Over the holiday weekend I heard there was a fan video based on the great Pat Mills’ mighty Celtic warrior Slaine (“kiss my axe!”) and the Horned God saga doing the rounds online, but the popularity was causing problems as Miguel Mesas’ website was being overloaded with fans attempting to stream or download the film and it was difficult to see it. His main site may still be struggling to deal with the number of visitors, but after watching a short trailer for it Kenny spotted on YouTube I will need to try again because frankly it looks bloody brilliant, especially for something produced in a not-for-profit mode by fans. The opening of the trailer even features Ukko bent over his desk recording the adventures of Slaine; the Earth Goddess makes an appearance and seems very true to Mills’ original vision of her as a constantly changing force of nature, benign, loving, hateful all at a moment’s notice. Throw in a Warp Spasm and plot elements readers will recognise from the Books of Invasions (a third volume of which is due from Rebellion this summer) among other refernces and any self-respecting Slaine fan will be demanding to see this.
It has always been a shame for fans of Brit comics that some of our favourite homegrown strips rarely make the jump to movie or television, especially as Hollywood seems to announce buying film rights for a new comics-based project every other week right now. Sure we’ve had the Judge Dredd movie which was passable as an SF action bit of brainless tosh, but certainly wasn’t Judge Dredd and the film Hardware was pretty much based on an old 2000AD Future Shock (hence the subsequent claims for plagiarism), while there have been a couple of attempts to bring Dan Dare to television which sadly didn’t really make it, but really we’re lacking in film and TV adaptations of Brit comics. You might think that is because our native comics industry has shrunk so much over the years and our film industry is similarly small-scale and mostly geared to costume dramas based on Jane Austen or the social realism of Ken Loach. Again I sigh and look across the Channel to La Belle France which seems to be able to maintain a healthy and vibrant comics and film scene (and is happy to mix the two as well, from Asterix adaptations to Enki Bilal‘s Immortal (which drew on elements of the Nikopol tales).
Well, those probably are factors, as is the fact that some characters who are huge here, such as Dredd, don’t have such a huge following outside the UK – with a Dredd movie likely to need a fairly large budget (especially by British movie standards) any studio would only commit the money if they know they can make a profit selling it around the world and, realistically Dredd won’t have the pull of Spider-Man on a world-wide stage. It is a shame though – small though both our movie and comics industry is these days, both have produced heavyweight, world-class players and it is a shame we can’t seem to translate that into more homegrown work. It isn’t all gloom though, as new technology allows film-makers a chance to create more professional looking work for far less money and resources – such as here with Miguel Mesas and his fan version of Slaine. Well done, Miguel, and let’s hope this inspires some more moves to translate some of our top Brit comics characters into new media.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Any torrent for this jewel?