Sin City -- Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist?

[hardcoremoose]

Here's a question for those who have read the books and seen the movie:

Why do you think Rodriquez passed on A Dame To Kill For and went with The Big Fat Kill instead?  Consider: A Dame To Kill For features tighter writing, a less linear plot, a strong female lead, a nice crossover with Marv, a larger role for Michael Clarke Duncan, and best of all, a flawed hero who actually gets his ass handed to him several times before finally figuring out how to get done what he needs to get done.

Was it because the hero changes faces halfway through the story?  I can't imagine that being a problem.  Maybe it was because in this day and age, filmmakers can't imagine letting their heroes take a whupping.

- Scott

[Keith Senkowski]

If you read the three he used (The Big Fat Kill, Yellow Bastard and The Hard Goodbye, which I've always just known as Sin City until recently) all intersect, at the bar in fact.  I'm guessing that is why he (Miller) chose those three.

Keith

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

A Dame to Kill For intersects at the bar too, and in fact a little more integrally than the ones he used. It also would explain the Manute character far better, who pretty much just comes out of nowhere in the film. Still, I understand if maybe the film needed (a) not to be 3.5 hours long and (b) to showcase each protagonist equally, rather than be half all about Dwight.

I like Dwight McCarthy immensely; he's my fave Sin City character all around. Unlike some, I think all the actors in the movie did a superb job, without any "uneasy" or "phone-in" performances at all. So my interest is having a screen version of A Dame to Kill For is merely preferential, rather than aesthetic.

What I hope for is a DVD version which includes A Dame to Kill For, integrated into the storyline just as the three stories in the theatrical release are integrated.

Or who knows, maybe a sequel that includes A Dame to Kill For, Family Values, and some of Booze Broads and Bullets (notably the Blue Eyes sequence). Now I'm just geeking, though.

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Norris]

Or who knows, maybe a sequel that includes A Dame to Kill For, Family Values, and some of Booze Broads and Bullets (notably the Blue Eyes sequence). Now I'm just geeking, though.

I think the odds of a sequel are pretty good (and I think that might be one reason A Dame to Kill For wasn't used already). From what I hear, the movie cost about $40 million to make (about what a high-end romantic comedy costs these days -- greenscreen helped, but Rodriguez knows how to save money), and it's already made $28 million.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, anyway.

The DVD version of the film is apparently going to offer the option of watching the three stories separately, with deleted scenes integrated.

[James Holloway]

Or who knows, maybe a sequel that includes A Dame to Kill For, Family Values, and some of Booze Broads and Bullets (notably the Blue Eyes sequence). Now I'm just geeking, though.

Best,
Ron

Kevin Smith's NPR interview with Rodriguez and Miller hinted pretty strongly at this, I thought.

[Brendan]

1) Direct translations from one medium to another does not work.  It just doesn't.  And this was as direct a translation as I have ever seen.  Hell, as I was watching it I was mentaly going, "Oh I remember that page in That Yellow Bastard."  If the movie was good I shouldn't be doing that, recalling the graphic novels.

2) What is written down doesn't sound good all the time.  I mean did Frank Miller actually read out loud what he was writing.  Didn't they at one point listen to the dialog and go, "Fuck that sounds stupid.  We need to rewrite that shit."  

3) Long internal narration does not work on the screen. I found it fucking annoying.  I also, in conversation with my wife, noted that The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep both lack that and are much better movies as far as the genre is concerned.  Internal monologue works for comics, but man does it feel stupid on the screen.

GOD YES.  I wanted to mute the whole movie and just look at the pictures.  As it was, I felt like I was watching two hours of Max Payne cutscenes.

I realized a couple of days after I saw it that I would have liked the movie significantly more if they'd made all the narration into subtitles instead of voiceovers.  Better yet, it could be cut entirely with little loss, and most of the scenes could be shortened by half.  I've never seen a movie that needed a bold editor more.

Narration boxes in comics work because you get between one and ten visual frames per shot; the combination of text and image increases the throughput of ideas.  In film, you get literally hundreds of frames (thousands in long takes).  The throughput is so much higher that the narration is unnecessary.  It's like putting inline skates on a bullet train, so it'll go faster downhill.

[hardcoremoose]

I realized a couple of days after I saw it that I would have liked the movie significantly more if they'd made all the narration into subtitles instead of voiceovers.

This is an interesting thought...we've gone on about how literal the adaptation is and how it's very nearly like watching the graphic novels (just with moving pictures), but subtitles or captions would have taken that a step further even.  I wonder what that experience would have been like?  Matt Gwinn and I discussed after seeing the film that the greenscreen imagery, even when a little shoddy, was perfect for this particular film, since many of the old b&w films made use of elaborate mattes for backgrounds and this was basically the same thing (just inserted after the fact rather than before).  Captioning the voiceovers might have worked in the same way, giving a little nod to silent films while also helping to capture the experience of enjoying a graphic novel, where reading is just as vital as seeing the images.  But man, there were so many images to see...it would've required effort to drink both in (and would that have been a bad thing?  it's certainly never affected my desire to watch foreign films.)  I guess we'll never know, although when the DVD comes out it might be fun to watch it without sound with just the subtitles on.

And to go back to Dwight McCarthy for a sec...Rodriguez has said he wants to eventually film all of the Sin City stories, so I have hope that we'll see A Dame To Kill For eventually.  I only wonder if he'll get two different actors to play the part, or just slather Clive Owen in prosthetic appliances (ala Mickey Rourke's Marv) for the first half of the story.  Either would be fine, although I think Owen inhabits the character perfectly.

- Scott

[Brendan]

I guess we'll never know, although when the DVD comes out it might be fun to watch it without sound with just the subtitles on.

Ah, brilliant!  If only there were a way to keep the music on without any speech.  Maybe it'll have a decent non-English dub I can switch to?  (But probably not.)