologue) that, realistically, couldn't actually have been verbalized in the time that elapses in that caption (ie, Spider-man having a five-line internal monologue about how he needs to figure out Doc Ock's weakness while dodging arm attacks). It can be done badly, of course -- any element in any medium can be done badly -- but it's something that you have more freedom with in a graphic novel, the flow of time in your panels and particularly the dialogue in there.
In a movie, time generally passes at a 1:1 ratio, with a few bullet-time or gratuitous slow-mo allowances per movie for directors playing with the rules (and not counting movies whose premise is "Guy can slow down time"). A director bringing in dialogue from a graphic novel needs to be aware of the fact that you can have longer lines than the graphic novel's writer was able to get away with in some places because the dialogue isn't getting in the way of the world (and can even give the director time to show that world more while the dialogue is taking place), but is going to have to trim other areas because of the new time constraints. Based purely on those few clips, I'm guessing that Rodriguez opted to be as faithful to the original material as possible, and that in doing so, he's actually going to do a disservice to the material. It's going to please the people who wanted a literal porting of the dialogue, but not the people who were most impressed by the spirit that the dialogue in the graphic novels conveyed. (And a whole lotta people who don't really care about dialogue as long as it doesn't get in their way are going to judge the movie on other merits, and this is hugely irrelevant for them.)
As for setting... that's just me. In real life, I get lost all the time because I honestly just don't care about the physical nature of the world and its geography and appearance that much. I rarely get much out of visiting visual tourist attractions like natural parks -- I can appreciate the serenity, but the appearance -- the setting, if you will -- doesn't do it for me. In the same way that I'm hugely impressed or turned off by dialogue, and will praise or condemn a movie based on its dialogue when other people were noticing other stuff, I am really really not ever going to notice the setting. And my impression of Sin City is that this is a movie where massive attention was paid to the setting, and that's supposed to be a selling point, possibly one of its highest selling points. So that's just me, and that's all that it is, and from the clips, it looks like they had a vision, and that's great for them, and after the most recent clip, my wife turned to me and said, "That's gonna be like Sky Captain, isn't it? Great visuals, cool effects, and really bad writing?"
Which is a shame. I honestly don't know whether you can have it all in one movie -- I can point to movies I like, but that just says that I liked the dialogue and writing and that the setting wasn't so bad that it got in my way -- and someone who loves setting and could care less about dialogue could have the exact opposite opinion and be just as justified in having it. And then there'll be the people who don't like a particular movie because of some pet peeve, or because it didn't do something that they wanted it to do, and that's also valid for them, but is different. The Incredibles, maybe. I haven't heard many complaints about that movie that weren't personal ("I just don't like superheroes as a genre") or I-wish-they'd-done-this-instead ("I don't want to see a mid-life crisis movie, I want to see a whole movie where young Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl fight crime!").
Beyond my opinions about the dialogue and my personal sign-off on the setting, I was annoyed at the blocking, or choreography of movements, or whatever you'd call the physical direction of the actors -- another thing that looked like a deliberate attempt to match Miller's style, which would be great except that Miller was working with pictures that don't generally move, and actors almost always move on a regular basis. The embrace I saw looked like bad pulp acting or the "two people making out" trope from a late-night television show. The shuriken was thrown with all the grace and finesse of a woman whose parents didn't let her play sports as a girl, resulting in the "throwing like a girl" stereotype which is really just "throwing like someone who never played baseball, softball, or football". It looked like awkward movements to get to really cool still shots -- the embrace ended in a good still shot, and I imagine the shuriken-throw would have, too. But again, it looked like a failure to successfully port over the spirit of what made the graphic novels so popular.
Anyway. I look forward to hearing what people who have seen the movie eventually say. And again, there is nothing wrong with liking a movie for its setting and not being as huge on dialogue. There's nothing wrong with liking the dialogue because you liked the dialogue in the graphic novel. There's nothing wrong with having no experience with the graphic novel, considering yourself a dialogue snob, and saying that this was rockin' dialogue, and the clips just took stuff badly out of context. I don't think that this is a movie that was phoned in lazily by people who didn't care. I think people really put a lot of love and effort into this, and, as I said, I think it's going to be a complete miss for me.
