Derived from Comic Strip Graphics: Remediation beyond Comic Book Adaptations in The Matrix (1999), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), and The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born (2007)

Abstract

This chapter examines stylistic remediation beyond comic book films and the industrial practice beyond case studies in adaptation by focusing on three films: The Matrix (1999), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), and The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born (2007). It first considers “bullet time” in The Matrix, showing that its formal migration is an example of transmedia style: narratives delivered across multiple platforms that are united by stylistic remediation. It then compares comic book space and caricature in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the Marvel Comics adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower novels. It also explains how The Matrix stylistically remediates the motion lines of comics within its bullet time sequences while Leone's construction of space eschews the conventions of the continuity system in favor of the spatial discontinuity present across comic book panels.