As we close out 2018, “4-Color to 35-Millimeter” is firmly ensconced in the 21st-century renaissance of superhero movies. However, your humble rewatcher did miss a few 20th-century flicks that fit the bill, so in this final week of the year, we’ll take a look at those forgotten films. We started yesterday with 1985’s Red Sonja, and today we move on to the Warren Beatty-led Dick Tracy from 1990.
Chester Gould created the Dick Tracy comic strip in 1931, and continued to write and draw the strip until the 1970s when he retired. A hard-boiled police detective who used cutting-edge (fictional) technology to stop criminals, Tracy proved to be hugely popular throughout the 20th-century, his two-way wrist radio becoming an iconic feature (and a major inspiration for the later invention of smartphones and smart-watches).
Tracy inspired a whole series of films in the 1940s, which this rewatch will get to eventually (your humble rewatcher didn’t even know they existed until researching this entry), and then in 1990 Warren Beatty helmed a new adaptation.
Beatty had wanted to do Dick Tracy for ages. He originally conceived of a Tracy film in 1975, but the rights were already accounted for. Tom Mankiewicz was hired to write a screenplay, but Gould’s creative control proved an impossible roadblock to getting a script approved, and the film fell through.
Gould died in 1985, and his estate was less hands-on with the approvals process. John Landis was brought in to direct a new script by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., but Landis pulled out after the on-set accident on Twilight Zone: The Movie that killed Vic Morrow. Walter Hill replaced him, with Beatty signed to play the title role, but Hill and Beatty clashed creatively, and then they both quit.
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Beatty wound up buying the rights himself after they reverted to Tribune Media Services, the distributor of the comic strip, and he also bought the Cash/Epps Jr. script, and wound up producing and directing it himself as well, not to mention doing an uncredited rewrite of the script with longtime writing partner Bo Goldman.
The cast is a who’s-who of acting talent of the period, starting with Al Pacino as “Big Boy” Caprice (the gangster from the comic strip who was modeled after Al Capone), Madonna as Breathless Mahoney, and Glenne Headley as Tracy’s girlfriend Tess Trueheart, as well as Kathy Bates, James Caan, Seymour Cassel, Charles Durning, William Forsythe, Dustin Hoffman, Catherine O’Hara, Mandy Patinkin, Michael J. Pollard, Henry Silva, Paul Sorvino, Dick Van Dyke, and tons more. Sean Young was originally cast as Trueheart, but was fired partway through, likely due to being harassed by Beatty. (Beatty’s story is that she was too difficult to work with; Young’s story is that she rebuffed Beatty’s sexual advances. My money’s on Young’s account being closer to the truth.)
Beatty lined up the Walt Disney Company to produce and distribute the film, but at the last minute they shoved it over to their Touchstone Pictures studio because of the adult content (mostly sexually charged dialogue from Mahoney).
While the film was successful, it was not as big a success as Disney had hoped for, and that, combined with various rights issues, led to this being a one-and-done franchise instead of the vanguard of a series as originally hoped by both Beatty and Disney.
“No pals in this business, Lips—you taught me that”
Dick Tracy
Written by Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr.
Produced and directed by Warren Beatty
Original release date: June 15, 1990
A bunch of mobsters are having a poker game in a warehouse. Flattop and Itchy, two other mobsters who work for Al “Big Boy” Caprice, gun down every player. Detective Dick Tracy—who is at the opera with his girlfriend Tess Trueheart—is summoned to the crime scene.
Later, a young boy who witnessed the massacre steals some food, and brings it to a shack. Tracy follows him, beats up the thug who forced the kid to steal, and takes the kid in. The kid, who doesn’t have a name, is cared for by both Tracy and Trueheart.
Big Boy continues his campaign to take over the city’s criminal element by killing Lips Manlis, his mentor, and taking over his nightclub, Club Ritz. Big Boy overhauls the entertainment, led by singer Breathless Mahoney, accompanied by piano player 88 Keys.
Lips is reported missing, so Tracy arrests Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles and questions them, to little effect. However, he goes ahead and arrests Caprice for Lips’s murder. Mahoney is a witness, though she’s more interested in getting into Tracy’s pants than the witness box.
