>A number of films have been released in recent years that are adaptations of graphic novels. These, of course, include all the Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Catwoman, etc. movies, but they are definitely not the extent of this trend. They also include such graphic novels/movies as 300, Watchmen, and Sin City. In the past few months, movies based on the graphic novels Kick A** and the Scott Pilgrim series have been in theaters.
Coraline is another film with a graphic novel tie. The story was originally a novella by Neil Gaiman, adapted into the graphic novel format in 2008 and released as a film in 2009. The story is of a young girl who moves wtih her parents into a large old house transformed into four apartments. On a rainy day, Coraline explores inside rather than out and discovers a bricked up doorway in the sitting room. In the night, the doorway is no longer bricked up and Coraline passes through it into a world containing button-eyed copies of her parents and the other tenants of her building. At first this world seems better than hers, but her real parents disappear from the normal world and the other world starts to unravel. Coraline must figure out how to save her real parents and get away from her “Other Mother,” or be trapped forever and have buttons sewn over her eyes.
Persepolis is a nonfiction graphic novel adapted into a movie. It is the story of one young woman’s experience in Iran during and in the years following the Islamic revolution. The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. The graphic novels and the film chronicle Marjane Satrapi’s life from her childhood in Iran during the war between Iran and Iraq to her teenage years going to school in Vienna, Austria and then her young adulthood back in Iran where she attended college, married, divorced and then moved to France. The cinematic style is simple, with the present day depicted in color and Satrapi’s flashbacks to childhood animated in black and white.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a film released in 2003, was based on a comic book series of the same title published beginning in 1999. The film is a action/adventure/superhero movie very loosely based on the graphic novels. It is set in the late 19th century and populated by Victorian Era superheroes. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is brought together to combat the threat of the “Fantom” who is masterminding attacks throughout the world designed to create upheavel on an international scale. They stop the destruction of Venice only to discover their mysterious benefactor had ulterior motives for bringing the group together.