Live action

[KristieCastaneda]

Hello folks.

What is the most successful live-action according to you? Talking about live action today, I must say it?s been disappointing a lot. Like they all try to get an Oscar by messing up with the casts? races.

[crimsonquill]

Like they all try to get an Oscar by messing up with the casts? races.

Would you mind defining what you mean?

Most comic book films aim for the best actors they can find which fit the characters they are casting for. Unless Marvel's comic character description designates a specific race then it's open to anyone who gets cast for the role.

For example: Namor is Atlantian, a race of humanoids that in the Marvel Universe are born with blue skin caused by them needing water to breathe, but NEVER has at any point in the comics said where the geographic location was for his Kingdom. DC Extended Universe however got to the Atlantians first with their Aquaman movies and it was among DC's Billion dollar films.. so Marvel decided to not use the "Atlantian" name to avoid franchise confusion. The casting for Namor was opened to everyone and they chose an actor with Mexican/Spanish roots which inspired them to use the Mayan culture to build the look and style of the new Talokanil society they created for the movie. Pretty simple, writers/artists just adapted to the cinematic world they are building and didn't have a drawing of Stan Lee's original Namor and his Atlantians held inside a glass cabinet upon his death. Stan Lee himself always said that Marvel is about bringing awareness to culture first to enhance a story. He defined that with the Wakandans in the first place.

And why they even adapted White Wolf from his comic origin to becoming Bucky Barnes "reborn as a native" name given to him by the Wakandans because his old life as Winter Soldier was gone and Bucky was dead to the world- his Wakandan name was literally "White Wolf" when translated to English. Bucky reassumed his name when he returned to the United States and was exonerated for his time as a brainwashed assassin. His future alias will apparently become whatever Feige's team comes up with during the upcoming Thunderbolts movie.

[UnkoMan]

I thought the guy who played Namor did a great job. I didn't love the movie, but he was good with the material he got, and it was a cool design.

I think the best live-action adaptations are the ones that, honestly, take the material and make it their own within the framework of film. This generally means completely changing things. Example, Logan was great. Not perfect, but great.

Another example, Guardians of the Galaxy 2. The first one was very well received and it changed a lot of things. The second one is not quite as good, and I honestly hated it the first time I saw it. Why? Because I love Ego the living planet, and thought what they chose to do with him was not right.

HOWEVER, watching it again, without the visceral reaction, I can see that changes made were used to further the story they were telling, and in that regard it worked. The emotional beats of Star Lord's adopted father/kidnapper being his closest bond played very well. Is any of that from the comics? No! But in the context of this specific story, it works.
Also, thank gosh for the changes to Mantis. She is WAY better in the movie than anywhere else. Sorry Mantis fans but... She was mostly Steve Englehart's highly specific weird fetish in the comics. The na?ve empath character was great. (Their Drax is starting to grate on me by now though.)

Another example would be Batman Returns. This movie is great. All the characters are nothing like their comic counterparts, especially Penguin, however they are memorable and work exactly right in their specific story. Plus the whole movie is set in this strange insular soundstage world. It does NOT try to emulate realism, which can be the failing point of a lot of comic-to-movie adaptations.

Anyhow, this is just one opinionated opinion, ha ha ha. Your mileage may vary. The first Sin City was great and it's like panel for panel recreations a lot of the time, but they still utilized the medium of film in a really awesome way. As opposed to something that seems to have no care and is just another corporate product like Aquaman or Shang Chi or whatever.