Personally I like the comic and the film of Ghost World but I wouldn’t consider the film to be a true adaptation because it deviates too much.

The best true adaptation that I can think of is 300 – but I think Spider-Man 1 and 2 are the best films that have come from comics.

I agree with “Popeye” as a good adaptation.

“Persepolis” was another damn fine film based on a damn fine graphic novel.

“Heavy Metal” did a swanky job adapting the tone and styles of the magazine, and presented it well as a film. Bonus points for the soundtrack.

“Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” gets mentioned. But Miyazaki created the manga and directed the movie. And a lot of people say that the manga was better — myself included.

But the Best Comic Book to Film Adaptation…

Bar-none…

The “Lone Wolf and Cub” series. The fact that they were able to make a thoroughly exciting film series based on a thoroughly exiciting manga series and keep up with the majority of the ideas, themes, images (they even had the gun-laden stroller, for crissakes!!), and not skimp out at all on the exhiliration factor made this one of the most entertaining film series of all time.

So why can’t I dislike the movie for changing the spirit of the graphic novel, which I DID like?

I’m not even sure if I like the movie.

I can’t disentangle it from the source material.

Judged as “Formulaicly quirky indie comedy # 3,400,016″ it might have worked pretty well. I know it’s not a great movie, but it might be decent. It was better than Art School Confidential, I guess.

But I can’t disentangle my love for the comic from the adaptation.

And, yeah, I would count it as an adaptation. But by those standards Daredevil and Batman Begins were also adaptations.

Best? Can we count American Splendor? Isn’t it a little too meta to really count as a straight adaptation?

I did like 300.

No, my problem is people expecting that something adapted from one medium to another is going to be, should be, exactly the same.
Why watch it/read it in a different medium if this is the case?
Why bother with different mediums if we’re going to ignore their rules, strengths and weaknesses.

I think you misinterpret what I’m saying. I’m not demanding that the movie be a literal scene for scene reenactment of the book, I’m saying that no matter what changes you make in the adaptation, you should do your best to keep the SPIRIT and TONE of the book intact. That’s my problem with Ghost World, not that they made changes but that the things they did change took away from the nihilism and bleakness that made the graphic novel unique and risky in order to make safe, forgettable and more marketable changes.

As a separate point, I don’t care much for the graphic novel, but really liked the film, and so I totally support the changes made in that case.

That’s not a separate point, that’s my exact point. You like those changes precisely because they change the spirit of the graphic novel, which you didn’t like. So why can’t I dislike the movie for changing the spirit of the graphic novel, which I DID like? The changes have nothing to do with being necessary due to the different natures of films versus graphic novels.

I could not disagree more about Ghost World — the movie missed the point of the novel entirely. Ghost World the graphic novel conveyed a sense of shapelessness and lack of purpose to the protagonist’s life. She wasn’t an artist. She didn’t go to school. There was no meaningful romantic relationship.

Well, she wasn’t considered an artist in the film, and the relationship was more creepy than romantic and meaningful.
Hell, I know people who read it as she tops herself at the end of the film.
If you see any shape or meaning to the character in the films life, then that is something you’ve added to it, not something that is there.

Ghost World the movie was more like a typical angsty teen bildungsroman. The worst part? Look at the panel in the comic book where Clowes draws himself? Who does that look like? Steve Buscemi. That’s right — he screws the main character in the adaptation

You know MASH was an adaptation don’t you

Richard Hooker’s novel was pretty much a plotless series of vignettes, IIRC.

Which neither proves not disproves anything, of course.

That’s irrelevant to my point, which was that films don’t have to be plot heavy to work. Whether it was an adaptation or not doesn’t change my point.

Yeah, but it deviates a lot from it’s source, and in turn made a hugely popular, award winning film out of a book nobody read.

So then your problem isn’t that the film has to be different than the graphic novel due to some types of rules that are inherent to good films. Your problem is that you never liked the graphic novel that much to begin with due to its content. Totally different point.

No, my problem is people expecting that something adapted from one medium to another is going to be, should be, exactly the same.
Why watch it/read it in a different medium if this is the case?
Why bother with different mediums if we’re going to ignore their rules, strengths and weaknesses.

As a separate point, I don’t care much for the graphic novel, but really liked the film, and so I totally support the changes made in that case.

You know MASH was an adaptation don’t you

That’s irrelevant to my point, which was that films don’t have to be plot heavy to work. Whether it was an adaptation or not doesn’t change my point.

I personally think the film is underrated and the comic over hyped.

So then your problem isn’t that the film has to be different than the graphic novel due to some types of rules that are inherent to good films. Your problem is that you never liked the graphic novel that much to begin with due to its content. Totally different point.