Unbeknownst to Tracy, the district attorney is on Caprice’s payroll, and so he fails to secure an indictment, and Caprice is freed. Caprice tells reporters that he isn’t going to sue the city for wrongful imprisonment—why blame the city for the actions of one man? He blames Tracy for harassing him unfairly.
Caprice tries to bribe Tracy, but he refuses to accept. Then Caprice tries to kill Tracy by leaving him in a building with an overloading boiler, but the kid is able to save him at the last minute before the building blows up.
Tracy tries to raid Club Ritz, which seems to fail, but it was all a cover for Officer “Bug” Bailey to put a listening device in Caprice’s office. Tracy is able to put a massive dent in Caprice’s criminal empire thanks to this inside information, but soon Caprice finds the bug. Caprice uses the bug to set Tracy up for a hit, but someone wearing a blank face mask shows up and spoils the hit, killing Pruneface and almost killing Bailey.
Mahoney agrees to testify against Caprice, but then Trueheart is kidnapped by “the Blank,” while Tracy is framed for the murder of the corrupt DA. With Tracy behind bars, Caprice’s criminal empire thrives—at least until the Blank frames him for Trueheart’s kidnapping.
Tracy’s fellow cops “accidentally” let him go on New Year’s Eve when he’s being transferred to a different prison. He interrogates Mumbles, who reveals that 88 Keys kidnapped Trueheart on Blank’s behalf. There’s a shootout at Club Ritz, and Caprice gets away with Trueheart, hiding out at a drawbridge. Tracy confronts him there, only to have Blank show up and offer to rule the city with Tracy after killing Caprice. Tracy refuses, Caprice shoots Blank, but Caprice himself falls to his death. Tracy unmasks Blank to discover that it’s Mahoney.
Tracy is cleared of all charges and back on the job. He’s about to propose to Trueheart when he gets summoned to a robbery. Leaving the engagement ring with her, he goes off with the kid—who’s now an honorary detective after saving Tracy’s life, and who has taken the name “Dick Tracy Jr.”—to solve the crime.
“You know, Tracy, for a tough guy, you do a lot of pansy things”
In his book about screenwriting, Which Lie Did I Tell?, the late William Goldman wrote an essay about the production of The Ghost and the Darkness. Goldman’s script for the movie was based on real-world events involving two lions who killed railroad workers in Tsavo, Kenya in 1898. Michael Douglas was one of the producers of the film, and Goldman talks about what a great producer Douglas was, and how he was concerned only with what would be good for the film. However, once Douglas was cast in the role of Remington, Douglas’s entire demeanor changed, and everything became about what would be good for him as an actor. It ruined the movie, to Goldman’s mind. (And to the minds of moviegoers, as the movie didn’t do so hot.) Goldman wanted to point up the difference between how actors behave when they’re writers and/or directors and/or producers versus how they behave when they’re actors, and how the latter tends to warp reality around themselves.
Dick Tracy always reminds me of that story, because producer Warren Beatty and director Warren Beatty did superlative work. Actor Warren Beatty, not so much…
The look of Dick Tracy is fantastic. Beatty used matte paintings for backgrounds—pretty much the last gasp of a technique that was being superseded by CGI for artificial backdrops—and everything in the movie was a primary color with no shading, just like a Sunday comic strip. Heavy use of makeup on the bad guys (provided by John Caglione Jr. and the great Doug Drexler) works beautifully here, giving the villains the same surreal look that Gould gave them in the comics. (I’m particularly impressed with William Forsythe’s Flattop, who looks like Gould drew him right on the film stock.)
Most of the cast is very obviously having a great time, starting with Madonna living up to her character’s first name as Breathless Mahoney, perfectly playing the sultry lounge singer. (She does a lovely job singing the Stephen Sondheim-written songs Mahoney performs at the Ritz Club, too.) Glenne Headley gives Trueheart a nice edge, her performance beautifully inspired by Noel Neill’s Lois Lane and Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson. Seymour Cassel and Charles Durning are delightful as the Greek chorus of Tracy’s fellow cops, trying to keep up with the determined detective, Dustin Hoffman is perfect as the pathetic Mumbles, and Paul Sorvino and James Caan lean into their histories of playing gangsters as Lips and Spud.
