Here's a new trailer for the Frank Miller adaptation, which is so cool that it looks just like the graphic novel it's based on. Quicktime required. I dunno how long this has been out but I just found it today.

It's been out since December 23rd.

Cool. I figured it had to be pretty recent.

In Brief: A poorly-made and poorly-adapted CGI-concocted mess that makes a mockery of both the medium in which it’s told, and the medium from which it was adapted.

Based on the miniseries Sin City: The Hard Good-bye, Sin City: The Big Fat Kill, Sin City: That Yellow Bastard, and Sin City: The Customer is Always Right by Frank Miller
Written by Frank Miller
Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, and Quentin Tarantino

---CAST:
Mickey Rourke as Marv
Bruce Willis as Hartigan
Clive Owen as Dwight McCarthy
Jaime King as Goldie/Wendy
Elijah Wood as Kevin
Benicio Del Toro as “Iron” Jack Rafferty
Nick Stahl as Junior/ The Yellow Bastard
Jessica Alba as Nancy
Rosario Dawson as Gail
Josh Hartnett as The Man
Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute
Devon Aoki as Miho
Alexis Bledel as Becky
Brittany Murphy as Shellie
Carla Gugino as Lucille
Powers Boothe as Senator Roark
Rutger Hauer as Cardinal Roark
Michael Madsen as Bob
Frank Miller as the Priest

One of the most important (and unheeded) observations made about the comic book medium, and media in general, was made by comics analyst and historian Scott McCloud, in his brilliant Understanding Comics, in which he noted the tendency to confuse form with content. Every medium has its own tools for telling stories, derived by both the advantages and limitations of their respective forms. Prose, for example, lacks visuals and sound, but allows a writer to tell the reader what’s going on in a character’s head. Comics have visuals, but lack motion and also lack sound, yet also retain some ability for internal dialogue and thought. Movies might seem the medium that most closely mirrors our daily sensory experiences, but makes it harder to establish characters’ internal thought, and so on. The best creators are those who make full use of the distinct language of these media, and who overcome their limitations. When adapting material from one medium to another, the smart creators are those who take heed of these different forms, and the result can be successful works like Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, etc. But with movies based on comics, too often there’s this bizarre fallacy that the very fact that the story is derived from a comic should somehow affect what the movie should look like, a notion that doesn’t seem to hold for movies based on any other medium.

Consider this:

Say you want to adapt a play into a movie. In between each scene or Act, do you show, on the movie screen, curtains being closed and opens to facilitate the transition? Of course not. Or how about when you adapt a best-selling book by Stephen King or John Grisham? Do you show pages being turned on the screen? The very notion is silly to suggest. Each medium has its own tools for telling a story, and these things are merely aspects of the medium from which the film is being adapted. To suggest that the mechanical nature of the medium from which a film is adapted should somehow inform the look of the film (“The film is based on a comic book, so we have to show pages from the comic book in the opening title sequence,” or “It’s based on a comic book, so we have to make sure shots literally resemble actual panels from the book”) is to engage in non-sequitur. But Hollywood doesn’t get that. As a result, we get a Batman TV show with actual sound effects spelled out on screen, as if the person who came up with this idea didn’t realize that the only reason such things are in comics is because they don’t have sound as TV does, and even dumber, a Hulk film that attempts to use actual panels, of all things, as if the otherwise-lauded director doesn’t get that panels are only used in comics because they are, by nature, told through a composition of static images, and not the continuous motion of a single movie frame. There are of course, exceptions. Mario Puzo and Richard Donner got it right with Superman, the best comic-based movie ever made, telling that story straight, with a good actor in the role of a villain, a sincere and resonant origin story, a majestic score, and so forth. Bryan Singer also got it right with the X-Men films. Sam Raimi surrendered a bit too much to camp with Spider-Man, but got it mostly right with its sequel.

But not everyone in Hollywood gets it. Some seem so focused on making good “comic book movies” that it doesn’t seem to understand that they should instead be setting out to make good movie movies. Producers and writers and directors of such films sometimes brag about their film being “a living comic book,” when no one ever thinks that The Bridges of Madison County should be a “living novel,” or The Fugitive a “living television,” or Hamlet a “living play,” and as a viewer, I no more want to see a “comic book movie” than a “novel movie” or a “play movie.” When a watch a movie, I want to see a MOVIE, one that utilizes the tools and language of that medium.

