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Best Rated-R "Comic Book Movies?"

J.T.

By J.T.
in "COMIC BOOK" MOVIES & TV

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J.T.

J.T.

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Akira is the best thing ever (only with the original English dubbing, though), so that trumps pretty much everything else, but... BUT...

 

Tales from the Crypt (1972) exists. 

 

 

This revelation totally fucks up my list.

 

And what Twiztor said.  I love the graphic novel (I am a Cold War kid) and I really liked the movie.  The movie had its flaws but nothing that really made me want to set the theater on fire.

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Jingus

Jingus

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For the record, I don't HATE the movie version of Watchmen. It's got several good moments, Jackie Earle Haley is fucking brilliant, and the film easily could've been much worse. I'd even say, aside from my admittedly-in-the-minority affection for Constantine, it's easily the least-shitty adaptation of Alan Moore's work in a feature film. Bullshit like From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen make Watchmen look like a fuckin' Akira Kurosawa movie in comparison. I just thought the movie didn't do enough justice to the book, which was possibly my single favorite comic of all time. It's like Harry Potter Movie Syndrome: yeah, they're not bad and they're deeply faithful adaptations, but the story just doesn't work the same way for me on the screen that it did on the page.

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J.T.

J.T.

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Whoops, I forgot that Tales is PG! Content wise though, a total R rating. 

 

MY LIST IS SAVED~!

 

But Jesus Christ, none of those shorts is Rated-PG.  Lack of 70's boobies and swearing probably kept it barely below the margin.

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JRGoldman

JRGoldman

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For the record, I don't HATE the movie version of Watchmen. It's got several good moments, Jackie Earle Haley is fucking brilliant, and the film easily could've been much worse. I'd even say, aside from my admittedly-in-the-minority affection for Constantine, it's easily the least-shitty adaptation of Alan Moore's work in a feature film. Bullshit like From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen make Watchmen look like a fuckin' Akira Kurosawa movie in comparison. I just thought the movie didn't do enough justice to the book, which was possibly my single favorite comic of all time. It's like Harry Potter Movie Syndrome: yeah, they're not bad and they're deeply faithful adaptations, but the story just doesn't work the same way for me on the screen that it did on the page.

 

You think Watchmen is that much better than V for Vendetta? V has issues, but I think overall it ended up a stronger piece on it's own. I think someone could watch V for Vendetta without knowing it's a comic and enjoy themselves. I think Watchmen undermines it's self in it's attempt to be so picture perfect, along with a bunch of other faults I've already mentioned.  

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Jingus

Jingus

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You think Watchmen is that much better than V for Vendetta? V has issues, but I think overall it ended up a stronger piece on it's own.

Yeah, not a fan of V for Vendetta. The comic itself is one of Moore's weaker efforts from his prime (maybe I'd like it better if I was English and understood more of the context, I dunno) but the movie did a thoroughly shameful job of whitewashing it and sanding off all the rough edges. Like, in the book, Evey is an underage minor who is caught by the Fingermen while trying to solicit johns for prostitution; in the movie, she's a grown adult who is on a completely innocent quest (literally taking medicine to her sick grandmother) and then the Fingermen just decide outta nowhere that they're gonna rape and murder her. The film turns V from a thoroughly deranged terrorist into being much more of a folk hero; it works as a hagiography of a man who, on the page, we're not really supposed to trust that much. And it also shares Watchmen's flaw of being not-an-action-comic which the filmmakers are trying to turn into an action movie, in a pretty tone-deaf manner.

Also, it doesn't help that Children of Men does all the EXACT same shit that V for Vendetta does, and does it INFINITELY better. CoM is dealing with the same specific plot of "a fascist government barely rules England, the last bastion of humanity in the postapocalyptic world, and we're dealing with not-exactly-trustworthy terrorists who are still trying to Fight The Power" that VfV did, and does it not only in a much more realistic and mature manner, but does it with a much more artistic ambition and even more likable characters. I'm admitting my own bias here because Children of Men is possibly my single favorite film of the decade of the 2000s, it's kinda like loving Deep Impact so much that you'd automatically sneer at Armageddon, but I think I saw V first (before I read the comic, too) and still didn't like it as a standalone film.

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AxB

AxB

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You think Watchmen is that much better than V for Vendetta? V has issues, but I think overall it ended up a stronger piece on it's own.

