Fans of the ‘Runaways‘ comic have been hoping for a properly done televised or cinematic adaptation for years, and while Hulu looks to have pulled it off, series creator Brian K. Vaughan wanted to make sure that there was enough difference for there to be some surprises along the way as well. Taking a beloved property and adapting it can be a tricky thing as sticking too close to the source material can just be a rehash and drive fans away but change too much, and they can get annoyed there as well.
However, the look and feel so far have given me confidence in what we’ll be seeing, and Vaughan’s explanation on why he made changes has me thinking the series will end up okay:
“It was important to me that we do something where people can’t go online and read how this ends or what’s going to happen next. If you’re a fan of the comic, you’re going to be surprised. If you’ve never read the comic, you’re going to be surprised.”
With Vaughan’s involvement, you can’t help but imagine that he’ll capture the tone of his creations while making a new iteration of them. Entertainingly enough, he was initially brought on not to be involved but just to stop by the writer’s room. This visit went from being a quick trip to a month that helped expand the series for showrunners Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz.
While they insist he helped guide them to the future of the series, Vaughan is a little more modest saying:
“I have to say, they have been so generous — they give me a lot of credit — but in reality, this is very much Josh and Stephanie’s show. They have assembled an incredible group of writers that I have been lucky enough to sit in with. I have a consultant title. They certainly consulted with me at every stage. The reality is, they didn’t really need my help all that much…
I feel my job was to give them the cloud cover, the freedom I guess, to make it their own. If this is going to succeed in 2017 as a television show, you can’t treat the 2003 comic book as storyboards to be adapted exactly. It needs to evolve. It needs to change. I was hopeful that they would make it their own, and they very much have.”
One area that was expanded is while while the book was always about the kids, Vaughn was able to help expand a bit on the powerless parents. It sounds like they’ll have a depth which wasn’t nearly as present in the source material:
“My loyalty was always with the young characters. I liked that right away, their thinking was: ‘How much more interesting would this world be if we came to care about the parents as much as we care about the kids?’ Having become a parent in the last two years, I’ve looked back on some of the ways I judged my parents.
“Parents aren’t gods. They’re sleepy, dizzy human beings trying their best to do an impossible job… Getting to show another side of these adults was a fantastic opportunity. [Schwartz and Savage’s] level of sophistication and the care with which they took for all of these characters meant a lot to me.”
As the target audience for everything Marvel runs the gambit of kids to adults these days, it should be an exciting insight to these parents that those who are parents in real life may enjoy seeing. Imagine if you were a supervillain with a teenager and how that would play out.
As always, I’m just getting more excited to check out the ‘Runaways’ which debuts today!
Are you going to watch the ‘Runaways’ this weekend? Do you think fleshing out the parents will help you empathize more with the kids, the parents, or both? Share your thoughts below True Believers!
Source: THR