And so it happens with Sin City, the gritty, crime-noir crime drama/thriller series stories written and illustrated in stark black and white by Frank Miller, the man who revitalized Batman with The Dark Knight Returns (the story that informed Tim Burton’s take on the character), and whose widely-acclaimed run on Daredevil included the fateful confrontation between Bullseye and Miller’s own creation, Elektra, that came to life in the poorly-casted 2003 film. Given this year’s critical and financial flop spinoff, Elektra, one might be tempted to think that Frank Miller’s characters don’t translate well to film, but seeing Sin City, it’s obvious that the problem is not the characters, but the approach to the material.

I’ve loved the Sin City books ever since buying the collected volume of the first story (originally without a subtitle, but now repackaged with the subtitle The Hard Good-bye, ala A New Hope), which caused me to wonder if my art school Sequential Art teacher, Klaus Janson, who inked Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Daredevil work, was the basis for Kevin, the psycho killer. Those stories not only showed what could be done with the medium, but caused me to think that some material is best told by that medium. I’ve long-felt that adapting Sin City to the big screen might be problematic if not done right. There are just certain comic books that don’t translate well (Can you imagine retaining Captain America’s flag-colored chain mail to the big screen, and being able to take him serious as a soldier? Or removing it, and still being able to see him as Cap?), and Sin City is something that I felt would have to tread a delicate line between remaining faithful to the source material and making changes to keep it from looking silly. But if Rodriguez and Miller, one of the most thoughtful and outspoken advocates of the comics medium, had any inkling of this important point, it certainly doesn’t seem so when watching the travesty that they made, which not only used Miller’s original artwork as storyboards, but goes out of its way to mirror it, like some obsessed celebrity stalker getting plastic surgery to look like a famous actress because she thinks the pretty girl in the talking picture box is really talking to her, and needs to emulate her every pore.

Why, for example, is it necessary to include the narration in which the protagonist from The Customer is Always Right describes the sound of a gunshot with a silencer? Narrating that “The silencer makes a whisper of the gunshot” may be necessary in a comic book or prose novel because in those media, there is no sound, and the story is supposed to be told in part with words. In the movie, we hear the silencer, so we don’t need this cornball musing on it. Indeed, most of the narration in the film is utterly redundant, since we see what’s being described. Granted, narration can be done well (indeed, I’m not saying that different media cannot learn from one another and even borrow some of these tools when used effectively—split screens for example, can work well in both comics and movies), but in this film, there seems to a slavish obsession with making the film look and sound exactly like the comic book, with no thought to adapting one from the other. Just witness Marv’s (Mickey Rourke) ranting about the “blood-for-blood good old days” or Dwight’s (Clive Owen) saccharine “Valkyrie” metaphor for Gail (Rosario Dawson), and you’ll wish for the merciful explosion of your eardrums so that you don’t have to endure any more of it.

If Rodriguez and Miller were so in love with the narration that they wanted to keep it, might it not have made more sense to depict say, Marv’s story in media res, with him in the (Spoiler Warning) electric chair, telling the story of how he came to be there to a reporter, or something, so that when he narrates his story, he can do it in the past tense, and have it seem less contrived? (End Spoiler Warning.) Instead of having Hartigan (Bruce Willis) constantly intoning Nancy Callahan’s name and age as he runs into the building to rescue her in the beginning of his story, are we not simply shown photographs of her, say on a missing child poster, interspersed with Junior’s mug shot? Wouldn’t this make more sense, and even be more visually creative? Miller, whose only prior behind-the-camera movie work was writing the screenplays to Robocop 2 and Robocop 3, was long-opposed to a Sin City film because he refused to allow Hollywood executives to mutilate his writing. Perhaps he should have. They might’ve actually adapted his dialogue into something that didn’t sound entirely awful.

And then there’s the visuals. Why the obsession with having so many shots mirror actual panels in the books? Why does the movie’s logo have to be the same one used in the graphic novels? Why does the opening title sequence have to have Miller’s renditions of the characters accompany the names of the actors playing them? Seeing this, one gets the feeling that Miller is not satisfied with being the mostly unknown author of the material on which the film is based, or even having his name on the title, and was desperate to shoehorn his artwork into it, and the result is preposterous. The white-silhouettes-on-black backgrounds, which work in the comics, look utterly ridiculous on the screen, as if Rodriguez and Miller just couldn’t make them the usual black-on-white. Honestly, is the story really enhanced by fluorescing Hartigan’s tie or the bandages on Marv’s body so that we can see them when they rest of their figures are in shadow? Why was this necessary? Why, when Kevin walks into a room, do his eyeglasses have to be in white silhouette? This shows a total lack of imagination on the part of the filmmakers, and the result is a film whose look is arbitrary and insular. The almost entirely-CGI backgrounds, which Rodriguez cluelessly lauds as making his work easier (“I don’t have to light the scene! I can just put a light here and there with the push of a button…”) are lifeless and artificial. When the Man (Josh Hartnett) walks out of a ballroom onto the balcony in the film’s prologue, never once do I feel that what I see behind him is real. Any suspension of disbelief is lost. There no people milling about (There weren’t any in the original story, but they could change that to add life to the scene, yet Rodriguez and Miller just couldn’t do that, oh no), and all the other subtle cues that signify reality—a fly zipping by, curtains or even dust motes being blown across the shot by the wind—are absent. The subsequent pan of the buildings when this prologue ends, as well as all other subsequent shots of buildings in the film, or equally about as vibrant as a bowl of oat bran.

