ShareThisThe promise and pitfalls of graphic-novel adaptations:1. Stay out of this "League." For "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," Alan Moore and illustrator Kevin O'Neill took "the entire body of Victorian-era sci-fi and fantasy and crafted an elaborate, continuous mythology," as Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Jensen described it. The 2003 film version, starring Sean Connery, is "a fiasco devoid of the geek joy. ... Bad choices and butchery abound," Jensen wrote. Case in point: adding Tom Sawyer to an all-Brit lineup of heroes. Moore has divorced himself from all film versions of his works, including "V for Vendetta," "From Hell" and the upcoming "Watchmen."2. One foot in the real world has benefits. Critics loved both the graphic novel/memoir "Persepolis" and the animated movie it became; "American Splendor" mixed Paul Giamatti's acclaimed performance with the real-life Harvey Pekar in the critical darling from 2003; and the 2001 production of Dan Klowes' "Ghost World" captured the comic's spirit of outsider slice-of-life. Live-action dramas "A History of Violence" and "Road to Perdition" attracted big names such as Viggo Mortensen, Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, if not box-office or critical success.3. Changes are inevitable but never easy. Take last year's "Stardust," an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's fantasy graphic novel. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time to change kindly Capt. Johannes Alberic into the cross-dressing Capt. Shakespeare (played by Robert De Niro, of all people), but critics weren't buying it, and "Stardust," despite Gaiman's endorsement, fell flat at the box office.4. Stars are not a guarantee of success. Angelina Jolie, for example, didn't carry the fanboy faithful as far as expected in the "Lara Croft" transfer from video games to movies. Likewise, Connery in "Extraordinary Gentlemen" and Natalie Portman in "V for Vendetta" didn't stop the movies from earning Moore's disdain.5. Don't forget the Web. Dean Koontz, the best-selling horror writer, has teamed with artist Queenie Chan for "In Odd We Trust," a graphic novel that landed Tuesday and is developed from his four-book series about Odd Thomas, a young man who can see dead people. And Odd can be seen on the smallest screens, in live-action Webisodes at http://oddthomas.deankoontz.com.(Sharon Eberson can be reached at seberson(at)post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
When film adaptations go right -- and wrong
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