Book vs. Movie: Priest
By Russ Bickerstaff
May 14, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
And in this corner: the Movie. A 112-year-old kid born in France to a guy named Lumiere and raised primarily in Hollywood by his uncle Charlie "the Tramp" Chaplin. This young upstart has quickly made a huge impact on society, rapidly becoming the most financially lucrative form of storytelling in the modern world.
Both square off in the ring again as Box Office Prophets presents another round of Book vs. Movie.
Priest
Inspired by the lead character from a late ‘90s computer game, Korean artist Min-Woo Hyung created a comic book featuring a cursed priest fighting demons with guns in the old west. The series, which started in 1998, ran for quite a few years. The comic book (referred to as a "Manwha" in Korea) was appealing enough on an international level that Tokyo Pop imported the series into an English translation for American audiences. The jump across the Pacific was successful enough that the premise caught the eye of Hollywood.
As early as 2005, Screen Gems bought a script for something of an adaptation of the comic book written by Cory Goodman. Less of an adaptation and more of a story inspired by Hyung’s original work, the film finally gets its release over half a decade after the original sale of the script. (Originally slated to be directed by Adnrew Douglas and starring Gerard Butler, the film that sees release was directed by Scott Stewart and starring Paul Bettany. The release has met a few complications since the completion of principal photography.) The mix of horror/western/action genres that made the original comic book an international success is conspicuously missing in the film. How will the film measure up to the comic book that inspired it?
The Book
According to an interview with Min-Woo Hyung found in Volume 3 of the Tokyo Pop presentation of the series, American comic books aren’t terribly popular in Korea. Having an American uncle, Hyung was exposed to American work from a very early age, which developed in him an appreciation for American culture. Various sources of inspiration came together for him in the creation of Priest. A character with a wide-brimmed hat — something of an undead hero found in the 1997 PC game Blood - had caught his eye. In the realm of comic books, Hyung found a great appreciation for Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. Mix those two things with a healthy love of old Sergio Leone westerns, and you have a pretty vivid idea of what Min-Woo Hyung’s Priest looks and feels like.
The story itself isn’t all that good. This is perfectly okay as it’s not all that bad either. It tells the tale of Ivan Isaacs, a priest who was born an orphan. As the story begins, he is something of a tortured Clint Eastwood-type drifting from place to place with guns and a clerical collar. He fights his way through a host of demons in the old west and we gradually discover that Ivan had been researching an artifact for the Roman Catholic church called the Domas Porada - evidently an earthly prison for devils. Things go awry as they usually do with Catholics and devils and before long, Ivan is wandering the west as a half-undead scourge on all things nasty. The priest is cursed. Half his soul is not his own.
There’s more — quite a bit more, actually - which is odd considering how little story is delivered in any actual page. Priest’s greatest weakness seems to lie in cheesy exposition. There’s a lot of story here and most of it lies in conversations that happen between action and horror sequences. With so little of the actual drama of the story playing out in anything other than expository dialogue, the plot itself seems to take a back seat to the action. As the story progresses, the largely uninspired execution of action sequences (and even some of the drama) approaches a kind of skillful execution. Min-Woo Hyung shows an ability to respectably take the story into contemporary times and then back into the era of the Crusades without making the jump cuts in the narrative feel at all disjointed. The story as a whole, however, never quite coalesces into anything more than a casual science-fantasy horror serial. There’s really not much depth beyond the surface of the story.
The story plays out in 16 volumes of 160-180 pages each. Having its heart firmly planted in cinema, the comic book moves with a remarkably cinematic feel. There’s actually remarkably little text in the 2,000-3,000 pages. And while the story is highly kinetic, moved along by a brilliant sense of action and pacing, the actual action that passes between the pages isn’t terribly inspired. Everything rests quite motionless in each panel. The flow of action doesn’t rip across the page with the kind of intensity it truly deserves.