1) Bruce Willis enters the bar, Brittany Murphy talks in slow motion, and then we pan to Jessica Alba twirling a lasso while the line "She grew up. She filled out" is delivered.
2) Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson arguing in the street about a possible gang war, and then Clive Own lunges in to kiss her, and then he orders a car. Box top, good engine.
3) Benicio Del Toro hitting on Brittany Murphy as she walks and he drives, and then his goons talk him into drawing a gun on her, and she says something coy, again slowed-down weirdly, and then some samurai girl throws an enormous shuriken.
2) Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson arguing in the street about a possible gang war, and then Clive Own lunges in to kiss her, and then he orders a car. Box top, good engine.
3) Benicio Del Toro hitting on Brittany Murphy as she walks and he drives, and then his goons talk him into drawing a gun on her, and she says something coy, again slowed-down weirdly, and then some samurai girl throws an enormous shuriken.
So that's what I've seen.
And I've come to the conclusion that I am so very not the target audience for this movie, and not in the way I originally thought.
Originally I was being an old sissy and complaining about the graphic violence, which is really a turnoff for me these days. This is paradoxical, because I love good fight choreography, but I really don't like graphic violence. I think it's possible to have one without the other, and I think that the latter is often used when they can't get the former, and that's disappointing for me.
(For the record: Haven't seen Kill Bill. Looked at the commercials, went "She can't hold a sword," and figured it was going to be splash, rather than flash. Asked a friend who saw it later if I should see it anyway, if I'd been wrong about my assessment. He said, "Nope, after awhile, she's just chopping away, and it's not really that well done, fight-wise. It's only worth seeing if you want to see the blood spray in a cool way." So there we go.)
But having seen these clips, which didn't have any graphic violence in them, I realize that my issues with this movie are so very personal that it would be an exercise in self-abuse to go see it. It boils down to the following:
1) I'm a big fan of dialogue and writing
2) I'm not impressed by setting
I imagine I'll get flayed, but from the clips I saw, the dialogue in this movie sounds awful. That's not a slam on Frank Miller. That's not even really a slam on Rodriguez, although it possibly should be. This is a movie adapted from a graphic novel, and if I had to guess, I'd guess that they're being really really true to the dialogue (and caption-text voice-overs) from the graphic novels. Which is a wonderful kind of homage, a great project of transformation, and a fantastic way to create a movie that'll impress the people who loved the graphic novel and the people who don't care about dialogue, while turning off everyone else.
In a graphic novel, every inch of space counts, and how you spend that space focuses the entirety of your story. Dialogue literally gets in the way of setting in a graphic novel -- if someone's pithy comeback takes two lines instead of one, that's less space in the panel to show the world that line is being delivered in. And if someone's line of dialogue takes one line and a teensy bit, then you have decisions about how to shrink the dialogue box, what to reveal behind it, and so forth. I'm sure comics experts can provide more formal terms for all this stuff, but it's there, whatever it is. And if you pop those lines over into a movie, you need to account for that by modifying the lines. You've lost the space constraint and gained the time constraint -- in a graphic novel, if you're good enough, you can get away with having somebody deliver an extremely long and coherent line of dialogue (or internal monologue) that, realistically, couldn't actually have been verbalized in the time that elapses in that caption (ie, Spider-man having a five-line internal monologue about how he needs to figure out Doc Ock's weakness while dodging arm attacks). It can be done badly, of course -- any element in any medium can be done badly -- but it's something that you have more freedom with in a graphic novel, the flow of time in your panels and particularly the dialogue in there.
