In the recent film Watchmen, Zack Snyder attempted a near shot-for-panel adaptation of the iconic comic, resulting in numerous scenes from the comic that clearly wouldn’t work on film not working on film. While the film kept the basic plot framework it eliminated so many of the messy and complicated details that made the comic such a rich character study and substituted in its place gratuitous violence and the occasional laughable sex scene. All this results in a film that is more a recreation then an adaptation. Accurate enough for the studios to feign deference to the rabid fanboys, yet empty enough so that it might be consumed by the masses without making their brainpan hurt. Really the highest compliment I can pay the film is that it is decent enough that it seems to be convincing people to read the original comic.

But rather then continue to get frustrated over such a lost opportunity, I decided to come up with a few film adaptations that often stray wildly from their source material, whether the source is books, plays, television shows or comics. While I know there are plenty of people who seem to be claiming that this is the best Watchmen film anyone could reasonably expect, I would much rather watch a film take a chance at creating something different and unique for film rather then simply try to be an accurate recreation of its source. That and I am often quite unreasonable.

So I give you my 6 gutsiest adaptations:

Howard the Duck

Fans of the foul mouthed, philandering, alien water fowl had to be scratching their collective heads when they found out George Lucas would be executive producing an adaptation of the often racy Steve Gerber comic Howard the Duck, into a children’s movie. The 80’s weren’t exactly known for children’s films loaded with social satire either, making for what had to have appeared to be a horrible fit. The result is what one would expect, a watered down version of the comic, but credit must be given for the ample duck nudity, as well as the film portraying alien bestiality in a positive, if incredibly awkward, light. How that got past the ratings board, I have no idea.

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I’m not quite sure how I pulled it off, but I became a Ralph Bakshi fan at a fairly young age. My first introduction to him, as it probably was for most kids, was Bakshi’s failed children’s film Wizards. And by failed I mean totally awesome!

You see Bakshi was a bit of a novelty amongst American cartoonists in that he didn’t make animated films that pandered to children and their parents. He wasn’t much of a fan of Disney so when he made a children’s film about warring wizards in a post-apocalyptic world he made sure to include plenty of bloody violence, authentic Nazi war propaganda films and an assassin named Peace. Needless to say critics and parents were a bit bewildered by the film and it was soon relegated to obscurity.

From there I moved on next to Street Fight (aka Coonskin). Unlike Wizards, Street Fight was made specifically for adults as it was a parody of blaxploitation films and satirizes racist stereotypes. And as it was made for adults it came with an R rating attached. Now at the time I was around 13 years old, and the idea of an R rated cartoon seemed positively unthinkable, if not impossible to me. (Little did I know that Bakshi had already topped that rating with his first feature film Fritz the Cat, which had garnered an X rating.) Sure enough, like any blaxploitation film Street Fight was filled with violence, rampant cursing and even the occasional bit of nudity. Nudity in a cartoon? That’s unpossible!
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