Sin City – The Film Adaptation from the Original Comic

When an adaptation is made from one medium to another, challenges occur that effect how successful the transition between the two mediums will be. This is because the different mediums have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. To make the most successful transition between them one should be aware of these differences so that one can make an adaptation that is as loyal to the original as possible. An adaptation may also be considerably different from the original by being another perspective or approach to the original story. However the case, one must have an understanding of the challenges of transitioning a story between media to decide what approach to take and what kind of adaptation to make. The creator of the original comic was a co director so seemed to considerably help with these decisions. The following attempts to discuss the film adaptation of the Sin City stories from the original comic books by discussing these challenge’s indicated by Pascal Leférve.

In Pascal Leférve’s article, "Incompatable Visual Ontologies", he indicates problems that occur when making an adaptation from a comic book to film. These problems are:

1. The deletion/addition process that occurs with rewriting primary comics texts for films.
2. The unique characteristics of page layout and film screen
3. The dilemmas of translating drawings to photography
4. The importance of sound in film compared to the ‘silence’ of comics.
   

Sin City

1.
The time one reads a story in a comic and views it on screen is different. A story may take longer to read in the comic because the viewer reads at their own pace and may take more time to view a drawing, page or panel. The viewer may turn back a few pages to return to an event that previously occurred in the story or view panels on a page in any order they desire. This is why comics have a more non-linear kind of narrative. Films on the other hand are more of a linear medium. The viewer is forced to follow a set path in the story at a set times and one cannot view the events at their own pace.

This is why the film adaptation of the sin city movie had to combine multiple stories into one film. This is not so much of a problem because stories in the original comic overlap by an event or character from one story often briefly appearing in another or characters in the story referring one from another story. When these stories are put on film they all relate and link together so that the film’s stories all work as a whole. For example, the character Marv dies at the end of his story during the course of the movie yet is later seen still alive in Dwight’s story. This is because the stories exist at different times. It may be an attempt of the director to allow the film to be as non-linear as the comic is.

These changes effect how text is used converted to dialogue in film. Certain words may sound appropriate as text in a comic but may not sound as good or relevant on film. Words as text are deleted or altered to suit the progress of the story of the film. For example, in the begging conversation between detective Hartigan and his partner is longer in the original comic than in the movie. An example where text has been altered is when Dwight comments on how Marv would be right at home in an ancient battlefield. This comment was originally made during a different story in the comic.

2.
The frames and page layout in the Comics are more regular and rectangular. Therefore, when they are converted to film there is not as much of a problem because the screen is rectangular. Despite this, the screen cannot change shape as a frame in a comic can. Though other movies attempt to use split screen it is not used in the Sin City movie. This may be because the director may have decided that this technique may be problematic because it draws the viewer’s attention away from the story and towards the technique itself. The camera is also mostly static in the film. This may be because that the director wanted the views to resemble the static frames in the comic book.

3.
The film is very faithful to the style and appearance of the drawings in the comics. The whole film is almost completely black and white just as the comic is. It also uses single colours to bring focus on certain subjects, For example the yellow senator’s son. The each character also appears to have individual lighting to give them the same high contrast and highlights as they have in the drawings in the comics. These lights are also used to show features of the faces such as Marv’s deep wrinkles. The backgrounds are pre-rendered so they seem to have a similar other worldly quality that the comics do. They tend to go from naturalistic to having the extremely high contrast quality of the scenes in the comic.

The one aspect that the live action film does not capture is the use of line. The line in the comic tends to be hard-edged and more or less intense to express events and characters. For example, females tend to have purely white faces with little use of line while male character’s face have more lines drawn to depict their hard features. The characters in the comic also have more abstract features, some character’s event tending to look like cartoon characters such as the Barman the story ‘Family Values’. The techniques of drawing style and the abstraction tell more about the subjects. Marv and the yellow senator’s son seem to be the only character in the film with these kinds of abstract feature’s that is more similar to the comic.

Marv has more harder and monumental facial features, which is not natural for a normal human being to have. The senator’s son appears to be made to appear like a cartoon character such as the late 1800’s newspaper strip cartoon character, ‘Yellow Kid’. The style of the senator’s son seems to refer to this yellow kid because his resembling features of the stubbly nose, bald head, large ears and the face. Also the colour that was chosen to colour him is yellow.

4.
Since the comics style resemble early 1900’s black and white detective movies the director may have studied these movies as an influence to the music and accent of the character’s since the comics cannot tell as much except from the writing style of the text. Though the music of the film seems to be similar to the music from these older films it still sounds distinct and otherworldly. The character’s tone of voice also resembles these movies yet seem to be ‘over acted’ to suit the style of the movie. Without getting much influence of what the music, how dialogue would sound like from the comic the films sound still seems to work coherently and express the mood of the comic.

In conclusion, despite some minor differences between the comic and the film, it is still a great adaptation and may be considered the best that there has ever been between a comic and film. The directors have a full understanding of the comic since one of them wrote the comic itself whereas most do not have this kind of understanding of the content that they are about to transfer to live action film. It does not only give respect to the original stories but also the visual style and mood of the original comics. Though there have been a few alterations made, this was so that the film worked as a film. There were considerations over the similarities and the differences of the mediums of film and comic.