I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie last night. It was light-hearted and fun, and the mummies were the cutest things ever. However, I'd like to look at a few stylistic choices from both the comic and the movie and see how they carried over.
Establishing the Setting:
In class we mentioned how Tardi draws the reader in to the setting. Not only does he accurately portray Paris' scenes, drawing them from photos and recreating famous areas, he also creates a mood through his artistic style and colors.
In Besson's movie, I think he did a good job of introducing the setting-- I still remember the first scene, where we see the title screen and then pan right to see our first shot of Paris. Besson's introduction of Egypt was also fairly accurate, and although I didn't necessarily agree with the choice of actors in the scene, the sand, dunes, and pyramids in the movie all placed me in the scene. (I have been to Egypt, and the Egypt scenes made me miss the country)
Characters:
Although I've only read one of the comics the movie was based on, I thought there was rather a significant difference between the comic characters and the movie characters. Not even mentioning Adèle's sister, who didn't exist in the comics, many other characters seemed different to me.
Zborowski, while still lost and pitiful in the movie, seemed to garner a little more sympathy as well. The actor was younger than many of the others, and didn't seem nearly so creepy and inappropriate as he seemed in the comic.
Inspector Albert Caponi also seemed to take the role of the villain, where comical scenes had people laughing at him and his character. In the comic, I wouldn't say I didn't like him, and he was also a victim of the larger police/government administration.
That leaves us with Adele herself, who's change I found the most intriguing. In the comic, all of the characters had moral ambiguity and no one person was representative of good or evil. On top of that, they all seemed to be "corrupt" in one way or another. Adele herself kidnapped a woman, stole, spied, and hired sketchy people. Yet, in the movie, while she still maintained her independent and witty personality, stole from a tomb and avoided the authorities, I would say the movie painted her as an overall good person. This mostly stems from her motive in the movie, to save her sister.
In the movie there was a stronger line between the people the audience sided with and the "enemies" of the movie. I would say the scientists were overall on the adventurous and exciting side of things, while the police were made fun of for their stupidity.
In the movie there was a stronger line between the people the audience sided with and the "enemies" of the movie. I would say the scientists were overall on the adventurous and exciting side of things, while the police were made fun of for their stupidity.
Adrienne, I am so glad you enjoyed the film because honestly, I was a bit bored by some of the cliches and exaggerations. I agree, the introduction of the settings in the film was a pretty good representation of the settings in the comics. However, I think that the characters were pretty disappointing in that they set the tone of the film, which made it more "light-hearted and fun" as you stated. I liked the suspenseful, dark mystery aspect of the comics, and I missed the whole part of Adele's character that was ambiguous in it's good and bad.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the both of you in that the settings in the film were adapted well from the settings in the comics. I also want to add that the depiction of minor male characters in the film was also very similar to how they were drawn in the comics. Both the film and the comic had an over-abundance of male characters sporting a well-groomed mustache. It somewhat became comical to me after I noticed the plethora of mustaches in the film. Also, I noticed that over the course of the film, there were numerous instances where an omniscient voice-over would speak to the audience to describe the events happening or to set up the next scene. After the first few times, I felt annoyed that the movie incessantly told me what was happening instead of showing me. And then it finally hit me: the omniscient voice-over was meant to represent the narrative boxes in the film! Personally, I thought this was an ingenious method of filmmaking because this technique remains faithful to its source material, while also giving filmmakers a new technique for storytelling. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the film and hopefully the sequel will be just as good, if not better.
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