Yeah, not a fan of V for Vendetta. The comic itself is one of Moore's weaker efforts from his prime (maybe I'd like it better if I was English and understood more of the context, I dunno)

 

 

I know there are plenty of Americans who have openly stated that they think Alan Moore (not that they named him, they just said whoever wrote V for Vendetta, probably meaning the movie) invented Bonfire Night. He didn't. It was invented in early 1606, to commemorate the failure of the actual gunpowder plot to kill King James the first and sixth* (and the whole parliament too) on November 1605. We still celebrate Guy Fawkes' Night now... on the 400th year Anniversary there was a TV documentary recreating it and seeing what would have happened if Fawkes' had got to set his bomb off (they built a replica Parliament on an Army base), and it climaxed with this:

 

 

* First King James of England. Sixth King James of Scotland. Some Scottish people are really specific about calling him James VI & I, instead of  James I & VI.

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Cliff Hanger

Cliff Hanger

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What about Barbarella?

Whats funny is that Barbarella is now rated PG.

 

 

i thought it wasn't so much that Barbarella's sexuality no longer warrants an R rating, but that there were 2 versions released in the 60s and the PG version is the one we always see today.  I definitely know that there were two versions at the time, but I've never seen the original "R Rated" cut, only the TV version which also got a theatrical run.

 

As for V for Vendetta (since several others are talking about it): if I had seen the movie without ever reading the comic, it would probably be in my top ten of all time.  Having read the comic first and loved it, the movie felt kind of sad and neutered.  I honestly can't say that it's a "bad movie", it's a great movie. But it manages to fuck up the political POV and message of the film more than anything since Starship Troopers (which unlike VfV was actually going out of its way to make a point opposing the original work).

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Jingus

Jingus

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I know there are plenty of Americans who have openly stated that they think Alan Moore (not that they named him, they just said whoever wrote V for Vendetta, probably meaning the movie) invented Bonfire Night.

Well that's just depressing. I know the bare-bones details about Fawkes: he was a Catholic terrorist, had a bunch of barrels of gunpowder, tried to blow up Parliament, was caught before he could do it, and is now burned in effigy every year. I do think it's pretty ironic that his face is now the symbol of standing up against government oppression; I wonder if Osama Bin Laden masks will be sold for the same purpose in four hundred years' time.

 

Jingus, you keep saying that Snyder tried to turn Watchmen into an action movie and it's funny because one of the main criticisms from film critics was that there wasn't enough action.

Film critics who clearly never read the book and had come to expect a very narrow interpretation of the concept "superhero movie", sure.
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HumanChessgame

HumanChessgame

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The Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie needs a bit more recognition.

 

 

For the record, I don't HATE the movie version of Watchmen. It's got several good moments, Jackie Earle Haley is fucking brilliant, and the film easily could've been much worse. I'd even say, aside from my admittedly-in-the-minority affection for Constantine, it's easily the least-shitty adaptation of Alan Moore's work in a feature film. Bullshit like From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen make Watchmen look like a fuckin' Akira Kurosawa movie in comparison. I just thought the movie didn't do enough justice to the book, which was possibly my single favorite comic of all time. It's like Harry Potter Movie Syndrome: yeah, they're not bad and they're deeply faithful adaptations, but the story just doesn't work the same way for me on the screen that it did on the page.

 

You think Watchmen is that much better than V for Vendetta? V has issues, but I think overall it ended up a stronger piece on it's own. I think someone could watch V for Vendetta without knowing it's a comic and enjoy themselves. I think Watchmen undermines it's self in it's attempt to be so picture perfect, along with a bunch of other faults I've already mentioned.  

 

 

I had never read Watchmen before seeing the movie and I enjoyed it.  A little later I read the comic and it didn't take away from my original thoughts on the movie very much, especially the full version.

 

I'd never read the V for Vendetta comic either, but I thought the movie was so awful I turned it off about halfway through.  While I've never had the desire to read the source material, just about everyone I know who's familiar with it says the movie totally bastardized it and changed it into a ham handed political statement that missed the original point.  All the 15 year olds who just discovered 4chan and think the Guy Fawkes mask is somehow cool and rebellious probably have a bit to do with my dislike.

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Curt McGirt

Curt McGirt

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I haven't read the comic (gave it a once-over at a shop one time, and damn did it look unsettling) but I love the movie personally. This is another comic vs. adaptation arguments I guess. As a film alone, I think it stands high above a lot of horror films in concept and execution. And Danny Huston rules. 

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odessasteps

odessasteps

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Eh, it was a pretty poor adaptation of a decent comic book (that had an all-time great high concept, the kind of thing it's amazing no one had come up with it before)

I thought it was a spin on Alan Moore having an underwater vampire city in Seamp Thing.

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