The stupidity of this mindset really comes into sharp focus when you see how Rodriguez and Miller treat the stars of this film. With all the star power this film boasts, why hide these big-name actors beneath facial prosthetics? Granted, Mickey Rourke may not be a big-name draw any more, and I can stomach the argument that Marv’s appearance is so distinctive that some attempt to replicate his lack of a nose bridge should be made to keep the look of the character, but there is nothing about Jack Rafferty’s appearance that requires the ridiculous nose or eye appendages that were glued to Benicio Del Toro’s face, and hiding the face of a big-name Oscar winner like that underscores a total lack of judgment on the part of the directors.

So slavish are the filmmakers to the depicting the original artwork, and so reluctant are they to modifying elements to make more sense when magnified on a big theater screen, that the various superhuman acts in the stories are filmed literally and straight, without any attempt to make them more believable, which brings the film down to a level of cartoonish buffoonery. Marv gets hit by a car head-on with no discernible injury sustained. Hartigan’s body gushes blood like a geyser after getting shot multiple times, but survives. The shot of Marv holding dragging poor schlep out the driver’s side door of a car as he drives is utterly fake, as the perp body doesn’t seem to suffer any trauma. In the book, we can speculate that Marv was going slow, and that that perp started singing before long, but in the movie, the creators run the car at 60mph, as if the perp is laying on a platform next to a car on a conveyer belt. Rodriguez and Miller have bought into the Great Myth of CGI, and worship at its Green Screen Altar, having deemed it heresy to mention that CGI and green screening, when used too much, and rendered poorly, looks AWFUL.

Indeed, the creators’ need to shove the literalness of the original artwork down our gullets is so pronounced that what they chose to actually change is perplexing. I don’t mind, for example, that Dallas is Caucasian, or that Marv doesn’t go to see his mom, or that Rosario Dawson, Devin Aoki and Brittany Murphy didn’t do the nude scenes in which their characters appeared in the original stories. But why did they hire an actress to play Nancy Callahan—Jessica Alba—who refused to do nudity? I mean, she’s a stripper for crying out loud! I could buy the rationalization that we only see her beginning her act before she jumps off the stage when seeing a familiar face before she could take off anything, but the moment when Hartigan sees Nancy performing in The Big Fat Kill is a vital plot point in the story. Although Nancy was established in the very first Sin City story, by the time we begin reading That Yellow Bastard, which was the fourth miniseries in the series, we may have forgotten her name, and not realized that the (Spoiler Warning) that the little girl that Hartigan tried to save in the beginning in that story was the same stripper we knew and loved, and that that portion of the story was set eight years before the “present” we’re familiar with. Hence, when Hartigan (and we) see the grown-up Nancy topless (and then nude) on the stage, we have that creepy realization that the little girl we cared about is now the familiar sexy bombshell we’ve been drooling over, allowing us to feel exactly what Hartigan is feeling. It’s a rare instance in which the nudity of an attractive female in a story actually is relevant to the story. And that was lost. Other aspects of that story are also missed, such as Lucille’s meeting with Hartigan, and Roark’s presence at the parole board, both of which would’ve made good scenes. I also have to wonder why in the world Bob (Michael Madsen), who shot his partner full of bullet holes, was the one to greet Hartigan upon his release, rather than Mort, who did so in the comic. For that matter, why was That Yellow Bastard cut up so that the first Act was shown before the rest of The Hard Good-bye, and the rest of Bastard shown later? Why is Kevin seen in the beginning of The Hard Good-bye when he’s about to kill Goldie? He didn’t appear in the original story until Marv first confronted him. This killed a lot of the suspense during that first confrontation. Why do Rodriguez and Miller include Manute’s (Michael Clarke Duncan) mention to Gail about now “serving a new master,” which is a reference to the events of A Dame to Kill For, which isn’t in the movie? None of this makes any sense.

