Jeff Lester over at The Savage Critics has a very well-thought-out essay regarding Dark Horse's "Buffy Season 8" and how it compares to the TV show.
"So the idea of Buffy: Season Eight in comics can stem from both Whedon's desire to make more cash, to give the brand that much more power, and his desire to tell a story, to have something to say that he can best say with Buffy and the characters of the Buffyverse. Or rather, the idea that Season Eight might be a bit of a cash grab won't stop him from developing a story with something meaningful to say. What should be interesting is seeing if we can tell from the first five issues of Buffy: Season Eight what Whedon might want to say, or what he might end up saying."
I like everything about "Buffy Season 8" except the giants and fairies. It reminds me of this Buffy novelisation I picked up once that started with Buffy riding a dragon. Ugh.
As Lester points out in his essay, Joss Whedon was limited by his budget on the TV show and that's why you had a lot of scenes of them just sitting around one pretty generic set or another just talking -- but also that a lot of genius characterization came out of that "limitation."
A comics writer once advised me in terms of TV and movie adaptations of comic books: "Here in comics you have an unlimited budget. Throw in as much fantastic special effects as you can."
I disagree. Not if it doesn't match the "feel" of the series or movie in question.
Anyway, it's a cool essay, check it out.
The same problem happens a lot with plays that are turned into movies -- sometimes what made the play work was that it was closed in and forced to rely on small spaces or on the audience's imagination. Often, when a play is "opened up" in a movie, it loses a lot of its power.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, it's not always true of plays into movies, or tv shows. The Star Trek animated series wasn't always great, but it did often take good advantage of the "extra budget" animation gave it -- more alien aliens, for instance.