But the standout here is Al Pacino. There are far too many occasions in Pacino’s career when he’s let shouting substitute for acting (Scent of a Woman, The Devil’s Advocate, Glengarry Glen Ross), but this is the only time he does it to good effect. He’s having a grand old time, going so far over the top as Caprice he gives everyone around him nosebleeds. It’s a joyous, hilarious performance, leaving no piece of scenery unchewed.
Sadly, the kudos do not extend to the lead, and that’s where the movie falls apart. Beatty never once gives the impression that he’s playing Chester Gould’s determined detective. Instead, he’s playing Warren Beatty, movie star. No matter how many times he puts on the bright yellow coat and hat, he never inhabits the role the way the rest of the cast does, never convinces me that he’s Dick Tracy.
It doesn’t help that the movie’s view of police procedure is horribly dated. The abuses of power Tracy indulges in—particularly his brutal interrogation of Mumbles—is difficult to watch in 2018. Since 1990, we’ve had so many reported cases of police brutality, from Rodney King and Amadou Diallo to Ferguson and Charlottesville, that seeing our protagonist torment Mumbles in his underwear is an image that no longer resonates as anything remotely heroic. It drains what little sympathy Tracy has as a character, and it’s a loss that Beatty’s poor performance can’t afford.
Even with the drag effect of the title role, the movie is a fun ride, for the most part, with great visuals, great music—besides the Sondheim songs, we’ve got a prototypical superb Danny Elfman soundtrack—and a lot of really great performances. If only Beatty had cast someone, anyone, else in the lead…
Tomorrow we’ll close out 2018 by looking at all three movies in the Men in Black series.
Keith R.A. DeCandido wishes everybody the happiest of holidays.
“Actor Warren Beatty, not so much…”
In retrospect, yeah. In “Heaven Can Wait” (fun, and arguably in the fantasy genre) and “Reds” (a 3 hour butt-buster), both of which I saw in the theater, he basically seems to be playing Warren Beatty.
I liked The Ghost and the Darkness. Saw it in the theater and have the DVD.
wiredog: I liked The Ghost and the Darkness, too, but the actual real story of what happened in Tsavo in 1898 is even more fascinating. David Mack and I used it as the basis for our collaborative Starfleet Corps of Engineers two-part novella Invincible back in 2001.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
OK, that book just went on the “buy” list for next week’s trip to Costa Rica.
When you announced that you’d be covering this movie, I tried to remember what I thought of it. I saw it once, when it came out, and I couldn’t remember anything else except for the fact that I saw it.
After reading your review, I remembered that I figured out the identity of “the Blank” fairly early on, which now makes me wonder if it was intended to be a surprise at all. I also remember thinking Beatty looked a bit old for the part, but I was 18 at the time, so my judgment was probably skewed.
This was a good try, stylistically interesting in its way, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about its literal 4-color, hyper-stylized approach. I think of Dick Tracy as being an exaggerated version of a gritty noir police drama. I guess this film was that in a way, but the candy-bright color scheme worked against it. Maybe it would’ve been better in black-and-white.
Still, I agree about the star being the least effective part. I remember that one of the main criticisms at the time (which I agreed with) was the incongruity that all the supporting characters were dead ringers for their comics counterparts but Tracy himself just looked like Warren Beatty, without any of the character’s trademark square-jawed, squinty-eyed look. I don’t know if audiences would’ve bought a hero in the same kind of grotesque makeup as the villains, but surely they could’ve found an actor who was a better match than Beatty, if it hadn’t been such a vanity project for Beatty.
It was quite a coup to get Stephen Sondheim to write songs for the movie, and to get Mandy Patinkin to sing some of them. I remember that a lot of people were surprised at how well Madonna rose to the occasion, broadening her range as a singer from what she was known for.
By the way, William Forsythe, who played Flattop here, would go on to play Al Capone in Paramount’s syndicated The Untouchables remake series three years later (which was even more historically inaccurate than the original TV series or the Costner movie).
wiredog: If you mean Invincible, you can get it as either two eBooks or as part of the Miracle Workers compilation.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Hah, I used the Lions of Tsavo in a Trek book, too. They inspired a subplot in my third Khan book!
