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Voting "No" to the Doc Savage movie
Feb. 8th, 2009 07:37 pmI am a Doc Savage fan - love the concept, read several fot he books, and just like the character. But in looking at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
doc_mystery 's link to a hypothetical Doc Savage movie poster, it occured to me that even if they made a Doc Savage movie I wouldn't much like it. Hollywood seems unable to capture the spirit of many of these characters - like, say, the Spirit, or the Phantom movie (which I love for the glorious cheese factor, but it isn't a shadow fo the actual Phantom character) or the Shadow movie (which I tried to re-watch about 4 years ago and found painfully slow and unengaging, never mind being untrue to the character). So why do I want a Doc Savage movie?
Think about it - the books are coming back into print and are available at any Borders or Barnes and Noble. They represent the ultimate incarnation of the character, and are cracking good reads. Why I do necessarily want to see him translated into a media that in no way will include Doc saying "Supermalagmated!", and is likely to not capture the comraderie of the team? Do I want to see Doc become vengance-obsessed over his father's death with Ham and Remy portrayed as bumbling jokes and the other 3 members of the fabulous five being written out to be replaced with a twenty-something hottie in a belly shirt as they fight terrorists in the 21st century? All this just to try to get more people to read the stories and realize how cool they are, when it will actually mean new movie tie-in books that aren't at all Robesonian?
On one level this makes me feel like a traitor, but on another level it just feels true. Read the stories. Push them on your friends. But realize that the electronic mass media is really unlikely to capture their magic and swell the ranks of Doc's followers back to their hayday. And that's OK. He won't be forgotten.
doc_mystery 's link to a hypothetical Doc Savage movie poster, it occured to me that even if they made a Doc Savage movie I wouldn't much like it. Hollywood seems unable to capture the spirit of many of these characters - like, say, the Spirit, or the Phantom movie (which I love for the glorious cheese factor, but it isn't a shadow fo the actual Phantom character) or the Shadow movie (which I tried to re-watch about 4 years ago and found painfully slow and unengaging, never mind being untrue to the character). So why do I want a Doc Savage movie?Think about it - the books are coming back into print and are available at any Borders or Barnes and Noble. They represent the ultimate incarnation of the character, and are cracking good reads. Why I do necessarily want to see him translated into a media that in no way will include Doc saying "Supermalagmated!", and is likely to not capture the comraderie of the team? Do I want to see Doc become vengance-obsessed over his father's death with Ham and Remy portrayed as bumbling jokes and the other 3 members of the fabulous five being written out to be replaced with a twenty-something hottie in a belly shirt as they fight terrorists in the 21st century? All this just to try to get more people to read the stories and realize how cool they are, when it will actually mean new movie tie-in books that aren't at all Robesonian?
On one level this makes me feel like a traitor, but on another level it just feels true. Read the stories. Push them on your friends. But realize that the electronic mass media is really unlikely to capture their magic and swell the ranks of Doc's followers back to their hayday. And that's OK. He won't be forgotten.