What next? “Kubrick changed too much of 2001, sacrificing the details of the scientific exploration for a visual narrative”
“When he adapted Red Alert as Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick lost the tone of the original and instead making it a comedy, thus mocking, rather than fearing, the gravity of the situation”
(take any of Kubricks films, as all are perfect and all are adaptations)

Was the guy who was going to business school to “fuck up the system from the inside” kept in the movie? I can’t remember, but I don’t think he was

Yes, he was.

Look at the original MASH movie or Car Wash.

You know MASH was an adaptation don’t you?

For me the stronger plot works for Ghost World, because if it wasn’t there, I really would have lost interest in the characters as they aren’t nice people, and nothing is happening around them.
I personally think the film is underrated and the comic over hyped.

Look at something like Coffee & Cigarettes, which is about as close to pure character stuff as possible, and it still concedes to having different characters in each scene to establish a linear structure.

But the graphic novel does have a linear structure. It’s just not especially plot heavy. Someone in the comments section tried to say they HAD to make it Ghost World movie more plot heavy because film has different demands than graphic novels, and I was disputing that. There are many films, mostly of the indie variety, that have just as little plot as the Ghost World graphic novel and still work. Look at Clerks for example.

V For Vendetta was a great movie, but veered just enough from the original story’s intents (completely changing the political discourse of the story) to make it a flawed adaption.

300 and Sin City both rate to me as excellent movies and comic adaptions. The job Zach Snyder did on 300 gives me faith that he could pull off the Watchmen flick, which I have always considered “unfilmable.”

I agree with those who mentioned both The Phantom and The Rocketeer, both of which capture the pulp action/adventure qualities of those two strips perfectly. I’m a big fan of both films.

Another Japanese effort I would note is the live action Cutie Honey movie. It’s a wonderfully cheesy, over-the-top movie, meaning it right in line with the cheesy, over-the-top manga it adapts.

The original Swamp Thing movie from Wes Craven was a pretty good effort of adapting the pre-Alan Moore Swampy into film form, while Return Of The Swamp Thing was a post-Alan Moore effort that was hampered by b-grade special effects which in turn limited how much of Swampy’s “elemental” origins they could show.

Just rummaging through my memories here, the last really good adaption that comes to mind would be the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve. The spirit and sense of awe it captured is note perfect to the Supes comic at the time. To people of my generation, Christopher Reeve IS Superman and always will be.

Wasn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, just going for two of the most recognizable examples. Either way, they work don’t they?

I just don’t think it’s fair to say that modern movies could be written in the exact same way as movies were in the seventies to equal success. You have to consider how much of an effect is had by the public consciousness’ idea of what a movie is. In the 70′s American film was insanely experimental, and audiences were used to seeing popular movies that got weird or unusual. They were prepared to view things like that. But nowadays, there’s such an ingrained tendency towards a “movie” formula that the majority of audience members wouldn’t be receptive to a straight-up character piece.

Look at something like Coffee & Cigarettes, which is about as close to pure character stuff as possible, and it still concedes to having different characters in each scene to establish a linear structure.

My point is, when it comes to making movies based on monthly serial superhero books that have been continually published for a stretch of decades, it is all but impossible to closely & faithfully adapt a specific storyline into a film, especially if it is the first movie that is also supposed to introduce us to the character and show his origins.

Just look at the Daredevil film… apparently the writers were so in love with Frank Miller’s DD stories that they just had to include Elektra and Bullseye and Kingpin in the film. So you had a film that was supposed to introduce DD to a general audience that probably wasn’t too familar with him, and it had all these extraneous elements that weren’t necessary to tell DD’s origin. Most of the stuff in the film should have been saved for a potential sequal, but the writers were too fanboy-ish to wait, they so much wanted to do as faithful as possible an adaptation of the Miller issues, that a ton of stuff was shoehorned into one single two hour movie.

Monthly superhero comics books and stand-alone movies are two completely different mediums. What will work for one will not necessarily work for the other. And so when translating the former into the later, you need to pick & choose the best elements of the characters and stories that will capture the spirit and intent of the original works.

I really, really love the Ghost World movie. I do not like the graphic novel. I’m not sure whether that makes the movie a good adaptation or not.

Well it does kind of lend support to the view that the two works were quite different from each other I guess.

I don’t think that a couple of movies from the 70’s count as doing it “all the time”.

Wasn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, just going for two of the most recognizable examples. Either way, they work don’t they?

It moved from being character-driven to being plot driven.

Uh-huh. I think the move from the Comics’ “We’re all freaks, kind of,” to the Movie’s “Let’s Laugh at the funny, funny freaks! Ha! Look at them caper for our amusement!” was a pretty damn big change, myself.

The tone and spirit of the two works were very, very different.