I watched Benicio Del Toro's interview on Conan O'Brien about Sin City and they showed an actual clip of the movie and it looked kinda crappy. They made the previews so mind blowing but if it's just going to be cheesy acting and silly costumes peppered with action scenes it's going to be a huge disappointment. I'll wait for a review before I see it.
Yeah, I think Sin City looks pretty crappy too. The visuals in the trailer leave me feeling kind of empty, like Sky Captain did. It seems like the movie is too caught up in literally translating the comic to screen panel by panel to have any life or soul of its own. It's the movie equivalent of a stuffed and mounted bear. Looks like a bear, feels like a bear, but nothing inside.
I haven't seen the trailer or Sky Captain. However, I do think I'm familiar with the phenomenon you're describing. It's a disease which video game developers and blockbuster movie producers are especially prone to -- graphicsitis.
Pretty graphics are nice, but they don't substitute for good gameplay/story.
A for instance from the game side. Several years ago I was given a copy of Unreal. At the time I played Doom II every day (still do occasionally...) I was absolutely floored by the quality of the graphics in Unreal, which were pretty darn whizzy when it came out. I played the game through, but I didn't replay it. I continued to play Doom II over and over and over. Why, when Doom II obviously looked like crap compared to Unreal (or Quake, or QuakeII or any of the thousands of FPS that came after)?
Because Doom II played well. It was more FUN. See also Civ II, Dungeon Master, etc etc...
A movie example: What Dreams May Come -- beautifully photographed. Story was crap.
I'm not trying to denigrate the importance of the visual in multi-media projects. I just think that too many folks think that good graphics forgive a multitude of sins. And that's just not true.
Thankfully Onstad does not fall into this trap. No one could complain about the quality of the writing in Achewood. It's clever, subtle and sophisticated. Nor could you say that the graphics are overly slick. They are deceptively simple, but amenable to close analysis.
I think that's one of the most appealing things about the strip. Onstad has found an admirable balance between the visual and the verbal. Both are vital to the humor and neither overpowers the other.
Well, I've rambled from Doom II to overly pretentious (yet fawning) criticism of a comic strip, so it's time to end this thang.