I have not seen this one since it first came out, so I am relying on the impression of 17-year-old me who saw it in 1990. I remember walking out and thinking that the whole thing was basically a hollow attempt to cash in on the success of Tim Burton’s Batman.
I’ve never been that impressed with Warren Beatty as an actor – and he’s genuinely terrible in this role. And he’s too old for the part. That said, I’m not sure who you’d cast as Tracy from the stock of actors around then. Harrison Ford …? Mel Gibson …?
The songs are ok, but Elfman’s score REALLY contributes to the feeling that the direction from Disney was “Be Like Batman.”
I think you hit the nail on the head. I liked the movie, and thought all the characters were great, except the lead. The Dick Tracy comics were always fueled more by the action and weirdness than the main character, but that approach didn’t work in the movie. Beatty played him like an empty suit. The only thing colorful about the character was his coat and hat.
I really have no memory of the film beyond the visuals… and owning the novelization by Max Alan Collins.
They got an Oscar for the make-up, and the TNG production crew couldn’t believe Doug Drexler was willing to slum it with them on TV when he’d won an Oscar. LeVar Burton used to tease Drexler by announcing “Academy Award winner Doug Drexler” every time the latter walked onto set.
It also seems that through legal finesse, Beatty has retained the rights to adapt the strip to live action, and every couple of years makes noise about a sequel. He even played the character again in something called “The Dick Tracy Special” in 2011, giving an interview in-character to Leonard Maltin.
https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/dick-tracy/246948/why-dick-tracy-2-never-happened
I didn’t think it was all that bad, through I haven’t see. It since renting the Video Tape during its initial release…As Twels/#8 touched on there was a lot of hype surrounding the movie, and Disney was trying to make it out as the event movie of the summer, largely following in Batman’s footsteps, A lot of people had to say at the time it seemed high on production levels, but not as much on a story/plot level, looking back I tend to agree…BTW, KRAD regarding the cast Trek’s Colm Meaney has a “blink and you’ll miss him” appearance as a uniformed cop. Also, regarding earlier adaptations, producers of the Batman TV series attempted a Dick Tracy live action show, which never got past the pilot episode, not sure if it’s been released in any form (officially or otherwise) though Tracy was played by Ray MacDonnel, who had the look for the part and went onto a longtime career in daytime drama work…
I remember enjoying the movie well enough, at the time. However, what I recall much more clearly than the details of the movie itself are the Kyle Baker drawn comic book tie in issues and the loads (mostly not selling, it seemed) of “Dick Tracy” merchandise at the Florida Disney theme parks.
I’ve also felt that part of the problem wax that the film was being targeted to a young audience, who Dick Tracy probably had little name recognition or connection with them. Heck, being a child growing up in the 70’s I didn’t know Dick Tracy much beyond brief references, or rare times when I read a newspaper comics page I didn’t see regularly. Seems even at that time he was becoming something of a comics relic. Not that it makes up for the films flaws, but I think that’s why the likes of the Shadow and Phantom live action films of the 1990s didn’t fare well commercially as well…
@11/capt_paul77: That ’67 Dick Tracy pilot can be found on YouTube. As I recall, it really played up the comic strip’s high-tech, superscience crimefighting angle, sort of a proto-CSI in a way.
As for the lack of name recognition you mention in #13, I’ll never get why people assume that has to be a factor. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader had no name recognition in 1977. A successful movie creates name recognition. The whole point of reviving an old character in a movie like this is to introduce them to a new generation. If the audience likes the movie, then they’ll want to know more about the characters. If that doesn’t work, it’s because the movie itself doesn’t work, regardless of the audience’s prior knowledge.
You are spot on with this review. I think there is no other movie out there quite like this one. Everything is pitch perfect. And so what if I figured out the twist – Dick Tracy the comic strip never surprised me either! It is a glorious production with a nerveless performance at the center. Great review!
Part of the reason this didn’t hit all its marks is that the trope of cop framed for crime he didn’t commit, was a tired cliche even then. I mean, yes it is an easy story to write for a movie version of a comic character (so easy that they recycled it for the Stallone version of Judge Dredd) but it is one best resisted and to go with something more in keeping with whatever it is that is being adapted. There was so much they could have done with the whole Dick Tracy style that it seemed a waste to go that route.
