Jonah Hex Movie Trailer and "We're Still Doing This? Really?"

There's a new movie coming called "Jonah Hex" starring Josh Brolin and Megan Fox. It is loosely based on the DC Comics character of the same name.

I'm not a huge Jonah Hex fan, but he's a cool character in the right hands.

A) I've never heard of any Jonah Hex origin story or explanation for his, uh, interesting facial condition.
B) Jonah Hex may appear in comics, and occasionally in series where weird or supernatural events occur (I loved "Rider of the Worm and Such"), but Hex himself has no powers aside from general orneriness and a willingness to shoot anything that moves. Again, at least in anything I've ever read.
C) I have no idea who Megan Fox is supposed to be in this film.

I haven't read much Hex in my lifetime, so I could be wrong on some of this stuff, but... You're going to see the trailer soon on TV or at the movies. And you're going to think "oh, this is what happens in the comics". This is not, in fact, what happens in the comics any more than Halle Berry's turn as Catwoman had anything to do with the comics. In fact, its worth noting that the producer on this movie is Akiva Goldsman, the guy who wrote "Batman and Robin" and "Batman Forever", if you're wondering about what sort of perspective you should expect on the source material.

If I sound a little irritated, I am.

There's nothing wrong with mixing genres. FCBD comic and Oni Press's newest darling "The Sixth Gun" is a great example of a series which is mix-mastering genres to make something new and cool. But "The Sixth Gun" is also fresh from the mind of Cullen Bunn. It is not an existing property twice the age of the intended audience of 20 year-olds.

Due to the WB corporate structure, DC has had a very hard time getting its properties to screen. The properties are either auctioned off to producers who want to work with WB, or given out like treats to favored producers who hear Sony made a boatload of cash on Spider-Man, and one comic character is the same as the next, right?


I am exactly as excited about this as I was about "Van Helsing".

While we were away, Joel Silver, possibly the man with the dumbest luck in Hollywood, announced a "Sgt. Rock" film. "Sgt. Rock", for decades at DC Comics, was the face of the every-man soldier serving in the European theater in WWII. His adventures in "Our Army at War", 'Star Spangled War Stories", and other titles, were fairly gritty, well researched morality plays and Vietnam-era ponderings on the nature of war. Stories about losing your buddies in fox holes and trudging through France in awful weather and getting shot at from all sides.

Joel Silver has announced that his Sgt. Rock will take place in the future.

This isn't just missing the point or having no disregard for the character. This is straight-up confusing, except to a producer who still can't quite understand what made movies like X-Men, Batman Begins and Spider-Man work. Or, for that matter, "Band of Brothers" or "The Pacific".

I shiver when I envision a director like McG getting his hands on "Enemy Ace".

Despite turns on "The Batman/ Superman Adventures", "Justice League Unlimited" and even "Batman: The Brave and the Bold", outside of comicdom, nobody has ever heard the name "Jonah Hex". Jonah Hex has virtually no pop-culture presence, and barely pings on the comic fan radar in 2010, even with a series which will hit its fifth year later on in 2010. So it appears likely that Hex's introduction to the planet is now a hacky script written by producers who became confused that the comic character they'd bought the rights to didn't fly or shoot lasers out of his fingers.



I am reminded of a conversation I had in 1997 with a film school instructor who asked me about a pitch I was working on for a class assignment. He asked me if I was trying to make my script like a comic (he knew I read comics). "Yes," I answered, truthfully. And he went on about how it wasn't hitting the notes right to feel like a comic. I nodded solemnly, writing down notes in a spiral and leaning back thoughtfully in my chair, but it took me several minutes to really figure out why we seemed to be talking past one another. Where he was talking "generic, lantern-jawed stereotype of a superhero" when he said comic, my brain had gotten on the rails with Grant Morrison's "Invisibles", some of Ennis's "Preacher" and had probably cut the brakes with "Kid Eternity".

I imagine that this sor of cognitive dissonance must be all too common when a producer receives a prospectus that a young producer looking to adapt a property drops in his lap. There's a generation of Hollywood producer and creator out there, who still can't be bothered to give a damn about the properties at which they've chosen to throw millions. And, honestly, when you're Akiva Goldsman or Joel Silver, you're going to make money and make more movies no matter what happens.

Here's the thing: making a Jonah Hex movie should have been shooting fish in a barrel.

For thirty years, the comics have been ripping off various aspects of "High Plains Drifter", "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Name any Sergio Leon Movie You Watched in College", with varying degrees of success. Yeah, he's got the scars, but that's all they had to do. Instead, they decided to make a new installment of the Smith/ Kline "Wild, Wild West".

I'm not even going to link to the trailer.

The good news is that about three months ago, DC Comics announced a reorganization. Out of that, Diane Nelson, head of DC Entertainment, named DC Comics super-writer Geoff Johns as Chief Creative Officer. Basically, anything that's going to be a movie and stamped with the DC label has to go through Johns, and Johns is not the kind of guy who is going to let "hey, let's give Hex magical powers!" the green light. And, in fact, likely got the job specifically because they knew what he'd do, and they've seen the correlation in success with Marvel's properties with their fidelity to the original concepts.

I am more than fine with changes. Nolan's Batman doesn't have a Robin. Gwen Stacy is a forgettable minor character in the third Spidey film. But once you alter the basic premise, and (dare I say it?) the milieu, you've lost me. And most of the time, you've lost the audience, too.

It's a terrible disappointment to see a trailer that seems like such a mid-90's throwback to the treatment of comic source material. But with Goldsman involved, is there any big surprise?




By the way, Hex's final fate is a bit of favorite comic-nerd lore. Possibly not just because they had the guts to say what happened to him, but that it so epitomized the hard-luck hero to begin with. I leave you to Google-search that one on your own. Just... you know, ignore the "Hex in the 25th Century" jazz. It was the 80's. People were trying things.

I'll now wait until cable for "Jonah Hex", and that's too bad. But after the Miami/Travolta-heavy "Punisher", Frank Miller's ridiculous misstep with "The Spirit", "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (which I still haven't watched more than a snippet of) and a handful of others, there's too many people trying to do right with comic adaptations to spend money on the ones where its clear that something has gone terribly wrong.

There's obviously a fine line between worshipfulness and letting the director and producer find the right alchemy within the source material without just chucking the source material (see: Wanted). But when it comes to comics (especially DC properties), we've seen perfectly good concepts get manhandled, as if its a bit of material nobody had ever seen before. The current Fox TV show, "The Human Target"? They've actually abandoned the central conceipt of the comic character. He's a master of disguise, not just a guy who is willing to be shot.

I feel bad not just for the audience who is getting screwed out of a chance to ever see sometimes brilliant ideas make it to TV or movies, but for the creators who watch as writers who can't be bothered to spend an evening reading start a train that will make and lose ten times what most of these creators would see in a lifetime.

Again, Nelson has put Johns in place, and one can hope the position will actually have some clout. Perhaps he can even slow down Silver before Sgt. Rock gets transplanted to the future.

But I'm not betting on it.