This is not to say that Min-Woo Hyung’s work is entirely without its visual appeal. One gets a profound sense of depth in the visuals, particularly when the author/artist is making grand, sweeping entrances into sophisticated bits of architecture and the rugged terrain of vast landscapes. The backdrop that the story rests on is beautifully rendered. There’s a certain kind of respectable poetry to individual bits of the story that work quite well in places, but Priest is a remarkably patchwork piece of art considering it was all written and drawn by the same guy over the course of nine years or so. In its worst moments, Priest is a silly and hackneyed action story. In its best moments, there’s a kind of beauty to it, but on the whole, it’s not a very accomplished work of fiction.
The Movie
The film wastes little time in distancing itself from the comic book. In an animated segment done in a style very reminiscent of Min-Woo Hyung’s style in the comic book, the premise is delivered — vampires have been around for as long as humanity has been around. It is the modern era. Vampires have been locked out of vast walled cities. In order to combat the evil, a group of priests were trained to be assassins trained specifically in the art of vampire hunting. This is quite a departure from a story about a cursed priest traveling alone and hunting the undead in the old west.
After a quick introductory segment featuring a western-looking family on a desert farm being overrun by something ominous, we get images of a dark future cityscape that feels heavily inspired by Blade Runner. Syd Mead gets a lot of credit for production design on that film, but the actual look and feel of the city was largely drawn-up by director Ridley Scott with inspiration drawn by comic book artist Moebius. It’s interesting seeing Moebius’ brilliant art ricochet into a film inspired by a comic book work far less inspired than most of Moebius’ stuff.
In this particular dark future, the priests who had been trained to fight vampires had been disbanded by the theocratic government in charge of the vast walled cities for fear that as a group they would wield too much power. Paul Bettany plays the film’s central priest. He is contacted by a representative from the town that was evidently attacked by vampires in the opening post-animated segment of the film. He’s going back to the town to try to reclaim it.
Bettany’s priest contacts the theocracy’s monsignors to get reinstated as a vampire killer so he can go out and defend the town. They inform him that they haven’t had any reports of any escapes from the vampire reservations. His request for reinstatement is denied. Even though the act of going against the theocratic church’s will is said to be going against God itself, Bettany’s priest elects to go beyond the walls to protect the people of the city anyway, mounting a wicked-looking cycle to journey out into the wasteland. Between this and a few other moments in the film, including some particularly nice shots of the walled fortress city, the film does capture some of the spirit of Min-Woo Hyung’s vast backdrop beyond the story.
The old west feel of the comic book original is paralleled in the film by the culture in the wasteland, which evidently has adopted an old west design for no readily apparent reason - kind of a silly and gratuitous appropriation from the comic book.
Bettany’s priest is joined by a lawman who wants to aid in the assault on the undead. The head clergy at the town are sent out to take in the rogue Bettany, who has gone against their orders. This begins a classic western-style action adventure storyline that is older than commercial fiction — an adventure story style that predates TV, film, radio and pulp magazines. It’s pretty solidly delivered here, but Stewart does little to add to the genre. There’s very little here that hasn’t already been seen a million times before in just about every form of medium from pulp fiction and radio serials to modern computer games.
Surprisingly, the fact that the story lacks originality isn’t quite enough to keep it from being entertaining. This type of story has longevity because it works no matter how many times it’s done as long as it’s done competently. Stewart’s film excels at being competent at telling a solid action fantasy adventure story.
The Verdict
While there are numerous parallels between the Min-Woo Hyung comic book and the film penned by Cory Goodman, the parallels make for more of a distant connection between the two. The comic book seems to have aspired for a story of greater depth and complexity than the film and failed pretty consistently to deliver on that aspiration. By contrast, the film seeks a much purer appropriation of a time-honored adventure story and meets with solid success in doing so.
Interestingly enough, the film comes out in a summer positively cluttered with classic adventure films. As a result, even though the film was better at achieving its desired effect, it probably won’t be remembered as well as the comic book in the long run. One week after Priest opens on 2,800 screens across the US, the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film opens on 4,000 screens. With a cool early reception from film critics on Rotten Tomatoes, Priest may only break even on production budget. The comic book series will likely remain in print for quite some time...