Is ‘30 Days of Night’ a smooth transition to celluloid?

Successful movie adaptations of novels are rare.  Directorial attempts to compete with a reader’s imagination more often than not fail for obvious reasons.  But what about adaptations of comics?

Before any movie goes into production it goes through the storyboarding process, and what better way to describe a comic than a series of unfolding events detailed in a storyboard.  So if a director followed each comic ‘panel’ exactly, would an adaptation to the big screen equal the original format?

Eben and Stella

‘30 Days of Night’ was created by Steve Niles (writer) and Ben Templesmith (artist) for a three part comic run back in 2002.  It tells the story of Eben and Stella, husband and wife police officers in Barrow, an isolated town in the freezing north of Alaska.  Alcohol is banned because of the high suicide rate and once every year the sun sets and the town experiences thirty days of night.

Vichente

That time is now, worsened by the knowledge that the town’s communication hub gas been destoyed meaning villagers will be unable to contact the outside world and the arrival of a stranger warning of their inevitable death.  Cue the vampires relieved to have found somewhere they can feed undisturbed for thirty days without sleep.

The big difference between the two versions is a comic sub-plot not found in the movie.  We’re introduced to a mother and son living in New Orleans who have just received information that a historic gathering is about to take place in Barrow.  The son is on his way there to film events unfolding which will be fed back to New Orleans via satellite, effectively proving the existence of vampires.  Not only does this prepare us for the next run in the comic series ‘Dark Days’ it also adds depth to the conclusion.  After all in both versions the chief vampire Vichente is angry that having spent centuries becoming a myth his people’s secret could potentially become public knowledge.

Since ‘30 Days of Night’ was a surprise success in in the US it’s fairly obvious there will be a sequel, so why the makers didn’t better prepare for one seems a little foolish.
Other differences between the two versions are limited.  In the film Eben and Stella are separated while in the comic they have a pretty normal relationship.  How the ’stranger’ gets killed differs, in the comic Stella shoots him, in the movie he’s eaten.  Interestingly one big change the film version makes involves language.  In comics a character’s dialect is determined by a design change to the speech bubble, eg. a jagged purple outline.  In the movie though the makers were able to actually create their own language and then add subtitles.  This works really well as it adds to the ‘them’ versus ‘us’ narrative.

Barrow, Alaska

There are striking similarities too.  In both versions it feels really cold.  You also feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.  This is best highlighted in the opening drawing (above), a long shot of Barrow in the distance, then subsequent drawings take us closer.  This is done in exactly the same way in the movie using the opening title sequence, effectively a journey from the middle of nowhere to the heart of a small isolated village.  My favourite visual in the film has to be the aerial shot of the townspeople being butchered below which doesn’t feature in the comic.  It is highly reminiscent of the opening scene in Martin Scorcese’s ‘Gangs of New York’ which is where I believe the film-makers got the idea from.

As a direct result of ‘30 Days of Night’ writer Steve Niles’ career is now booming although to be honest I’m a little surprised.  Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed ‘30 Days of Night’ immensely but it feels like an amalgamation of other horror stories.  What is brilliant however, is the rawness of both versions.  It breaks away from the formulaic vampire movies of the last decade to give us a truly blood thirsty tale about creatures of the night who need to drink blood to survive.  The credit for that has to go to artist Ben Templesmith.