In a movie, time generally passes at a 1:1 ratio, with a few bullet-time or gratuitous slow-mo allowances per movie for directors playing with the rules (and not counting movies whose premise is "Guy can slow down time"). A director bringing in dialogue from a graphic novel needs to be aware of the fact that you can have longer lines than the graphic novel's writer was able to get away with in some places because the dialogue isn't getting in the way of the world (and can even give the director time to show that world more while the dialogue is taking place), but is going to have to trim other areas because of the new time constraints. Based purely on those few clips, I'm guessing that Rodriguez opted to be as faithful to the original material as possible, and that in doing so, he's actually going to do a disservice to the material. It's going to please the people who wanted a literal porting of the dialogue, but not the people who were most impressed by the spirit that the dialogue in the graphic novels conveyed. (And a whole lotta people who don't really care about dialogue as long as it doesn't get in their way are going to judge the movie on other merits, and this is hugely irrelevant for them.)
As for setting... that's just me. In real life, I get lost all the time because I honestly just don't care about the physical nature of the world and its geography and appearance that much. I rarely get much out of visiting visual tourist attractions like natural parks -- I can appreciate the serenity, but the appearance -- the setting, if you will -- doesn't do it for me. In the same way that I'm hugely impressed or turned off by dialogue, and will praise or condemn a movie based on its dialogue when other people were noticing other stuff, I am really really not ever going to notice the setting. And my impression of Sin City is that this is a movie where massive attention was paid to the setting, and that's supposed to be a selling point, possibly one of its highest selling points. So that's just me, and that's all that it is, and from the clips, it looks like they had a vision, and that's great for them, and after the most recent clip, my wife turned to me and said, "That's gonna be like Sky Captain, isn't it? Great visuals, cool effects, and really bad writing?"
Which is a shame. I honestly don't know whether you can have it all in one movie -- I can point to movies I like, but that just says that I liked the dialogue and writing and that the setting wasn't so bad that it got in my way -- and someone who loves setting and could care less about dialogue could have the exact opposite opinion and be just as justified in having it. And then there'll be the people who don't like a particular movie because of some pet peeve, or because it didn't do something that they wanted it to do, and that's also valid for them, but is different. The Incredibles, maybe. I haven't heard many complaints about that movie that weren't personal ("I just don't like superheroes as a genre") or I-wish-they'd-done-this-instead ("I don't want to see a mid-life crisis movie, I want to see a whole movie where young Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl fight crime!").
Beyond my opinions about the dialogue and my personal sign-off on the setting, I was annoyed at the blocking, or choreography of movements, or whatever you'd call the physical direction of the actors -- another thing that looked like a deliberate attempt to match Miller's style, which would be great except that Miller was working with pictures that don't generally move, and actors almost always move on a regular basis. The embrace I saw looked like bad pulp acting or the "two people making out" trope from a late-night television show. The shuriken was thrown with all the grace and finesse of a woman whose parents didn't let her play sports as a girl, resulting in the "throwing like a girl" stereotype which is really just "throwing like someone who never played baseball, softball, or football". It looked like awkward movements to get to really cool still shots -- the embrace ended in a good still shot, and I imagine the shuriken-throw would have, too. But again, it looked like a failure to successfully port over the spirit of what made the graphic novels so popular.
Anyway. I look forward to hearing what people who have seen the movie eventually say. And again, there is nothing wrong with liking a movie for its setting and not being as huge on dialogue. There's nothing wrong with liking the dialogue because you liked the dialogue in the graphic novel. There's nothing wrong with having no experience with the graphic novel, considering yourself a dialogue snob, and saying that this was rockin' dialogue, and the clips just took stuff badly out of context. I don't think that this is a movie that was phoned in lazily by people who didn't care. I think people really put a lot of love and effort into this, and, as I said, I think it's going to be a complete miss for me.
Fast Learner
First Post
I saw it, and did say.
Your #3 spoilier is incorrect. That's not Brittany Murphy, it's Alexis Bledel, of Gilmore Girls fame. Who looks pretty hot, which is disturbing to this old man.
Your #3 spoilier is incorrect. That's not Brittany Murphy, it's Alexis Bledel, of Gilmore Girls fame. Who looks pretty hot, which is disturbing to this old man.
Jeremy Ackerman-Yost
Explorer
Oddly... I was impressed by the first trailer, and deflated by the second. Not sure why. I've not read the graphic novel, so I had no pre-existing prejudices in that regard, but was actively turned off by the title. Screams "I'm going to be gratuitous in every manner possible!!!" I think. Probably why I never looked twice at the graphic novels.takyris said:
In any case, I loved the visual style in the first trailer, but something ineffable about the second didn't sit right with me. Haven't spent much time trying to figure it out.