Countless other miscellaneous things that stuck out to me screamed a lack of restraint, subtlety or believability. The melodramatic saxophone music in the opening prologue is so corny that it essentially functions as product placement for the state of Iowa. The shot of Miho (Devon Aoki) getting splattered with “blood” after decapitating a guy is awful, since it’s clear in the close-up of her face that her body is not in the right position it’d be in after swinging a sword downward, and Frank Miller’s cameo as the priest is totally gratuitous, as he has apparently been spending so much time with Quentin Tarantino that he’s now picking up his most vain habits. Armond White, reviewing the film in the March 30th, 2005 New York Press, got it right:

Graphic art has its own principles and justifications that become inane when converted into live action. Rodriguez and Miller try to resolve this problem through digital photography that simplifies the imagery, recreating the starkness of print panels. Their wasted effort does little more than turn cinema back into two-dimensional flatness.

Rodriguez [uses] the same elastiviolence as in the Matrix movies: Killing and brutality are absurdly amplified yet have no effect. Rodriguez and Miller don’t actually have an esthetic, just a gimmick.

As shot by Rodriguez, Sin City’s digital b&w lacks the mystery of photochemical b&w photography. A noir without the enveloping quality of shadow or the tacticle sensation of smoke, it fails at what makes movies a great visual art form.

The public has been long-admonished by the comics industry that they should try to open their mind to the possibilities of an entire art form and storytelling medium at which they’ve long looked down their noses, but what is less popular to say is that the industry itself should try being a part of that thing called the Outside World. Creators should try acknowledging that they can learn a thing or two by seeing how creators in other media make stories great, rather than fanboyishly insisting that the public swallow every idiosyncratic quirk of comics, as Rodriguez and Miller have done.

Luigi I really have to disagree with you on this. I thought Sin City was really well done as a movie. The internal thoughts being heard as a window into the character was cool. My friends and I didn't think it was a very bad movie and judging from the amount of people that where at the theator.

I have never read any of the sin city graphic novels (Nor did I unfortunately make it through your rather long review, I did skim it though) and don't really feel cheated by not having done so. But I didn't thinnk the look of the movie was all that bad, the hearing the internal thoughts of the characters was cool.

You are wrong on at least one thing too. Jessica Alba (who played Nancy) Was never topless during the entire run of the movie at any time. Nor was she as far as I could tell even braless under a shirt. That would have been somethign I think I would have noticed.

As for the CGI looking fake. To each their own not every movie has to be a documentary or even totally believeable. The bathroom talk after the movie sounded like there wasn't anyone disappointed by the look of the film as they was talking more about what went on during the movie than talking about technical flaws (if even anyone noticed)

So lighten up Luigi The movie wasn't all that bad and wasn't as ugly as you seem to think it was.

You are wrong on at least one thing too. Jessica Alba (who played Nancy) Was never topless during the entire run of the movie at any time. Nor was she as far as I could tell even braless under a shirt. That would have been somethign I think I would have noticed.

Luigi's complaint was not that she was topless, but that she wasn't. In fact, he says, it was a "vital plot point" that she should have been not only topless, but completely nude.

Luigi, your long, well thought out post makes me feel completely justified that I didn't go see this movie. It looked horrible to me in the commercials for all the reasons you describe. Nice to know the commercials didn't lie.

Just seen this movie myself. The best thing about the film is that it's a faithful translation of Frank Miller's art to the screen. It's also the worst thing about. What Miller does on the comics page works because of the nature of the comic book medium. It does not work on the silver screen without looking fake, affected and extremely distracting. The bandages on Mickey Rourke's face were particularly annoying as they seemed to be glowing in the dark, something real bandages would never do. There are many other scenes just as distracting.

The story is hopelessly obssessed with over the top violence and plots that make little sense, since we are given precious little back story to explain the Sin City universe. (Junior's transformation into the Yellow Bastard and Marv's invulnerability are inadequately explained, I think.) The result is a very surrealistic flick - as far as I'm concerned. There's very little depth to it.

I've never read Sin City (I'm not that much of a Frank Miller fan) and only skimmed over Luigi's review, but it looks like I'd have to agree with him on this one. It's far from being the best comic adaptation I've ever seen.

BTW, didn't Benicio Del Toro in the part of Jackie-Boy look a lot like Cesare in the silent movie classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

Quentin Tarantino, incidentally, directed the scene where Dwight and the dead Jackie-Boy converse in the car on the way to the Pits.

"She makes a Pez dispenser out of him."

R: Luigi I really have to disagree with you on this. I thought Sin City was really well done as a movie. So lighten up Luigi The movie wasn't all that bad and wasn't as ugly as you seem to think it was.
Luigi Novi: To each his own, R.

