A noticeable trend has been growing in the film industry in recent years. Graphic novel adaptations have been becoming more and more apparent thanks to a positive audience response asking for more. This topic has been covered in previous blog posts, however the authors focused on one particular adaptation of a film. For this particular blog post, I wanted to discuss the common traits that are found in adaptations and examples of them. Covering this topic is interesting for me, due to taking a cinema studies course and learning about Watchmen and the differences between the graphic novel and the film. From there, I discovered more and more movies that I learned were adaptations, which encouraged me to learn more about it and try to research noticeable commonalities between the two different mediums. A few of the most popular adaptations in recent years include: Sin City, Watchmen, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and Hellboy.
According to an article titled How Graphic Can a Mystery Be? The author, J. Madison Davis delves deeper into the art of adapting a graphic novel into a film. The most popular form of adaptations that has been rising are ones that were originally graphic crime novels. He discusses similarities between adaptations, mainly the Gothic feel that is commonly found in these movies. The qualities that are often times carried out throughout these films include the grey color tones/shadows, dramatic camera angles, and operatic emotion. They tend to have a more serious tone in order to continue the dramatic feel carried on throughout the novel. This is especially prominent in the film Watchmen.
Through this increased popularity of adapting graphic novels to films, I believe it would be interesting to start viewing other genres of comics, rather than crime and adventure (super heroes) being recreated into movies. If different forms of graphic novels begin to surface in the Hollywood industry of films, it would be fascinating to see how they visually portray these novels.