Mark Hamill Trades Lightsaber for Director's Chair
{St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 27, 2004}
Mark Hamill has joined the geeks.
Hamill, of course, is most famous for playing Luke Skywalker in the original
STAR WARS trilogy. To genre fans, he's
a member of the canon, right up there with William Shatner's Captain Kirk from
Star Trek and
Adam West's campy turn as Batman.
For the better part of 30 years, Hamill, 52, has been meeting and greeting fans who often express their adoration and tell him that
STAR WARS shaped their values and changed their life.
Now Hamill gives a little of the love back with his warm-hearted, quirky and amusing direct-to-DVD release
Comic Book: The Movie.
Hamill plays Donald Swan, a comic book-obsessed high school teacher invited by a Hollywood studio to make a documentary about the comic roots
of "Commander Courage", a fictional 1940s Nazi-bashing super hero about which Swan publishes a fanzine.
The studio is making a film based on an updated, grittier and grimmer version of Courage called "Codename: Courage". A snarky studio executive, played
smartly by Lori Alan, figures Swan's documentary will be a cheap way to add an extra feature on the future DVD of "Codename: Courage".
Swan, however, wants to use his documentary to drum up fan support for the more innocent version of the hero and, he hopes, get the studio to revamp its script.
What follows is a sometimes silly but well-intentioned adventure, where Swan meets a slew of guest stars including comic-loving writer-director
Kevin Smith (of
Clerks fame),
Playboy guru Hugh Hefner and legendary
comic book creator Stan Lee.
Comic Book: The Movie marks Hamill's directorial debut. His skill behind the camera is adequate, but Hamill could have benefited
from more script.
Many of the scenes are ad-libbed, ostensibly to add authenticity to the documentary style of the film. Some of them work very well, such as a hilarious
interview by Swan of Smith, playing himself, during which Smith works in a few pointed digs at obsessive comic collectors and, of course, obligatory gay jokes.
But others fall flat, such as a similar set up with Hefner, who just isn't as good off-the-cuff.
The film also makes use of Hamill colleagues from the second part of his career as a voice actor in cartoons and video games.
The voice actors all do a fine job in front of the camera, including a knee-slapping performance by Jess Harnell, best known as the voice of Wakko
on
Animaniacs. He plays a camerman who could care less comic book culture.
The two DVD set includes a bonus disc of special features, including outtakes, deleted scenes and a featurette on the many voice actors starring in the
film. For cartoon fans, the
Behind the Voices feature is a true treat - if a touch surreal hearing the voices of
Space Ghost and
SpongeBob SquarePants coming out of human faces
rather than animated ones.
Comic Book: The Movie could easily have become a nasty indictment of comic book fans, much the way 1997's
Trekkies was of
Star Trek fans. Instead, Hamill directs a film that
portrays comic book lovers as generally normal folks - albeit a bit nerdy - who are very much in touch with their childlike passions for truth, justice
and a near-mint copy of Action Comics No. 1.
The movie's harsher critique comes against the way Hollywood grinds up beloved comic characters to create films that please neither the fans of the
source material nor the popcorn-munching crowds at the multiplexes.
Hamill's use of voice actors in live-action roles shows another ax he wants to grind: Creative people being pigeonholed into one role.
Whether Hamill sees himself in that mold, it's not clear. But
Comic Book: The Movie certainly shows he has plenty of empathy
for both those actors and the geeks - er, fans - who love them.