5 posts tagged Neal Adams

Neal Adams knows superheroes. He broke new ground with Batman, X-Men and The Avengers, and recently tackled ZvG: Zombies Vs. Gladiators, a project on the Amazon Studios Movie Development Slate (see the trailer here).

Adams talked with us about the best superhero movies he’s seen, plus Batman, Sherlock Holmes and what Superman needs to be super again.

Some highlights from the interview:

What do you think are the biggest pitfalls for studios looking to make a superhero movie?

Underestimating the audience. … They really have to look for good stuff. People are not thrilled necessarily with superheroes — they’re thrilled with characters with characters, just like literature forever. You need good characters. You can relate superhero movies directly to Shakespeare, or stories of the gods.

Of all the superhero movies that you’ve seen, which ones stand out to you as having done the best job?

Well, oddly enough, the last two Batman movies have done some of the best jobs, and Batman is not even a superhero; he is the antithesis of a superhero if you think about it. Nothing super about him …. Superman is probably the greatest comic book superhero, this god-like creature that’s out there. And Batman, created very shortly after that, is the opposite. He’s a superhero who is not a superhero in any way. He’s like an Olympic champion who is very much like Sherlock Holmes. And if you play him that way, then you’ve got a great character. Is he a superhero? Well, he does put on a weird costume. … Sherlock Holmes is a great character. No, he’s not a comic book character. Well, excuse me, I just saw the last two movies. He looks like a comic book character to me. In fact, I would say that of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That guy is a superhero — of a different sort.

What is Superman’s place in the world, in the 21^st century. Some people say he doesn’t work anymore …

Superman is one of the most unrealistic characters. And he’s changed — he used to be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, now he can leap tall planets. I think the future of Superman is to downgrade his powers so that he’s fallible and is someone who can be hurt. … I think you have to go in that direction. There are too many middle-ground characters getting too much traction. … If Superman is not making it people’s minds, but Thor is, something’s wrong and it’s gotta be fixed. And it will.

— Stephanie Reid-Simons

Ever since it was first uploaded to the site back in 2010, ZvG: Zombies Vs. Gladiators has been one of Amazon Studios’ most buzzed-about projects — and one of its most active. Dozens of writers and filmmakers have offered their takes on the material. And, more recently, some big names have been involved: Horror icon Clive Barker will be doing a rewrite. And comics legend Neal Adams created an animatic.

So what has all this been like for the project’s original writers, Michael Weiss and Gregg Ostrin?

“The whole process has been a lot of fun,” Weiss said. “And we really do appreciate all the interest, debate and enthusiasm about the project.  Clive is a master and we can only imagine that he will take the script to the next level.”

As for Adams, “I was also thrilled to hear of his involvement in the project as well. I loved the trailer cut to his illustrations,” Ostrin said. “As a kid who came of age during the glorious 1960s, I have literally grown up enjoying Mr. Adams’ work.”

But it’s not just the celebrity aspect that excites Ostrin and Weiss. “It is incredibly flattering and also empowering to see the excitement around the script, because it only validates our initial belief in the concept,” Ostrin said. “You also need to remember, when we came up with the idea and wrote the script, the only zombie project on the books was World War Z.  Walking Dead hadn’t happened, neither had Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. …  The whole zombie-mash up thing then exploded at once.  But we have always felt this script was unique in that it combines history with a zombie origin story.”  

Ostrin’s take on Amazon Studios: “To me this seems like the perfect way to bring together the best of creativity, fanboy enthusiasm and pop culture in an effort to develop a script that will have the benefit of an established presence on the web before it ever gets made.”

Comic book artist Neal Adams, known for his ground-breaking work with Batman, X-Men and The Avengers, recently tackled ZvG: Zombies Vs. Gladiators, a project on the Amazon Studios Movie Development Slate. He created an animatic of the script (see the trailer here), which shows everything from ancient Rome, inside and outside the arena, to a battle with elephants in the mix and “bodies flying everywhere.”

Adams talked with us about superheroes, ZvG, testing visualizations of stories and why comic books can be “the greatest art in the world.”

Some highlights from the interview:

What do you think being a comic fan does for somebody who is making a movie?

First of all, it gives them that critical sense that it’s not what you think it is if you think it’s pop culture – it’s really adventure. These last two Batman movies, it was like you were going to a movie, not a “comic book movie.” So, the Avengers movie, my God, guess what? I am going to a comic book movie, but it sits in a kind of reality that other movies can only pretend to be in.

What happens is the sensibility is changing. People are going, well, these movies do not just mean guys in tights doing super things because they were bitten by a radioactive spider. They mean everything. They mean the ancient gods, they mean Shakespeare, they mean all the things in literature because there’s nothing that can be done anywhere else that can’t be done in comic books.

What excited you most about working on Zombies vs. Gladiators for Amazon Studios?

This was like doing a movie. … I started to do the boards, and I thought, this is cool. I’ve got gladiators killing zombies, that’s great, zombies leaping on people and biting them in the neck. Maybe not the way it ought to be, but you know, they’re going to keep on working on this and turn it into a movie. … All the things where you go “What can they do here?,” they do it. It’s just a pile of great stuff. …

If you do it right, it’s a great testing device for a movie because you can look at it and say, hey, it’s slow here, it’s fast here, this is wrong, this is right, let’s do this, OK, let’s take this out … why don’t we do a classical soundtrack. You’ve made the movie, but now you have a chance to remake it, and make it better.

I’ve done this kind of work for advertising agencies for 30 years. … You can take animatics and for $100,000 you can do five ideas as fully realized commercials, you can test them and find out what’s going to sell the product better. When I first did it … I’ve watched the process, I might have done the first animatic … it made sense to me.