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Sin City: Comic vs Film

sin city poster.png One of the side benefits of the book reading effort of 2008 was the discovery of the Arlington County Public Library, which is a few blocks away from where I work. Besides a nice collection of books they have reliable, no registration, WI-FI, and plenty of computer friendly tables. They’ll even send you e-mail notices about upcoming due dates. I’ve taken to dropping in over lunch or when there’s some slack time between knocking off work and catching my bus home.

Browsing the graphic novel section, I came across the collected versions of Frank Miller’s Sin City comics. Although I didn’t think the movie was great (the intense ultraviolence can be offputting) I thought The Hard Goodbye was excellent and in hindsight portends Mickey Rourke’s star turn in The Wrestler. The voiceovers in The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard were overly intrusive. However, the movie worked for me visually as an audacious attempt to bring a comic book to life on the big screen.

I didn’t realize the extent the movie was an almost literal interpretation of the comics. I had repeatedly watched Sin City on cable in 2007 long before I got my hands the graphic novels. I would say 90 percent of the plot survived directly from the books. Probably 75 to 80 percent of the dialog was retained, which I find pretty remarkable. Having gone back to the original source material, I have to commend Robert Rodriguez et. al. for creating a pretty compelling experience that’s true to the original vision and style. Obviously having Frank Miller on the team helped, but it’s still a pretty far leap from the comic form to cinema. That’s why they’re different media.

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