By Eric Stuckart
Creator, Destroyer

About a month or so back, I heard about Red, the upcoming Summit Entertainment film hitting theaters October 15. And seeing the trailer, I saw the DC logo, so that piqued my interest. So, like any good comic book reader, I decided to go out and pick up the trade paperback.

After reading Red, the three-issue story by Warren Ellis and pencilled by Cully Hamner, I was confused, very confused. Now I’m well used to Hollywood using and abusing our favorite comic books and malforming them into whatever story they want to sell. We’ve seen it happen with the biggies like Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men, among others. Hell, I could go on forever.

But now, something more nefarious is happening. The well is starting to run dry, so they’re going for the more ‘fringe’ stories, stories that should probably be left alone. Hell, after what they did to Jonah Hex, I shouldn’t ever have faith in Hollywood’s idea of what a comic book movie should be. But then again, the last twenty years also brought us such cinematic classics like Dick Tracy, The Phantom, and Monkeybone, so it’s obviously been a longtime practice for the guys in their think tanks to come to the conclusion that this is what viewers want.

Back to Red, I’m really confused as to how it’s going to be made into a film that has any sense of reverence to the source material when they’re playing it off like an action-comedy, bordering on a buddy-cop type of film. Perhaps I’m being presumptuous, as I’m only going on the trailers I’ve seen for the movie, but I think it’s safe to say that they’re not going to capture the cold blooded nature of the comic in any way, shape or form.

In Warren Ellis’ book, it tells the story of Paul Moses, a retired CIA Agent living out his golden years in seclusion, punctuated only by the occasional letter from his granddaughter, who lives in England, and a weekly phone conversation with his ‘handler’ back at his former headquarters. Michael Beesley, the newly appointed Director of the CIA is shown a number of files as part of his initiation. Learning of what atrocities Moses had committed—we never find out what exactly he did—Beesley decides that the only way to keep these secrets safe is by assassinating Moses. This plan goes belly-up; Moses turns out to be harder to kill than planned, and he goes out for vengeance. The story only has four characters worth mentioning, and is tidily wrapped up in its three issue run.

How Erich and Jon Hoeber managed to stretch this story out into a screenplay for a feature length film is beyond me. Even more confusing is how they apparently must have sat back and thought that the story wasn’t epic enough with one badass to go out for blood, that they needed three more. So basically, somehow the story was mutated to include not only Bruce Willis as Moses, but Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren as members of some sort of elite team that they all used to be part of. Somewhere in there they wrote in a love interest for him, in the form of Mary-Louise Parker, because all badasses need a girl on their arm while they’re capping motherfuckers. Even moreso if they’re part of the Viagra league. That just goes without saying.

Now I’m going to be honest here, the movie looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, and I’m sure it’ll be enjoyable at the very least. The talent that they have going into the film is at least of a higher caliber than that of, say, The Losers, another comic adaptation that kind of came out of the blue. My problem is the fact that something like this shouldn’t be named Red, or based off of the comic at all. Hell, if they really had to flesh out the story to be some kind of ridiculous action flick, they could have still done it with just Bruce Willis. Considering how many people would go see it just based on his presence, they could have attempted to do it somewhat in the spirit of the film. Just look at how many people love the Die Hard movies.

But if they did that, it wouldn’t be a guaranteed payoff. The comic, while not the most violent out there, is definitely something that would earn a film adaptation a hard R if done in the spirit of the book. And there’s something to be said about Ellis’ version of Moses, who does a lot more shooting than he does talking, but that’s an acceptable risk in my opinion. Red is the type of book that could have been recreated word for word, and unlike Watchmen, which had way too many twists and turns to be easily recreated in the film medium, this would have adapted perfectly. Hell, the book itself could have been used for storyboards.

But, Hollywood had to be the greedy pig that it is, and go for the easy bucks. It’s easier to market an action-comedy with a PG-13 rating than it is an R rated revenge movie, especially if it’s something of this nature. I’m well aware of the difficulty that Summit would have trying to advertise a movie about a man that goes, Lone Ranger style, and takes down an entire building of CIA Agents. Aside from the action movie crowd, that just doesn’t happen unless you’ve got the money behind the project already, or you go full-on and dive into the cheese. As much as I love action movies as a guilty pleasure, I’m well aware of the fact that the only way they get made is for the spectacle, not the substance, unless that substance tastes like Velveeta.