A few years ago, when The Dark Knight Rises was about to be released, David Cronenberg was out promoting Cosmpolois and made the following statement in an interview:
“…a superhero movie, by definition, you know, it’s comic book. It’s for kids. It’s adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying, you know, Dark Knight Rises is, you know, “supreme cinema art,” I don’t think they know what the fuck they’re talking about.” [1]
This caught me a bit off guard as it was Cronenberg himself that directed one of my favorite comic to film adaptations – A History of Violence. This statement also seems odd coming from a man who has spent the better part of his career elevating the base genre of horror to the level of art. And what about films like the Oscar nominated Ghost World, American Splendor and Persepolis? When you get down to the heart of it, a comic book is nothing more than source material. Just as great movies have been based on books and plays, so have awful movies. And some of those great films even began life as pulpy novels intended for base amusement. The French New Wave practically made a habit of it. I guess that’s why it was Jean-Luc Godard who coined the phrase, “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.” I could not agree more.
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