So I've read and loved the comic series up until 50-something and plan on picking it up again soon. It's one of my favorites. I was pretty excited about AMC's adaptation of it. Not anymore. I feel the same way I do about most adaptations, and I really need to stop getting hopefully suckered in by these things. I always get burned.
It just doesn't seem like they have much respect for the source material. They're completely changing the feel of it by bludgeoning the viewer with a merciless drama hammer from the very first moment. They're multiplying the drama of every single plot point x100 and severely altering the portrayal of every character for the sake of drama.
Let me just cut to some uncensored nerd rage. My list of complaints so far.
Comic: Lorrie has a single isolated fling with Shane outside of Atlanta in the early days of the zombie outbreak. She's just forced herself to let go of Rick, worried as hell for her kid, and having an emotional breakdown. She has a moment of weakness where she seeks comfort. If I recall correctly, she actually rejects Shane later, admitting it was a mistake. There are no signs that Rick and Lorrie had any relationship problems before this.
Show: They invent like 10 minutes of dialogue which occurs even before the first page of the comic to expose Rick and Lorrie's pre-zombie relationship problems. It looks like as soon as Rick was out of the picture, she threw herself lustfully at Shane with multiple intimate encounters. I would not be surprised if they revealed that this affair existed pre-zombie outbreak.
Comic: Morgan Jones is the first survivor Rick meets. This guy sets the stage for the rest of the story in a really interesting way. He appears to be the most friendly and competent survivor in the entire story. The emotional stability of every character introduced from here on gets progressively worse. Looking back at this from 50 issues in, there's such a stark contrast.
Show: Morgan Jones is an aggressively paranoid nervous wreck, with a newly invented backstory involving the recent zombification of his wife to justify it. He threatens to kill Rick every 10 goddamn seconds until he's sure of his health, and even then seems only mildly friendlier. There's nowhere to escalate from here. It seems like they're going to keep the show as intensely dramatic as imaginable from beginning to end, leaving themselves no space for constrast.
Rick's first meeting with Glenn and the other survivors from the camp is the craziest deviation so far. There's no build-up to any internal conflict. There's immediately some idiot jackass instigating an armed stand-off, involving a whole bunch of extras who I'm guessing they wrote into the script just to be more expendable meat and drama material.
Above all, I'm disappointed with their portrayal of Rick. He has absolutely nothing in common with the comic book character.
Comic: Rick is emotionally and physically stable and level-headed with a natural leadership presence. He may shed a tear or recoil momentarily in horror when things happen, but he accepts and recovers quickly to deal as sensibly as could be expected with any problem. This makes him an ideal grounding point for the story and the other survivors who flock to him.
Show: They cast somebody with deep-set, haunted eyes who looks like he's lived through a holocaust concentration camp and could break down into tears at any moment even when nothing is going on, or maybe fall dead from some terminal illness judging by his sickly complexion and perspiration. He looks like this even before the zombies hit. On a couple occassions, he's appeared focused when there were people to shoot or threaten. COULDN'T HE AT LEAST HAVE BROWN HAIR FFS!?
What really makes me sad is I appear to be alone in my criticism. I've done some searching for other fans of the comic to trash it, and can find nothing. Very disappointed.
I can understand the need to expand the story to make a tv show, but I don't understand why this has to involve a fully opposite approach to the style and pacing of the story and complete reinvention of almost every character. Occassionally stealing a visual directly from a comic panel does not alone make an adaptation faithful.
Author
Topic: I want to rant about The Walking Dead (Read 1142 times)