As an aside, I've got to point one thing out here...
I'd love to see this type of analysis done on why movies are different from books... and have it applied to the standard The Lord of the Rings arguements that get tossed around these parts.takyris said:
Just sayin'
nakia
First Post
takyris said:
I think your analysis is spot on, takryis, and it made me think about films v. graphic novels in a way I had not thought of before.
I am viewing Sin City as an experiment -- an attempt to put a graphic novel on screen whole cloth. Not just tell the same story as faithfully as possible on screen, but actually put the graphic novel on screen, which is why it has been shot digitally and looks the way it does. This experiment may fail miserably, precisely for the reasons takryis describes. Each medium has different conventions, strengths, and weaknesses. What works very well in one medium (a type of dialogue in graphic novels) may not work at all in another (the graphic novel dialogue style may seem stilted and trite on film). But it's a bold experiment nonetheless. And, since it is a bold experiment involving one of my favorite comics, I am going to see it.
An instersting aside, one relevant here, I think, is that Frank Miller became known for altering the conventions of dialogue in comics. He became noted for having "voice overs" that did not appear in word balloons and were placed outside of the actual comic panels. In one of the Sin City comics, he has a word -- one word -- take up two pages in a "centerfold." I was floored by this, both at its use stylistically and its use in the context of the story. I mean, what writer/artist wants to use two whole pages on a single word?
Canis: Definitely true, re:movies and books. I had a great time watching the Lord of the Rings movies, though, and it'd been awhile since I'd read the books, so I'm probably not the right person to do that. I also get accused of trying to be too cinematic in my own writing (ie, people saying "This would make a great movie, but I'm having trouble reading it as written down like this") in a few cases, which likely stems from the fact that when I write, I pretty much envision a movie and write the novelization of the movie in my head. So I'm probably not going to be in touch with the differences. 
(Although I've recently discovered that movies seem to be better at heist capers than books -- a book based on The Sting has to stay in the viewpoint of a character who doesn't know about the big end-twist, stick with camera-eye viewpoint (ie, writing without saying what anyone is thinking), or lie about what a character is thinking in order to achieve the big twist at the end, since it's clear that both Newman and Redford were in on it. In a movie, you don't have to say what people are thinking, but most books are written from the viewpoint of the hero, which means that the hero can't surprise the reader with something he's been planning the whole time unless the author does some backflips to come up with a "Aha, it was implanted subliminally" twist or something.)
Nakia: Thanks -- I think it's a great experiment, too, but it's an experiment that really cranks up things that aren't selling points for me. That said, it's doing really really well on RottenTomatoes at the moment, so I could be completely full of it. Week two will be the telling point, I think -- it's had enough good press and enough critical praise that I suspect it'll have a good week one.
(Although I've recently discovered that movies seem to be better at heist capers than books -- a book based on The Sting has to stay in the viewpoint of a character who doesn't know about the big end-twist, stick with camera-eye viewpoint (ie, writing without saying what anyone is thinking), or lie about what a character is thinking in order to achieve the big twist at the end, since it's clear that both Newman and Redford were in on it. In a movie, you don't have to say what people are thinking, but most books are written from the viewpoint of the hero, which means that the hero can't surprise the reader with something he's been planning the whole time unless the author does some backflips to come up with a "Aha, it was implanted subliminally" twist or something.)
Nakia: Thanks -- I think it's a great experiment, too, but it's an experiment that really cranks up things that aren't selling points for me. That said, it's doing really really well on RottenTomatoes at the moment, so I could be completely full of it. Week two will be the telling point, I think -- it's had enough good press and enough critical praise that I suspect it'll have a good week one.
Definitely. That's what I'm trying to do in a heist caper I'm trying to write. But it's tougher than it would be in a movie, and it tends to feel forced. As, I imagine, anything does, unless you're really good at it. The easiest way to to it, really, is camera-eye, but camera-eye also feels really forced and awkward unless you're really good at it.
