I have to
watch Atomic Blonde, if only
to work out what the hell is going on.
You
see, I was already interested. It looked like a John Wick movie
starring Charlize Theron beating up tons of dudes and then kissing
ladies on the mouth. I can absolutely get behind all the concepts in
that sentence, especially Charlize Theron as a female John Wick.
Then
the reviews hit and I discovered it was an adaptation of The
Coldest City written by Antony
Johnston with art by Sam Hart. That's one of my favourite graphic
novels ever. The graphic novel is a John leCarré-style
spy thriller set in the last days of partitioned Berlin. The main
character, MI6 operative Lorraine Broughton, is tough in a fight and
resourceful but she's no John Wick and as for kissing ladies on the
mouth... well, its been a couple of years since I last read it but I
don't remember it.
I'm
not even being a purist here: the film they seem to have made looks
like a fun film and if nothing else I am genuinely curious about how
they got from this book to the concept I'm seeing in the trailers. Of
course, this is assuming the trailers are representative of the
finished product which isn't always the case and if you have even a
second of Charlize Theron a) fighting a bunch of dudes and b) kissing
a lady on the mouth, then you're going to want to put that front and
centre of the advertising. I can't blame anyone for that.
Still,
an interesting potential case study and also perhaps a limit case
scenario for my previous pious insistence that I don't mind changes
to the source material if it makes the story a better fit for the
medium its being adapted to.
No comments:
Post a Comment