@@@@@#14/CLB Thanks, will have to look it up…Considerinf the Batman production connections, not too surprised about the high tech gimmickry angle, nor about Victor Buono playing a part in it..
I’ve always felt that Daffy Duck was more convincing in the role.
I enjoyed the newspaper strip in the ’60s, when they developed anti-gravity ships, and went off to have adventures on the moon with all the aliens who lived there. It’s almost as if Chester Gould got bored, and decided he liked Buck Rogers stuff better than detective stuff. And since Buck and Flash Gordon had disappeared from the Sunday funnies in my local paper, it gave me some SF to enjoy when I was a kid.
As it happens, I first became aware of the ’60s sci-fi era of Dick Tracy through Doug Drexler’s old blog, which unfortunately isn’t around any longer. He not only did the makeup for the film, he’s a huge fan of the comic.
#20
FYI, Doug Drexler has an active Facebook page now. I know, I know… Facebook (ugh), but he’s been posting a lot of cool behind-the-scenes photos over the past few years.
That “three hour butt-buster” REDS is one of my favorite movies, as is his thriller THE PARALLAX VIEW.
Alas, the major problem with this one is that, while a visual masterpiece, it just wasn’t any good as a Dick Tracy story. Dick Tracy in his heyday was a downright brutal strip, where *both* Tracy and the villain of the day fell into death traps they had to escape as Tracy closed in. None of that survived to this version.
@21/Falco: Yeah, Doug and I are Facebook friends. And sometimes he reposts some of the neat stuff that used to be on The Drex Files, but only a fraction of it.
I think the movie failed (as a movie about Dick Tracy, if not at the box office) by completely misunderstanding what Dick Tracy the strip was all about. Warren Beatty seemed to believe that it was all about bright colors and matte paintings, and that the hero should never really be in trouble, when the strip was about a world where hero and villain alike suffered agonizing cliffhangers and extraordinary jeopardy as the noose around the bad guy tightened. The Dick Tracy I know was beaten, stabbed, shot, impaled, starved, tortured, buried alive and frequently left for dead; he was as unstoppable in his own way as Batman, fighting villains who were every much as formidable as that hero’s Rogues Gallery. I have indeed posited that Tracy in his heyday was what Gotham was like before Batman showed up.
Honestly, there is nothing in this movie to match the sheer excitement of a disabled Tracy in mortal combat with the 300-pound lady assassin, Momma; the boundless evil of the Brow; Tracy battling the mad strangler known as the Mole in a collapsing tunnel; or the fiendish death trap one villain, I think Mrs. Pruneface, contrived out of a block of ice and a mini-refrigerator.
Tracy’s heyday was woefully short, the 1930s and 1940s. Following that it became more stylized, to accommodate complaints about the violence. It is still around, but honestly, has been a decreasing shadow of itself for 70 years.
I wanted a *real* Dick Tracy movie, not this…pageant.
While we’re rounding up the odds and ends of the comic-book to movie adaptations, what’s the rationale for including Dick Tracey but not the two Modesty Blaise movies?
@25/zeg: Nominally, this rewatch is specifically for superhero movies based on comics, though it’s been stretched to encompass some borderline characters. I guess Dick Tracy is on the borderline because he’s a lawman using superscience to fight a colorful rogues’ gallery of villains (indeed, the strip originated the use of the police term “rogues’ gallery,” originally meaning a collection of photos of known felons for identification purposes, for a comics hero’s collective nemeses). But Modesty Blaise, from what I can tell, is more just a general adventurer.
zegmustprovebrains: As Christopher said, this is mainly for superhero movies, and Modesty Blaise isn’t quite right. Though I could probably be persuaded otherwise by a good argument. I included Dick Tracy mostly because I already included The Spirit and The Phantom, and it seemed fitting.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@26, 27 If Dick Tracy is sufficiently similar to Batman’s pulpish roots as ‘a lawman using superscience to fight a colorful rogues’ gallery of villains’, Modesty Blaise, as a spy using gadgetry to fight a colourful rogues’ gallery of international criminal organisations, seems reasonably close to Batman’s later international outlook. For all his claims to be The World’s Greatest Detective first and foremost, the Hong Kong sequence of The Dark Knight is essentially a spy movie, complete with corporate espionage, infiltration, and illegal rendition via the CIA Skyhook program from Thunderball. Unlike Bond, Modesty has a sidekick, and like a lot of spy stories, it borrows cannily from other genres. I first came across the strip through its cross-pollination with sci-fi and horror when Charles Stross borrowed some of the ideas for the Laundry Files Book 4.
