Everything seems to point to the fact that the new Keanu Reeves vehicle, Constantine, will be just as crappy as all the nerds were expecting. I just saw the trailer on TV and they don't even pronounce the main character's name correctly. (It's Con-stan-TYNE, not Con-stan-TEEN. These things are important, for God's sake!) But that's Hollywood for you. I don't really care, since I had no real intention of seeing it. I just find it amusing to publicly criticize movies I don't know much about.
Constantine joins the proud rank of butchered Alan Moore film adaptations, that already include V for Vendetta, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. (Fun Fact: While the movie version of League was tagged as "LXG" - to cash in on the success of the X-Men movies - the comic books/graphic novels are generally abbreviated LOEG.) These movies were previously discussed on Superblog!! As I said then:
Constantine would also seem to suck, considering that the studio's first decision was to transform the title character - a sarcastic, blond, working-class Liverpudlian - into a dark, brooding American.
Moore himself never actually wrote the John Constantine, Hellblazer comic book, though he created the character (his first appearance was in The Saga of the Swamp Thing #37, June, 1985).
Moore's friend Jamie Delano got to kick off the Hellblazer book, and a few years later Irishman Garth Ennis took over. The movie seems to be based on a storyline from Ennis' run on the book, Dangerous Habits, wherein Constantine gets cancer.
Fun Fact #2: The only reason that Constantine exists is because the Swamp Thing series' artists, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, wanted to draw a character that had the visual appearance of the artist Sting, and Moore obliged. Since the character is owned by DC Comics, this is a piece of information they probably want to downplay, though Moore has said in interviews that Sting is aware of the character and finds it amusing.
Anyway, Keanu doesn't look much like Sting. As a matter of fact, he doesn't look much like John Constantine, either. Or talk or act like him. But that doesn't mean that the movie can't be GREAT!!
And I'm sure it is!
Superblog!! - Prone to wild mood swings
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