Comics, Movies, and Masks
May. 13th, 2004 12:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
woodwardiocomOr, "Yet Another Post About Headgear"
-This post contains minor spoilers for the Hellboy comic and movie.
-The Hellboy movie was, mostly, very true to the comic. On the 1 (Lawnmower Man) to 10 (Wyrd Sisters) scale, I'd put it around a 7. Most of the changes were there for obvious reasons. Abe got psychometric powers to make the forensics work more interesting, and to give him something to do besides swim. Hellboy got a romance because everyone loves a love story, it improves the arc, and it gives him a motive to turn bad. The BPRD became a secret organization because . . . okay, that one I don't get. Maybe to make the setting one the movie-goer could relate to (i.e., weirdness is all hidden tabloid-fodder) rather than one comics-readers can deal with (weirdness is public knowledge, like Superman).
-However, the changes to Doctor Kroenen puzzled me. In the comic, Kroenen is a mild-mannered and polite surgeon who is, admittedly, a Nazi with medical ethics best described as "absent". In the movie, he never speaks, is a kickass swordsman, and is apparently head of the Thule Society (must be tricky to run meetings without talking).
-The only similarity between the two characters is the name, the all-covering mask, and their presence at the Ragna Rok experiment. And it's the mask that is the key.
-In the comic, we have never found out what's under the mask. Even I don't know, and I wrote the sourcebook with advice from Mignola. My best guess was that Kroenen was pathologically afraid of germs, and I labelled that as no more than a possibility. We may, in fact, never find out (and not just because comics-Kroenen is presumed dead). In comics, there are several characters whose true face has never been revealed (most famously, Doctor Doom). This may be Mignola's intent.
-However, in the movie, we do find out what's going on behind the mask. It's not pretty, and I won't spoil it. The fact that we find out, however, may be why the characters are so different. Mignola may want it to be absolutely clear that seeing behind movie-Kroenen's mask tells us nothing about comics-Kroenen's secret. They're obviously two different characters, after all. If they'd been similar, the trick wouldn't work, and the movie would be spilling beans as yet unspilled in the comic. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain . . because it's the wrong curtain.
-This post contains minor spoilers for the Hellboy comic and movie.
-The Hellboy movie was, mostly, very true to the comic. On the 1 (Lawnmower Man) to 10 (Wyrd Sisters) scale, I'd put it around a 7. Most of the changes were there for obvious reasons. Abe got psychometric powers to make the forensics work more interesting, and to give him something to do besides swim. Hellboy got a romance because everyone loves a love story, it improves the arc, and it gives him a motive to turn bad. The BPRD became a secret organization because . . . okay, that one I don't get. Maybe to make the setting one the movie-goer could relate to (i.e., weirdness is all hidden tabloid-fodder) rather than one comics-readers can deal with (weirdness is public knowledge, like Superman).
-However, the changes to Doctor Kroenen puzzled me. In the comic, Kroenen is a mild-mannered and polite surgeon who is, admittedly, a Nazi with medical ethics best described as "absent". In the movie, he never speaks, is a kickass swordsman, and is apparently head of the Thule Society (must be tricky to run meetings without talking).
-The only similarity between the two characters is the name, the all-covering mask, and their presence at the Ragna Rok experiment. And it's the mask that is the key.
-In the comic, we have never found out what's under the mask. Even I don't know, and I wrote the sourcebook with advice from Mignola. My best guess was that Kroenen was pathologically afraid of germs, and I labelled that as no more than a possibility. We may, in fact, never find out (and not just because comics-Kroenen is presumed dead). In comics, there are several characters whose true face has never been revealed (most famously, Doctor Doom). This may be Mignola's intent.
-However, in the movie, we do find out what's going on behind the mask. It's not pretty, and I won't spoil it. The fact that we find out, however, may be why the characters are so different. Mignola may want it to be absolutely clear that seeing behind movie-Kroenen's mask tells us nothing about comics-Kroenen's secret. They're obviously two different characters, after all. If they'd been similar, the trick wouldn't work, and the movie would be spilling beans as yet unspilled in the comic. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain . . because it's the wrong curtain.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-13 03:46 am (UTC)"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain . . because it's the wrong curtain", by the way, is a great line.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-13 07:21 am (UTC)-Thanks. A good closing line can be tricky.