http://www.blogcdn.com/www.cinematical.com/media/2010/03/300-1267533921.jpg
There’s an interesting little (and I do mean little) trend going on in genre / geek movies and television right now. Actually, I should say it’s been going on since March 2007, but it seems to be debating whether to sputter itself out or not. It’s the so-called “graphic novel style”, which really just means “in the style of 300.” Numerous films in pre-production have boasted that they’re going to be done “in the graphic novel style”, including Timur Bekmambetov’s gestating Moby Dick adaptationand Keanu Reeves’* 47 Ronin*. Recently, it’s reared its really ugly head in the Starz television series *Spartacus: Blood and Sand *which has featured shots practically lifted from Zack Snyder’s film, but with a tie-in graphic novel being sold as an excuse. (“See! It’s based on a comic like 300 was!”) As I noted in the column last week, some advertisements even claim the series is based on a graphic novel, though it’s a slender claim to make of a tie-in series.
It’s really pretty cute. Everyone wants to be cool like the kids on the comic book shelves. We never thought we’d hear that in a million years, did we? Let alone be the inventors of, in the words of the LA Times](Review: 'Spartacus: Blood and Sand' on Starz) “[a] particular aesthetic, born of video games and comic-book panels.” It’s a style that values fakery over realism “sort of the way that synthesizers were preferable to pianos in '80s pop.”