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Is A Successful and Good Doc Savage Movie Possible?


Ranxerox

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I disagree. Pulp comes out of a specific moment in American history, and a particular take on race, that Americans today have a hard time confronting squarely. Take Lone Ranger. The decision to cast a White actor as Tonto was the start of a comment on the Appleish original Tonto that audiences of the 1930s would have appreciated. The next thing that the casting directors should have done was to cast an able-to-pass American Indian actor as the Lone Ranger, just as a "high yellow" African American should be cast as Doc Savage, and take the very definite position that the Ranger's mask, like Clark Savage's strangely mutated bronze skin (and the scarf that almost concealed the Shadow's big, hooked nose), was a metaphor for racial passing in American society.

 

The problem, I think, is that American society is past the point of being able to slyly wink at these things, as it did in the 1930s, and not yet at the point where it can explicitly accept them.

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I am intrigued by your casting ideas.

 

However, aren't all works of fiction products of specific moments in history. That in and of itself doesn't invariably prevent them from speaking to people in different times and places. I don't think that the race thing in and of itself would keep pulp from making such a leap (though admittedly the race thing doesn't help).

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Jay Silverheel's Tonto was stoic figure, and better at a lot of things than the Lone Ranger. Clayton Moore's Ranger never rushed into a bad situation just because he could outdraw most of the people he dealt with. So when you see Johnny Depp bringing the weird, it creates a dissonance in older viewers.

 

That's just my opinion from the trailers.

 

I just can't imagine Jay Silverheels being buried up to his neck wanting to know if a woman talked about him in a good way.

CES

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Assault is right the key thing to any movie's success is the script. The Lone Ranger tanked because of the script. I even heard that Disney was blaming the failure on lack of name recognition. Which is why their making Finding Nemo 2, As if anyone had heard of the fish before the first movie was a blockbuster. No I suspected the Lone Ranger was in trouble when the main charecter only appeared in 10% of the advertising, Then I heard it was nearly 3 hours, and Silver was running things, and I knew it was doomed.

 

As long as were on this subject a kinda sorta side note. because my memory has failed me. The Shadow and The Phantom both had everything going for them to make great movies. Good sets, action, actors but something went wrong and the whole was less than the sum of it's parts Someone actually explained the problem once but I forgot what they said. So I'm a bit at a loss to say how to avoid a problem I can't explain.

 

There's nothing wrong with camp. To disagree with an earlier post the Batman show at the time was so much Batman they actually turned actual comics into episodes. However while I don't really see a campy Doc Savage it could work. But I think they should focus on a non camp non angst ridden Doc. The original Spiderman and Superman trilogies worked fine and the latest darker and edgier were fine too. Doc being Pulp should lean more towards edgy but not dark. And there is a place for comedy, but it shouldn't take away from the serious moments

 

And I don't really have much else to say. As it all boils down to script. Once you have a good script, it will depend on who well the studio backs you. And that is beyond all of our control.

 

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Assault is right the key thing to any movie's success is the script. The Lone Ranger tanked because of the script. I even heard that Disney was blaming the failure on lack of name recognition. Which is why their making Finding Nemo 2, As if anyone had heard of the fish before the first movie was a blockbuster. No I suspected the Lone Ranger was in trouble when the main charecter only appeared in 10% of the advertising, Then I heard it was nearly 3 hours, and Silver was running things, and I knew it was doomed.

 

As long as were on this subject a kinda sorta side note. because my memory has failed me. The Shadow and The Phantom both had everything going for them to make great movies. Good sets, action, actors but something went wrong and the whole was less than the sum of it's parts Someone actually explained the problem once but I forgot what they said. So I'm a bit at a loss to say how to avoid a problem I can't explain.

 

There's nothing wrong with camp. To disagree with an earlier post the Batman show at the time was so much Batman they actually turned actual comics into episodes. However while I don't really see a campy Doc Savage it could work. But I think they should focus on a non camp non angst ridden Doc. The original Spiderman and Superman trilogies worked fine and the latest darker and edgier were fine too. Doc being Pulp should lean more towards edgy but not dark. And there is a place for comedy, but it shouldn't take away from the serious moments

 

And I don't really have much else to say. As it all boils down to script. Once you have a good script, it will depend on who well the studio backs you. And that is beyond all of our control.

 

Most of the humour in "Doc Savage" seems to have been provided by Monk and Ham, as was done in the earlier movie,. I agree about the script needing to be good; the obvious person to get to write it would be someone like Will Murray, who writes most of the new "Doc Savage" novels being published by Altus Press.

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Sounds like it's print on demand. That usually triples the price.

They easily could be; have that "slightly larger" format that print on demand titles tend to use. On another (Doc Savage related) topic I read recently that "Dynamite" are set to produce a new "Doc Savage" comic. As I already enjoy their "Spider", "Shadow" and "Green Hornet" comics I will be looking forward to this !
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I'm going to go with "no." Doc Savage isn't a very compelling character and the source material is sub-par. There are better pulps out there if one wants to make a pulp movie based on actual pulp-era fictional heroes.

 

 

Which ones did you have in mind ?

 

I'm a bit of a Doc fan so I have to disagree with Vondy's no :winkgrin:

 

But I am curious on which pulp series you do think would work.

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Doc Savage isn't just one character, but a team including his cousin Pat.  A move would have to focus on an extraordinary man and his allies, and that is tough.  Look at the short shift the Howling Commandos got in the Captain America movie.  They were there, but not a lot of impact.

 

After the disaster that was The Lone Ranger I don't hold out much hope, but I'd like to see it and hope it would be like the 1996 movie The Phantom with Billy Zane.

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Doc Savage isn't just one character, but a team including his cousin Pat.  A move would have to focus on an extraordinary man and his allies, and that is tough.  Look at the short shift the Howling Commandos got in the Captain America movie.  They were there, but not a lot of impact.

 

After the disaster that was The Lone Ranger I don't hold out much hope, but I'd like to see it and hope it would be like the 1996 movie The Phantom with Billy Zane.

 

I don't think it would be that big of an obstacle, portraying Doc, Pat and the Fab Five.   Movies have successfully shown small groups like that before. 

 

My fear is that Follywood will once again try to 'improve' the story and make disasters like Lone Ranger, Green Hornet and so on. 

 

My first requirement is ABSOLUTELY NO ORIGIN STORY!!!  I have yet to watch a Jame Bond 007 origin.  Indiana Jones didn't have an origin story.   Many great adventure stories didn't have an origin story.  

 

Doc doesn't need one. 

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