So I try to get really good at it. We'll see how that works out for me.
So I try to get really good at it. We'll see how that works out for me.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
takyris: you seem to be saying that movies have more dialog than comic books.
That's flat-out wrong. Sorry, man, but it is. I mean, read comic books much? Look at the action/word ratio an average comic book: Spidey dodges a punch, Doc Ock says, "I've got you now, you miserable arachnid!", Spidey sees debris tumbling towards onlookers and thinks, "Those innocent bystanders! I've got to save them, but how do I keep this maniac off me?", and says, "You four-armed baboon!"
That doesn't sound like an out-of-line comic book panel to me. Obviously it changes from panel to panel and artist/writer to artist/writer, but trying to reproduce that in a movie would be impossible. You could never fit that much dialog (external or internal) into the space of time covered by the punch, not without being all tricky, at any rate.
I would say the Spiderman movies had LESS dialog than your average comic book, not more.
So I just can't accept your argument about all this. If you don't like Miller's dialogue, that's fine, but I just do not accept the assertion that movies have more dialogue than comic books and thus comic book dialogue doesn't translate to film.
It seems like you're making very very large assumptions about both the nature of the comic books and the nature of the film, and using those assumptions to rather extremely interpret the trailers, and using that interpretation to dismiss it. You seem to have gone a long way from the available evidence in order to reach your judgement.
Again, if you just didn't like the trailer, that's fine. I don't share your opinion on throwing star posture (or Uma's grip, which was certainly one that I would approve of in a junior student. It's how I was taught how to hold a katana. Her hasso-no-kamae was wrong (when she and Elle are squaring off), but everyone's is. Nice ko-gasumi, though (when she's watching her surrounding enemies in the reflections in her blade)), and I just don't believe you can judge dialogue based on out-of-context clips (for the most part; I mean, how do you judge a line like "I know."? (thinking of Han Solo, there -- GREAT line, but only in context)), but that's me.
I for one am hoping Rodriguez finally lives up to his promise and delivers the film I've been waiting for him to deliver. I think he's immensely talented but dreadfully sloppy, and I just really want him to give me a film that feels like he took the time to do it right.
That's flat-out wrong. Sorry, man, but it is. I mean, read comic books much? Look at the action/word ratio an average comic book: Spidey dodges a punch, Doc Ock says, "I've got you now, you miserable arachnid!", Spidey sees debris tumbling towards onlookers and thinks, "Those innocent bystanders! I've got to save them, but how do I keep this maniac off me?", and says, "You four-armed baboon!"
That doesn't sound like an out-of-line comic book panel to me. Obviously it changes from panel to panel and artist/writer to artist/writer, but trying to reproduce that in a movie would be impossible. You could never fit that much dialog (external or internal) into the space of time covered by the punch, not without being all tricky, at any rate.
I would say the Spiderman movies had LESS dialog than your average comic book, not more.
So I just can't accept your argument about all this. If you don't like Miller's dialogue, that's fine, but I just do not accept the assertion that movies have more dialogue than comic books and thus comic book dialogue doesn't translate to film.
It seems like you're making very very large assumptions about both the nature of the comic books and the nature of the film, and using those assumptions to rather extremely interpret the trailers, and using that interpretation to dismiss it. You seem to have gone a long way from the available evidence in order to reach your judgement.
Again, if you just didn't like the trailer, that's fine. I don't share your opinion on throwing star posture (or Uma's grip, which was certainly one that I would approve of in a junior student. It's how I was taught how to hold a katana. Her hasso-no-kamae was wrong (when she and Elle are squaring off), but everyone's is. Nice ko-gasumi, though (when she's watching her surrounding enemies in the reflections in her blade)), and I just don't believe you can judge dialogue based on out-of-context clips (for the most part; I mean, how do you judge a line like "I know."? (thinking of Han Solo, there -- GREAT line, but only in context)), but that's me.
I for one am hoping Rodriguez finally lives up to his promise and delivers the film I've been waiting for him to deliver. I think he's immensely talented but dreadfully sloppy, and I just really want him to give me a film that feels like he took the time to do it right.
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