R: You are wrong on at least one thing too. Jessica Alba (who played Nancy) Was never topless during the entire run of the movie at any time. Nor was she as far as I could tell even braless under a shirt.
Luigi Novi: I didn’t say she was topless in the movie.

TomM: Luigi's complaint was not that she was topless, but that she wasn't. In fact, he says, it was a "vital plot point" that she should have been not only topless, but completely nude.
Luigi Novi: Well, not quite. I was merely saying that her nudity in that one scene in general was a vital plot point. I was not prescribing a particular degree of it for the movie. If Alba had only gone topless (Hell, even implied toplessness, where we see her disembodied bra flying across the screen, and then just seeing her from the neck up), even that would’ve conveyed the power of that scene from TYB. Even though by contrast, Carla Gugino went topless (and Gugino IS hot!), Nancy’s nudity in that scene was far more relevant for purposes of the adaptation.

(Btw, I mistakenly referred above to the Hartigan (Bruce Willis) story, That Yellow Bastard, as The Big Fat Kill at one point. TBFK was the Dwight (Clive Owen) story.)

Ok My apologies re-reading your big post I see I was wrong. I'll agree with anyone who says Jessica Alba should'va been topless or even implied topless. :-)

Not having read any of the sin city universe or whatever I took the movie at face value as an entertaining romp and all. I don't know. Somehow not knowing the backstory on all this didnt really bother me or lessen my entertainment which is the only benchmark I apply to a movie or show. If I can come out of it feeling satisfied that I got my monies worth of entertainment then thats all I need.

Being a long time fan of the comic, I really enjoyed this film. In Entertainment Weekly, Rodregiz made note of how this was a translation of Miller's work to the big screen and not an adaptation. Basically, I loved just seeing my favorite moments brought to the screen in full action. (Spoilers!) For example, I practically cheered when Hartigan screamed out his swear ("Eight years, you son-of-a-b**ch!") while pounding into Junior. (End Spoiler) Maybe Rodreighez did miss the point, I don't care. I just enjoyed seeing everything I love about the comic faithfully recreated.

In Entertainment Weekly, Rodregiz made note of how this was a translation of Miller's work to the big screen and not an adaptation.
Luigi Novi: Semantics. It originated in one medium. It was made into another. Hence, it's an adaptation. Semantic hairsplitting on Rodriguez's part doesn't change this. If he wants to argue that this is not an adaptation, then he'll have to explain what the difference is between an adaptation and a "translation." Otherwise, this is no difference from the euphemistic labeling of using or borrowing parts of music by rap and hip-hop artists as "sampling," or illegally posting entire books or downloading movies as "sharing." Changing the word used to describe something with a mere euphemism doesn't change the nature of the thing, as George Carlin once observed.

An adaptation by any other name....?

Would still be just as sweet.

Hmm. My review was printed in The Comics Buyers Guide #1607 (Aug 2005), which arrived in the mail a couple of days ago.

It was actually version of it that I heavily edited for length. Only problem is, the page on which the printed letter ends is on the other side of the page on which Peter David's monthly But I Digress column begins. Geez, what a choice. In saving both, which one do I copy, and which do I keep the original one?

I should add that it was printed in the letter column, not a feature.

In saving both, which one do I copy, and which do I keep the original one? - Luigi Novi

Buy another copy of The Comics Buyers Guide?

Had a feeling someone would say that. Let's see...Shell out $6 for another copy, or just photocopy one or the other..........Hmmmmmmm........I think I'll go with that latter option.

Then you shouldn't have been too upset that someone did make such a post. Perhaps next time, you'll be more careful in wording your post.

I'm joking! I'm joking! Yeesh, settle down.

I'd probably buy another copy. I bet my folks still have their 50 copies each of the two times I was in the newspaper. (not because of crime or stupidity)

I'd just save the whole magazine, but then again I'm a packrat and have boxes full of CBG's from back when it was still a weekly newspaper.

However, the way you apparently do things, I'd suggest saving your own and copying BID, as there's a new BID every issue, but not a new letter from you in every issue.

I can't save entire issues, as there's not enough space for all the magazines I read. As it is my photo collection is so huge that I want to get rid of it by scanning it and maybe creating a photo reference website (I've gotten rid of about 20% of the Celebrity section.) I already have a big box of TV Guides that need to be cut up, and another box of other assorted mags that's overflowing. I also have ever weekly CBG already from the past several years, and I want to get rid of those too. Even saving the CBG's in which my letters have been printed would mean a stack of 12 or 13 CBG's. I've resolved to not buy as many mags as I used to, since you can find most of the pics therein on the Net anyway.