Not sure if it’ll convince you, but I thought I’d give it a shot. ;-)
I guess the reason Dick Tracy peripherally qualifies could be that there’s a lot of overlap between superheroes and detectives — e.g. Batman, the Question, Elongated Man, Martian Manhunter, Detective Chimp, etc. (All of those are DC characters, but then, “DC” is short for “Detective Comics.”) After all, the majority of superhero stories are crimefighting stories. Then again, there have been a number of superheroes or superhero-adjacent characters with spy/international intrigue connections — SHIELD, Black Widow, Silver Sable, etc. (All Marvel characters this time — perhaps because the Marvel Universe proper came about in the height of the Cold War.) So maybe Modesty Blaise is close enough after all?
I dunno, though. Dick Tracy is closer because of his stylistic influence on superhero comics — the “Rogues’ Gallery” of weird, flamboyant recurring foes, the high-tech gadgets. He’s part of the history of superhero/crimefighter comics through that influence.
I don’t think I knew that the songs were written by Steven Sondheim. I certainly didn’t know that it was intended to be the first in a series. I think that would have been hard to pull off, considering that every one of the gangsters except for Mumbles was dead by the end of the movie.
I remember seeing this via video rental some time in the early 90s. My only memories of it are the blank-faced villain being the femme fatale and the flat-headed henchman.
Looking back, I don’t recall have any real issues with Beatty’s performance…His overall problem playing the part was his Hollywood glamor/ladie’s man image was a complete contrast to Tracy’s rugged/tough image. There was some consideration to using prosthetics on Beatty to match Tracy’s comic strip looks, but supposedly covering up Beatty’s handsome face with such was determined to be somewhat a potential liability. Also, Beatty spoke largely with a normal voice, and while such things are a matter of personal interpretation, when reading the comic strips, I always imagined Tracy’s voice as somewhat gruff and city accented
This movie pissed me off for a lot of reasons, several of which have already been discussed here. From its content to its marketing to the generally fawning reviews it received, it seemed like a clear attempt to ape the success of the Tim Burton Batman while appealing more to the nostalgia of people who had found that film off-puttingly modern in its darkness (an opinion that, though it seems fairly absurd now, was rather common at the time).
But as we’ve said, it gets the nostalgia all wrong. The Tracy strips were actually far more violent and sadistic than Tim Burton could ever have managed, and Beatty is simply not Dick in either looks or demeanor. And I can’t recall even the Sunday strips having so garish and limited a palette, with clothes and vehicles rendered in a few obnoxiously primary colors they never would have sported in real life. Plus, that whole “make it look like a comic” approach had already been done to death even by then, used to better effect in everything from the Batman TV series to the Superman Broadway musical to Spider-Man’s appearances on The Electric Company to the Creepshow films.
Adding insult to injury, everybody involved in the project seemed smugly assured it was so much better than Batman. When interviewed by Larry King, Beatty couldn’t even bring himself to diplomatically feign appreciation of that film, limiting his genuine praise to the observation that “Jack was hilarious.” In other words, I’m going to say something good about my old skirt-chasing buddy, but these weird little Goth nerds who are running away with my Hollywood? Forget them. (No, forget you, pal.)
To be fair, though, do we really want to give Sean Young the benefit of the doubt that she had been fired from the picture because she resisted Beatty’s advances? She was getting fired from everything back then, including Batman itself. And while James Woods has done enough in the ensuing decades to indicate that their romantic difficulties can’t be blamed solely on her personality quirks, she has certainly provided enough objective evidence that she is indeed quite the loon.
@32: I don’t think I’ve ever read the comic strip, but I was introduced to Dick Tracy (before the movie) by reruns of the cartoon, which I barely remember now. I watched a few clips of it on Youtube yesterday, and it’s… pretty dire. One thing it gets right though, IMO, is Tracy’s voice.
