Anghus Houvouras on why television is the superior medium for comic book characters…
You hear it all the time: television has become a more interesting medium than the movies. It’s one of those trendy uber-hip things to say when you want to engage in a straw man argument over the superior art form. As I watched the first season of Marvel’s new Daredevil series on Netflix, I found myself for the first time with a salient example of how television is by far the best medium for comic book characters. Let’s catch this train of thought and take it for a ride.
1. Serialized stories work better in serialized installments
Comic books are, by nature, serialized stories requiring multiple issues to complete an arc. Movies struggle to fit the entire history of a character into a single 2+ hour extravaganza. Comic books were made for television adaptations. Good comic books build worlds with a number of characters who struggle for screen time in a single movie. With a dozen episodes or more, the creators can take time delivering us a fantastic, nuanced Kingpin like Vincent D’Onofrio instead of a one-dimensional Kingpin like Michael Clarke Duncan.
2. Pacing
Imagine trying to take fifty plus years of character stories, pick a popular story arc, and then reduce it to a two-hour story. Stripping down the characters to the most basic components and walking them through the traditional three act structure leaving enough time at the beginning for the origin story and the end for the mega-giganto battle at the end (more on that later). Television allows the origin to be peppered in over the course of a season. Both Arrow and Daredevil use a flashback scenario to give you back story over the course of multiple episodes. Television allows you time to be introduced to the characters.
3. The burden of the cinematic experience
Superhero movies have become so frequent and popular. The massive box office hauls have led to mega-budget movies that feel contractually mandated to skull-fuck your senses into oblivion. Movies like The Avengers successfully manage to juggle some small, well-developed character moments with epic action set-pieces. In order to justify high ticket prices these movies have to include third act sequences where cities are leveled, legions of foes are dispatched, and everything explodes. Television allows much smaller, sensible confrontations. The budgetary limitations make shows like Arrow and Daredevil have to be creative with their storytelling.
4. More Characters you love
How many characters can you fit into a movie and still provide any sense of depth? There are lots of buzz this week coming from the Avengers: Age of Ultron press screening that Hawkeye “gets all the good lines”, which is great since the first movie provided him with as much quality screen time as S.H.I.E.L.D. AGENT PLAYING GALAGA. We might get some good moments from Hulk, Captain America, and Iron Man. But characters like Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Vision will be relegated to limited amounts of time to shine. Not on television, where even ‘Night Nurse’ can be given enough time to become three-dimensional people. Plus, there’s usually a two to three-year wait between installments for those supporting characters to fight for attention.
5. Believe or not, better action
Comic book movies pour on the bombast, but if you want superior fighting scenes you’ll find it on television. Daredevil’s fight sequences are incredibly choreographed and lucid. Something superhero movies haven’t been in ages. I love Nolan’s Batman films, but the only good action came when Batman was in a batmobile or flying in a batcopter. Batman Begins had Batman fighting ninjas and you couldn’t tell who was landing a punch. The Dark Knight Rises‘ fight scenes were like watching rehearsals. Daredevil has far more imaginative fight sequences than any comic book film I’ve seen, which have become so reliant on the computer generated FX that they barely look real. Arrow has also delivered some great action sequences that feel more like classic kung fu cinema. Movies will always have the spectacle part down, but how many times can you see New York blown up by faceless drones?
6. Better Villains
One of the biggest casualty of the superhero films is the under developed villains. They often exist to give the hero something to do and are little more than pale reflections of the protagonist. Sure, every so often you get Heath Ledger’s Joker or Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Most of the time we end up with Alexander Pearce, The Red Skull, General Zod, or Aldrich Killan. On TV, we get to delve deeper into Deathstroke, The Kingpin, and Reverse Flash. They become more than just ‘the guy who needs punched in the face’. On television they get the time to becomes as interesting (or more so) than the heroes.
There you go. Six reasons why comic books are better suited for television. Does that mean we’re going to see fewer comic book movies? Dear lord no. That’s a cash cow that is still giving milk by the bucket load. For me, what it means that I find myself much more eager to see AKA Jessica Jones than Ant-Man.
How about you?
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5&v=pnc360pUDRI&feature=player_embedded
Originally published April 11, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
