March 29 movie: Constantine. This was exactly what I expected: an entertaining way to kill a couple of hours. Snickering at the questionable theology was at least as much of the entertainment value as the plot. I didn't know it was based on a comic book but I guessed so pretty early on. Hard to put my finger on why, there's just something comic-book-ish about the hero. The tortured superhero I guess.
constantine
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Amusingly, the tortured backstory of Constantine is completely original to the film. It's not a particularly faithful adaptation of either the plots or the tone of the comics series until very late in; the way he defeats the mass of demons in the hospital, and then his conversation/confrontation with Satan (the best part of the film) are both very much in line with the source material.
So what was Constantine's backstory in the comic?
Varied and fairly complex. Family problems, started with magic as a punk, accidentally damned a girl to hell in a botched exorcism.
The main thing that was lost in the transition is that John Constantine is, fundamentally, a magical con man and deal-maker. He's not a very skilled wizard, but he knows how to get people to trust him so he can get what he needs, sometimes in trade but just as often in flim-flam. The story which was the primary inspiration for one of the main plots of the film involved him selling his soul to three different major demons, thus maneuvering them into a situtation in which none of them could afford to let him die.