Old Myspace Ramblings: The Priest movie was always going to suck.

This is a post I made on Myspace in November of 06. My hopes for Priest have actually decreased since then. Enjoy.

Priest on the Big Screen: Movie I've been hoping for or movie that will piss me off to no end?

Current mood:worried

It should be pretty easy to see that I love Priest, seeing as how it's the background of my Myspace page and all. I am a huge fan of the manwha (korean comics, for the uninitiated), as full of heart-wrenching personal tragedy and socio-political intrigue as it was full of zombies, Renegade Angels, buckets of blood, and action of a breed rarely seen in comics, raw and visceral. As far as Anti Hero protagonists go, few can stack up to the utter cool factor of Ivan Isaccs, a truly tortured soul who's rage and sorrow fuel the engine of his revenge without fail, more than a mere man, a juggernaut who seemingly can only be stopped by his own personal demons. Add to that the antagonists, a circle of fallen angels who seek to resurrect their leader, Temozarela, an angel who's contempt for humanity and in turn God himself drives him to rebel in a most foul way (too many spoilers in that sentence as it is, hehe). Well, maybe I should let tokyopop's website's description say the rest.

"In the frontier of the American West, a veil of evil threatens to engulf humanity. Servants of the fallen archangel Temozarela are paving the way for their dark lord's resurrection. One man stands in the way of the apocalypse: Ivan Isaacs, a fallen priest who sold his soul to the devil Belial for the power to fight evil. Armed with a wicked blade and silver bullets, Ivan will give the heretics a baptism of blood in his pilgrimage for humanity's redemption. An epic journey across hundreds of years and spanning the globe, Priest is the most ground-breaking manga to come from the new entertainment hotbed of Korea. "

Now I found out just recently that Priest is being developed into a Hollywood movie, and my first reaction was, naturally, to enter a state of joyous shock. I never thought it would happen, and when I heard it was, I lost it. It was like when I heard that Lord of the Rings was going to be a major motion picture all over again, that's how big the series is to me. So of course, I started to search around for more info and found this site:

http://www.domas-porada.co.uk/main.php?id=Movie&nav=Nav_Movie

Most of the info is promissing, untill I hit this paragraph:

Plot Line: "A vampire Western that concerns a warrior priest who disobeys church law by teaming with a young sheriff and a priestess to track down a band of renegade vampires who have kidnapped his niece."

This pisses me off beyond words, if it's true. Without giving away too much of the plot of the comics, this plot is almost completely wrong. It's easier to list the things that are correct, since they are few. It is a western about a former priest who is a warrior. It isn't a vampire western, has nothing to do with Ivan's niece, since she doesn't exist, the sheriff is a federal marshal and not Ivan's ally (as far as I know) and there is a priest who teams with the marshal, but he is very definitely a man. Most importantly, no fugging vampires. Zombies, fallen Angels, religious zealots, demonic possessions, Vatican hit-men, twisted mutants, crusaders, Turks, dark priests, and one ravening mad Demi-God but not one goddamn VAMPIRE!

I know Vampires are Hip right now, but really, you can't just dump a few vampires into any movie and expect it to make a good movie. Maybe that's just me tho.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, why all the outrage. Well it's simple really. I am outraged that a comic with such an enthralling story is getting the Doom treatment.

Director Man: "I want to make Doom into a movie"

PC Ass-hat studio: "okay, but the fact that your main character's are fighting demons will offend people. Can't you just toss aside everything the original story was about besides 'shooting stuff' and make a movie about that?"

Director Man: "uh, I guess so

It's asinine, and it ruins great ideas. The truth is, Priest doesn't shed a very kindly light on religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, but that's part of what makes it so interesting. It's not just mindless hack n slash action at every turn of the page, it is deep and challenging, not just "guy kills zombies cause it's cool". More like "Tormented guy kills zombies to get to their angelic masters." Much more interesting.