All Star Superman to be adapted for DC Animated Movie

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Bass said:
In their respective fields. Quitely is a bigger name in comics than Timm is in movies. Ironically, Timm is a bigger name in comics than Quitely.
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Timm might not be top shelf for animation directors, but I'd be hard pressed to find a more recognized name that Warner Bros. has access to.
 
Gothamite said:
[video]http://www.mtv.com/videos/movies/581723/bruce-timm-talks-all-star-superman.jhtml[/video]

He clearly knows it's not going to be that close to the comics.
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Which is amusing since Morrison is on record as saying that the All-Star Superman animated movie is about 90% accurate to his books.


Wired.com takes a look at the new Grant Morrison documentary, and talked with the man himself about a variety of topics.

One movie we've been excited about is the adaptation of his cyborg critter story We3. Morrison wrote a script for the movie which had Kung Fu Panda director John Stevenson attached to it a few years back. Sadly, Morrison said the recent trend towards colorful fantasy (see blockbusters: Alice and Wonderland, Avatar) haven not helped his gritty tale about three military lab animals outfitted with weapons technology on the run and seeking sanctuary.

"We3 is just stalled, as usual. People just keep asking, 'What the tone? What's the tone?' Which is a shame," Morrison said. "But I've got other stuff coming up that could change everything, and make people look again at those films. But you know how Hollywood is: There's a bunch of irons in the fire, and we're all waiting for some of them to catch."

Wired points out that, of the vast body of Morrison's work, the upcoming All-Star Superman movie will be the first to be adapted to film. The comics creator said he couldn't be happier.

"I saw the movie and it's one of my top three superhero movies ever. Only the superfans are going to complain, because the film has about 90 percent of my stuff in it. Much of it is actual dialogue taken from the book," he said.
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never read the All Star comics at all. imdb link

after watching the movie, didn't care for it one single bit. not even worth my time to write a review.
 
supposedly it comes out on the 22nd, but there are leaked copied on the net as of this week if you know where to look.
 
I liked it.

It wasn't the comics, didn't have time to cover all 12 of his exploits, left out the Bizarro World entirely, but still, had a nice poignant ending.

And killed him. I thought for sure they were going to rewrite that ending.
 
mods: could we get a spoiler tag up top please so i don't get yelled at

in the comics, was jimmy a cross dresser?
 
nigma said:
mods: could we get a spoiler tag up top please so i don't get yelled at

in the comics, was jimmy a cross dresser?
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Not exactly. He did a column in The Daily Planet where he lived in another person's shoes, so to speak. Early on in the comic he did an article on a woman - can't remember who right now.
 
So that didn't work.

Also, does it count as being "based on" Morrison and Quitely's work if the entire thing is lifted, completely, without changes other than cuts and every shot is cribbed from the comic? Shouldn't its credits say "written by Grant Morrison" and "art directed by Frank Quitely"? Seriously, this tantamount to plagiarism. I struggle to consider what Dwayne McDuffie did other than have Superman kill Solaris, and make the answer to the Sphinx look like a bad episode of COLUMBO by rejigging when we find out the newspaper had the answer.

The episodic nature also doesn't translate well to an unbroken movie-length work, throwing the pacing off. The entire mood is so ridiculously maudlin which makes the outrageousness of the story completely idiotic. I laughed out loud when, at the climax, Superman says to Lois, "I'm becoming pure energy." This moment they clearly wanted to be tender and moving but it was laughable.

Solaris isn't remotely set up (in the comics or the movie) and giving him a melodramatic British voice made him sound like Dick Dastardly.

The problem isn't the preposterousness of the ideas, nor really the concept behind the movie (as it worked in the comics) but rather, the mood. Everything, from the music to the lighting to the acting says, "THIS IS SERIOUS AND SAD AND TRAGIC" and then they stuff and cram the movie with a billion crazy ideas, from suneaters and gravity guns to time telescopes and dinosaurs from the center of the Earth, at a blinding pace, it becomes impossible to immerse yourself in it. It sends mixed signals. The comics allow you to absorb it at your own pace, it's less dramatic overall, and the episodic nature allows Morrison to throw each idea seperately, one at a time, into the story. But in this, we are introduced to a thousand concepts which appear, require mindspace to accept and file away, then they don't return, instead we just get more and more, and the ones that do return seem arbitrary. The whole thing is off.

This thing needed a full re-write in order to work without the whimsy, episodical nature, and instead it was a transliterated exercise in poor judgment.

And it was better than DOOMSDAY, PUBLIC ENEMIES, and CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS.
 
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The idea of Dwayne McDuffie changing a Grant Morrison script to be more suitable for film is downright offensive.
 
Bass said:
So that didn't work.

Also, does it count as being "based on" Morrison and Quitely's work if the entire thing is lifted, completely, without changes other than cuts and every shot is cribbed from the comic? Shouldn't its credits say "written by Grant Morrison" and "art directed by Frank Quitely"? Seriously, this tantamount to plagiarism. I struggle to consider what Dwayne McDuffie did other than have Superman kill Solaris, and make the answer to the Sphinx look like a bad episode of COLUMBO by rejigging when we find out the newspaper had the answer.
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They didn't rejig this as you say. In the comic, which I had to reread to confirm, Sampson handed Superman the paper and he glanced at it. The Sphinz shows up with the riddle, SUpes answers, everyone walks off. The final panel shows the paper, and one of the pages inside the paper is the ad for the car the lizardman was going to throw at the beginning of the issue. It's implied that Superman saw this ad, where in the movie it's pretty much said thats how he came up with the answer.

Granted, this one thing wouldn't change your opinion of the movie, I just remember always thinking that when I read the issues.

And I enjoyed the film.
 
But you just pointed out the rejigging - in the comic we don't know Superman got it from the paper until the final page, and it also shows us that Clark Kent wrote the "SUPERMAN IS DEAD" headline, which makes us think he won't die. It's a really sweet little moment because we assume Superman worked it out because he's smart, but then we get a little insight into how he solved it.

Instead, they had the newspaper fly across Superman's face which made the set-up (Samson showing him the newspaper) seem contrived. When Morrison distanced the two, it came as a nice surprise, but by mashing them together it seems really cheap.
 
What's Jimmy Olsen like in this movie? I really liked how he was portrayed in the All-Star comic, but it sounds like they cut his parts out.
 
They cut most of his parts out.

They omitted the PROJECT leader for a day column, and the Bizarro story, which were the two stories he was mainly in.
 
Ultimate Houde said:
They cut most of his parts out.

They omitted the PROJECT leader for a day column, and the Bizarro story, which were the two stories he was mainly in.
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Wow. That's disappointing.
 
That sucks. I really liked Grant Morrison's version of Jimmy though, it's like he put all of the cool elements of him into that one version (just like he did with Superman). Does he at least have the super-signal watch?
 
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