Some thoughts on genre

[seriousfic]

Every so often, someone complains that comic books are dominated by superheroes instead of, say, a comic book about cops or doctors. Because God knows there aren't enough stories about cops or doctors out there. What Garth Ennis they fail to realize is that the medium is uniquely suited to comics. The bright, distinctive costumes easily set the characters apart and the pictures are able to depict any action the creator wishes without straining a budget. By contrast, look at TV shows that try to depict the same thing. Both Heroes and Smallville didn't take long to start sucking out loud.

And while we're all tired of cops, doctors, and lawyers, procedurals and sitcoms are uniquely suited to the medium of television. Meanwhile, it occurs to me that horror is uniquely unsuited to TV, since the viewer knows that the entire cast is usually going to show up for the next episode alive and well, and most horror relies on the worry that the cast will die. Sure, Buffy and Supernatural (maybe even Doctor Who) are exceptions, but they're more adventure shows anyway. The question isn't "will our guys survive?" as "will our guys triumph?"

So, what genre is uniquely suited to movies?

Comments

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

romantic comedies. If the stuff that happened in romantic comedies happened to the same cast in an episodic forum you'd want to reach into the TV or comic panel and strangle them

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Counterargument: How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs, Friends.

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

Friends doing that stuff is why I no longer watch new sitcoms.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Counter-counterargument: HIMYM has many, many episodes that have nothing to do with Ted's search for a wife. They're about jobs, friends, living in NYC, all kinds of things that have nada to do with romantic comedy.

I've been saying for years that superhero comics are the only ones that lasted because all the other genres could be done at least as well, and maybe better, in live action. Now that SFX have finally reached a point where they're a) cheap enough and b) convincing enough, we're seeing a lot more superheroes on tv and in films.

[ivanolix.livejournal.com]

International action-adventure fluff. Like National Treasure (or the Bond movies, in a way) or sci-fi equivalents like Independence Day. Anything that doesn't involve a lot of intrigue, just a lot of "Ooh, we have a clue, off to Paris!" and "Look, the aliens can only be defeated by this object held in Arizona! To the unrealistically-short flight!"

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

What about a mindbender, like Memento or The Usual Suspects? Playing around with format like that works for two hours, but having to keep up with a story week in and week out would be hard on both the creator and the audience. And as just about every trippy mystery TV show has demonstrated, it's just about impossible to play a mystery out over years.

[mightbefound.livejournal.com]

I think you hit it when you said horror/thriller--you couldn't sustain a good horror plot over multiple episodes, and comic books/novelizations don't get the same visceral reaction as a good Hitchcock movie (IMO). plus, you know the cast doesn't HAVE to survive at all!

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Remember Harper's Island? They tried to do a 22-episode slasher movie. That's another thing, the vast majority of TV has to be somewhat sanitized. Horror comics can, without the burden of make-up or CGI, get away with some awesome gore.

[mightbefound.livejournal.com]

Horror comics can, without the burden of make-up or CGI, get away with some awesome gore.

True, but there's something about, like, Jason popping up behind someone on-screen that makes you scream and jump in your seat, in a way that just doesn't translate to comics.

I must confess I've never even heard of Harper's Island. :\

[rann.livejournal.com]

Zombieland exists as a movie because they wanted to do a series, having noticed that no one had really done a TV series about zombies. No one wanted to do it as a series but someone wanted to do it as a movie so there you go.

The problem is, I think, that zombies at their minimum effective level are still just too graphic for television. Even if it was pay-for TV. Dexter is still relatively sanitized compared to even a fairly mild zombie movie, for example, where seeing people having chunks bitten out of them is common. At the point zombie movies become acceptable even for the far end of a TV series, especially recurring, they'd have been watered down so far that it would lose any and all feeling of being a zombie flick.

Especially when you consider the utterly cheerful sociopathy a lot of the characters display in Zombieland. Every week would see jokes about mutilation, smashing skulls with car doors, and how you can't take a poop without worrying about zombies sneaking in and eating you balls-first.

Similarly, comics tend to remove a lot of the punch from zombies. Sure they can be drawn to LOOK more horrible, but because it's just ink and paint it loses a lot of the punch. After all, we're used to seeing freaky things on comic pages... zombies turn into just another monster. In movies, their former humanity is highlighted by the fact that there's a human under that appearance of torn skin and bleeding eyes and so on. Seeing it move, hearing it moan and hiss, these are things that a comic just can't get across that confronts you with the thing that's scariest about zombies, that they used to be human.

For that and a lot of other reasons, I'm going to throw zombies on there as uniquely suited to movies.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Except that "Walking Dead", a series based on a comic book, is coming to a television near you THIS FALL.

(Of course, it may flop horribly. I guess we'll see.)

[rann.livejournal.com]

O... kay? Not sure what the point of EMPHASIS is.

As commented above, a concept being badly unsuited to television doesn't always stop someone who thinks they can make money off of it. Just that it usually sucks (hard) when they try it.

[liliaeth]

I think one of the reasons why 'Walking Death' might actually work as a tv series, is because it always focussed more on the human characters than on the slaughter. (at least in the parts I've read of it)

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

War movies. TV just cannot pull off the epic scale battle scene the way a movie screen can.