This week Neil Calloway wonders why Britain doesn’t make films based on comics…
As someone who usually bemoans the apparent abundance of sequels and comic book adaptations, I was disappointed to hear Alex Garland’s announcement this week that there would not be a sequel to the 2012 film Dredd. Not just because I liked the film, and haven’t had a conversation with someone who didn’t like it (admittedly, I’ve only had a few conversations about it), not just because it was a messed up comic book film aimed squarely at grown ups, but because it was that rarest of things; a good British comic book movie.
Unfortunately, despite near universal good reviews, it made very little money – less than its $45 million dollar budget – and less than half, in fact, than the first Judge Dredd film, widely derided as a failure and released twenty years ago.
Some of the greatest comic book writers – Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore spring to mind – are British, and some of their best work is set in Britain. Why aren’t there great British comic book movies?
We shoot comic book movies over here; while Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England was being shot in a field in Surrey, Thor: The Dark World was being shot in an adjacent field. A low budget esoteric black and white English Civil War film, and a blockbusting American franchise movie being made side by side; I don’t think you’ll find a better example of the difference between the two film industries. There, I think, is the answer as to why there aren’t more British comic book films.
In Britain, we tend to make small films where people have quiet domestic dilemmas, or period dramas where people in costumes have quiet domestic dilemmas in nice houses. With the exception of the occasional gangster film or James Bond, we don’t really do explosions and action.
The films that have been made from British comic books – I’m thinking of Alan Moore’s work in particular here – have in one way or another disappointed, which may have dissuaded others from adapting other works. Just because nobody waxes lyrical about From Hell or The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, both of which were disowned by Moore, it does not mean great adaptations cannot be made in the future. We suffered many sub par screen incarnations of Marvel characters in the late 1990s and early 2000s before Marvel Studios took control of the material and wiped the slate clean and became a major Hollywood player.
There is hope; Kingsman: The Secret Service, a film directed by a Brit, written by a Brit, based on a British comic book, is on course to make $300 million at the global box office. You can be sure of a sequel, and hopefully British film companies will take notice and start making other adaptations featuring British comic book characters; there’s a Marvel Cinematic Universe. Why isn’t there a 2000AD Cinematic Universe? Instead of shooting a movie featuring Captain America over here, why isn’t there a Captain Britain film coming to our screens?
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future installments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONsp_bmDYXc&list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5&feature=player_embedded
Originally published March 22, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
