Silent boys and kick-ass girls
An edition about movie projects that failed and silent storytelling
HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!
January has finished in a blink of an eye. Right now I’m focused on different comic projects, and you surely don’t see anything about them until the end of this year.
Meanwhile, if you want to support my work there is plenty of new releases, some of them are:
ELIXIR graphic novel written by Frank Barbiere and Ricky Mammone.
PROJECT MONARCH with Mike Oeming.
INFINITY AFTERMATH graphic novel written by me, with art by Pedro Andreo.
In digital and paying what you want:
PARANOIA KILLER: VIRYA and the PARANOIA KILLER COMPILATION
And you can find signed books, drawn blank covers and little size original art in my online store: victorsantos.bigcartel.com
I can’t promote or talk about the process of these new works, but there are some stories about my published book that I can tell you now.
THE FIRST ATTEMPT (SO FAR) TO AN AGAINST HOPE MOVIE
Against Hope was published by Dark Horse comics during the pandemic. It was a self-contained book about the revenge of a young black woman against a bunch of neonazis who killed her boyfriend and played the “most dangerous game” with her… and they would soon regret it. Unlike Black Kaiser, who is a mature legendary “hero”, with Hope I wanted to tell about the creation of the myth. How the legend was born.
I'm proud of this book because even if the story is simple (I would call it “classical”) I played with the different timelines and the way they overlapped and how the past resonates with the future and vice versa.
Dark Horse Entertainment (co-producer of the Polar movie) tried to develop a movie adaptation. I'm not sure if I am allowed to say names so I will not do it. I helped to develop the project with a UK director with experience in TV shows and horror-thriller films and a young African-American actress interested in playing Hope. The director included a close collaborator of his as a writer because he wanted a black female creator to develop the character and her backstory.
I even produced new concept art never seen before. You can see some of the illustrations below based on the new pitch:
We prepared a cool dossier and pitched it to Netflix… But Netflix rejected the idea. I think the main problem was that the time was not the correct for the company (shareholders meetings, multiple cancellations and a more conservative agenda)... And I must admit maybe they were a little scared: It was a very violent revenge story about racism. I love how the director and the writer not only tried to soften the story, they made it more brutal and ruthless. I'm not sure if DHE tried to offer it to other streaming platforms or broadcasters, after this first attempt I was very busy with different comic projects and didn't care about the rights. After all, this wasn't my main job.
And years after, I recovered these movie rights because this contract of representation with DHE expired, and now Mediatoon is moving them. Sadly, I think we will never see this Against Hope first attempt at a movie but maybe soon we will have a new chance to make a live-action Hope Walker project.
We need more heroines like Hope (And of course, you don’t need to wait for a movie to enjoy the story, the graphic novel is available).
TELLING SILENT
I watched John Woo's Silent Night and loved it. His previous “return to action”, Manhunt (2017), was really disappointing. It looked like an amateurish copycat version of Woo, the same mannerisms (two guns, doves, slow-motion) but a discouraging lack of commitment. But Silent Night is totally what you can expect from the master but in a evolved way. It’s violent and epic when it needs it, but it's cheesy and sentimental like only a Honk Kong movie can be. Actually it doesn't feel like an American movie even though the producers have sold it like the glorious return of Woo to Hollywood twenty years later. It feels totally Hong Kong vibes, with Joel Kinnaman overacting physically (because he can’t talk) like if he was a Chow-Yun Fat or a Simon Yam in a heroic-bloodshed film. The parts that show the familiar bright side of his character are really over-corny for Western tastes (a very useful technique Asian movies use to make a high contrast with the later brutality) and the process of preparing for vengeance is slow-burn, something that the more enthusiastic fans of TikTok and YouTube movie summaries will not forgive (“I want my vengeance NOW!”). The action is rougher and dirtier than other Woo’s films but it’s told in his masterful way. Never get lost, no shaky cameras, no cuts every 0,0001 seconds. You understand perfectly what’s happening and where is everybody. In this aspect, the master has not lost his touch.
Of course, if we talk about the idea of making a silent action story I can’t avoid mentioning my Polar books. The origin of this series of graphic novels was a silent webcomic (that you can still read for free). I chose this option mainly because it was a way to make the story universal, not needing translation to different languages. And it’s hard, because even though you are making an action story where the main effort is focused on the physical, you understand how difficult it is to tell a story visually clear. For this reason Woo sometimes needs to rely on elements like phone messages, cards or radio communications to make the movie more comprehensible (I needed to do it too, using computer screen and files the characters read). It’s funny to imagine how a Polar adaptation could have been worked if they had used only the webcomic as inspiration.
The Woo’s and Kinnaman’s efforts in Silent Night are laudable and even though it’s a movie everybody will not enjoy due to its special approach, the total commitment to the story of its makers make it a satisfactory experience.
And that’s all! See you in a next edition of my newsletter!
Best.
Victor
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