@34 I never saw the 1960’s cartoon, though I recall it being rerun by local TVstations and released on video tape in 1990 to tie in with the movie’s release…From what I understand the reruns didn’t last long due to complaints and concerns over perceived politically incorrect racial/ethnic portrayals…
@35 You can find complete episodes on Youtube if you want to see what it’s like (and hear what I mean about Tracy’s voice). And yes, unfortunate ethnic stereotypes is one of the reasons I described it as “pretty dire”. I had less discerning tastes as a kid, though.
I had a passing acquaintance with the comic strip when I was young (don’t remember how, exactly — I assume I got my hands on a compilation book or some such?) and mostly remember it being filled with grotesque monsters and being shockingly dark & violent.
I know I saw the film, but (as with the Phantom and others from this era) I really don’t remember much of anything about it.
I only saw this movie once, at its theatrical release. Ditto for the two Burton Batman movies. But while I remember plots and details of the Burtons, the only thing I remember about Dick Tracy was how gimmicky it was to make it look so comic-booky; especially the primary colours only things was pretty jarring. Sin City would go on to do a pretty interesting version of that idea, but maybe that was helped by being mostly black and white.
Also, I vaguely remember not be able to accept Warren Beatty as a hard-boiled detective. I was probably too young to see him in his leading man roles, but in Dick Tracy he just looked too old and too soft IIRC.
@krad: did you cover Sam Raimi’s Darkman? It came out the same year as Dick Tracy.
Darkman’s not a comic book adaptation.
Eduardo: MaGnUs is correct, Darkman is an original movie, not based on a comic book, and therefore out of the purview of this rewatch.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I wonder if the list of non-comics-based superhero movies would be longer or shorter than the list of comics-based ones. 20 years ago, it was probably longer, but these days, who can say?
And how would they compare to the list of comics-based non-superhero movies of today and of 20 years ago?
@39/Eduardo Darkman was something of a reversal of a comic book movie…Filmmaker Sam Raimi created Darkman after he couldn’t do the 1989 Batman like he hoped…Subsequently there were some comic book and graphic novel adaptations of the Darkman character…Like Dick Tracy, released in 1990 to cash in on the Batman spawned boom of comic/superhero films..
Well, that clarifies things.
I, too, was in my late teens when this movie came out, I even remember going to Disney World (quite a difference for this California-born Disneyland fan) and seeing the huge push of Dick Tracy merch in various places (mostly Disney/MGM Studios).
I always felt the color palette was a mistake. I suspect most readers of the comic understood that Tracy’s trademark yellow trench was “really” beige or tan, but that four-color printing didn’t allow for such nuance. This is also my complaint about the multitude of blue cinematic X-men. Beast’s fur, etc., was supposed to be black, but any details would be lost if actually colored in that way. Like Jefferies tubes in Star Trek morphed from a single crew access point near engineering to bizarre crawl spaces running through the entire Enterprise, in-universe justifications for blue mutants may have developed, but I am sure the likely reason is simply the limitation of the original printing process.
rowanblaze: The original intention was for Nightcrawler and the Beast to be black, not blue, but even the writing gave in to the true visual, and both those characters have repeatedly been referred to as blue in dialogue and narration for more than 40 years.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@47/krad: Similarly, Batman’s cape and cowl were supposed to be black, and Spider-Man’s costume was supposed to be red and black. I think I saw that there’s actually going to be a red-and-black version of Spidey’s suit in the next movie.
What gets me is how everyone these days seems to think Starfire of the Teen Titans has “orange” skin, when she was constantly described in the original Wolfman-Perez stories as gold-skinned, even nicknamed “Goldie” by Cyborg, and her complexion was close enough to human that she could pass as someone from the Mediterranean or with a really good tan. The “orange” was just as close to gold as the printing could get.
Hey, zegmustprovebrains, you should know that you talked me into it. My rewatch of Modesty Blaise and My Name is Modesty will go up tomorrow….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought about this some more after I last posted and I still think a comic-booky period piece was the wrong way to go for this adaptation. In general retro-futuristic doesn’t seem to work all that well for mass consumption, or at least I can’t think of an example more successful than The Rocketeer. I would love to see a Dick Tracy that takes the tone of The Untouchables and marries it with the near-future technology from something like Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible series.
That said, I personally loooove retro-future stuff like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow