Flashed Away?February 6th, 2007 in Directors, Movies |
I’m not a big comic book fan like some of the contributors here at Screenhead. But there was a time when I read Flash comic books during the Sixties, when the artwork was done by Carmine Infantino.
It was with interest and a bit of shock that I read about Warner Brothers decisions regarding the big-screen adaptation of this classic superhero. A version of The Flash was written by David Goyer, who was also scheduled to direct. Most are familiar with Goyer as the guy who has written screenplays for the Blade trilogy as well as Batman Begins. He also directed Blade III.
Goyer’s Flash was deemed too dark by the suits at Warner Brothers who have turned the project over to Shawn Levy. I am assuming this is based on the box office success of such films as the Steve Martin remakes of Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther as well as A Night in the Museum. Somebody let me know if I’m missing something, but I think Levy has benefitted from great marketing campaigns rather than any display of filmmaking skill. This makes me long for the days when studio heads actually matched projects with directors based on their actual talent for a certain kind of movie. For me The Flash has gone quickly from a project I was looking forward to, to one of those films that I would possibly see on cable, if nothing else was on.
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February 6th, 2007 at 7:02 am
You’re not wrong.
I suspect this might be another in a long line of bad films made from reasonable comic sources. I’m still smarting from ‘V for Vendetta’
and while I’m here, is it me or has anyone else noticed that films of this ilk used to be much darker than they are today. We used to give children some credit when it came to horror (not gore). I mean, ‘Ghostbusters’… and I watched the 1980 ‘Flash Gordon’ film the other day. Apart from being the very definition of camp, it contained some pretty dark references that would never appear in a pg-rated superhero flick these days.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:01 am
I can take a guess why the suits at Warner Bros. didn’t like what they saw. David Goyer, a true, blue comic book geek, wrote the script with BOTH Silver Age Flash Barry Allen (pictured above) and his successor, Wally West. “Dark” is probably too strong a word for “Flash” - its not gothic or psychological like “Batman”, but it is a high octane action. Check out Geoff Johns’ run on “Flash” - which was probably at least partially the basis of Goyer’s concept, since he and Geoff Johns are buddies (Johns wrote several scripts for “Blade: The Series”. And in the classic “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, Barry Allen does die in arguably one of the most memorable comic book deaths ever . . . I can only imagine this did not compute up at Warner Bros., who probably saw pretty colors in place of the Scarlet Speedster. Unfortunately, that’s not all that the WB did not compute, as you can see from my above blog.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:39 am
[...] Goyer’s removal from The Flash (see Pete’s blog here) is bad, but this next one is much, much, much worse.Joss Whedon, who practically re-invented the [...]