Book to Film Comparison: The Incal and The Fifth Element

Reading Alejandro Jodorowsky’s legendary graphic novel ‘The Incal’ is no easy task. Here I fancy myself a science fiction super buff with a brain, yet even I found it a challenge to comprehend a lot of the situations and plotlines in the book. This is not to say that it’s completely incomprehensible, what I mean is that this is the kind of book you have to read on various occasions to fully grasp. It’s the kind of graphic novel you should read once, without trying to make sense of it. Hopefully some of its essence should transfer onto your brain on your first read, then when you read it again, keep adding bits of information to what you already know, that’s the best way to go about it. The thing is that The Incal is a barrage of information, an avalanche of science fiction awesomeness. An amalgamation of mystical artifacts, alien races, political intrigue, god like beings and amazing outlandish vistas.One thing is undeniable, this graphic novel, which is really a compilation of comics that were printed separately through a period of seven years (1981-1988), is a juggernaut of a masterpiece, a work of art with a resounding impact on anyone who ventures into its pages. Each page is a gift from the comic book gods known as Moebius and Jodorowsky.

 On the left is Jodorowsky, sandwiched between is a Saudukar Warrior from Jodorowsky's defunct Dune film, to the right, one of the films producers

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of my favorite persons in the world, not just for his films which I adore, but also because of who he is as a person. When I hear him talk in say, the documentary called Jodorowsky’s Dune’s (2014), it’s like I’m listening to a kindred spirit. A true ateur, a realist, a humanist, Jodorowsky has always used his art to comment on humanity, our craziness, our subconscious preoccupations, our collective worries and thoughts. This is why I adore every single one of his films. Yet I had never read any of his comic books, I just had to experience this other area of his art. So I started at the beginning, with The Incal, a graphic novel that is the foundation for ‘The Jodoverse’ a series of comics written by Jodorowsky. Interesting how it was his frustrations with Hollywood that turned Jodorowsky to comics. You see, once upon a time, Jodorowsky attempted with great enthusiasm, to make a major Hollywood science fiction film based on Frank Herbert’s Dune. It was going to be the end all, be all of science fiction films. He had the conceptual art, the actors, the special effects technicians, he just needed the millions. Sadly, Hollywood got cold feet and slammed the door on his face. I’m almost 100% sure Hollywood producers saw him as a quack, a nut job, an unreliable director who was probably going to make a movie that was going to be unmarketable and over budget. But what did they know, right? As Jodorowsky himself always says, all geniuses are a little crazy.

A Young Jodorowsky

The comic book world was a world where Jodorowskys imagination was not limited by budgets or back stabbing producers. Here was a medium in which his imagination could go anywhere it wanted, and boy did he take it places! His writings include: Before The Incal, The Incal, The Final Incal, Metabarons Genesis: Castaka, Megalex and The Technopriests, among many others. The good thing about Jodorowsky’s comic books is that he always partners up with amazing artists, which is what we’re here to talk about today. Jodorowsky partnering up with Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) to produce The Incal, a seminal work in comics, and by seminal I mean you’d better read it at some point in your life, there's still nothing like it out there. It's the story of an anti-hero named John Difool who suddenly comes upon a magical artifact known as The Incal. Once he obtains it everybody in the universe wants it for their own dark purposes. In essence it is a story of ultimate evil vs. ultimate good, about the ambiguity of life and about the unpredictability of life, sometimes you do what you got to do, whether you planned it that way or not.

The story behind The Incal is that Jodorowsky took concepts he had prepared for his adaptation of Dune and jam packed the The Incal with them. I honestly don’t see a lot of Dune in The Incal, save for the fact that the good guys are escaping an evil government and that they have to do something to stop it, I'm thinking he put more of the conceptual stuff he had planned for Dune into The Incal, spaceships, buildings and the such. The real issue here though is how much The Incal has influenced filmmakers and comic book artists from all over the globe. One such filmmaker is Luc Besson, the director behind The Fifth Element (1995). The dirt on The Fifth Element is that Luc Besson ripped off Jodorwsky’s The Incal. I’d say this isn’t entirely true. Sure there’s some similarities, you’re definitely going to see them. But in my opinion, many of these similarities are visual in nature and don’t necessarily subscribe themselves to the plot. An interesting aspect of this whole Incal/Fifth Element issue is that Moebius actually worked as a conceptual artist for Besson on The Fifth Element; so it’s doesn’t really surprise me that Moebius’s style is all over the conceptual part of The Fifth Element. The similarities bothered the folks at Humanoid Press, the company that prints The Incal in Europe, so they sued Luce Besson for supposedly stealing ideas from The Incal for his film. The question is :did Besson deserved to be sued?

Luc Besson directs on the set of The Fifth Element (1995)

Moebius worked as a conceptual artist on some of the best filmmakers. For example, he worked on Willow (1988), Masters of the Universe(1987), Tron (1982), Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland (1989) and The Abyss(1989). He also conceptualized many of the flying cars, buildings and characters seen on The Fifth Element, which is probably why The Incal and The Fifth Element share a few similarities. First time I saw The Fifth Element (1995) in theaters back in 1995 it seemed so new and so fresh to me, I had never seen anything like it before, in fact, I went to see it a record setting five times to the theater! I haven’t done that for a film in a while, my limit nowadays is three times if I really love a movie. It was only years later, after I started reading Moebius’s work that I learned about what an influential artist he was and about how the reason why I loved The Fifth Element so much was because it was partially conceptualized by Moebius.

Here’s a list of the similarities:

The novel starts with John DiFool, the protagonist of the story, being thrown from the balcony of a building. On his way down he has to avoid a zillion flying cars as he makes his way down to the grimiest parts of the city, the lower levels. This happens in The Fifth Element when Leeloo jumps from a building also having to avoid a zillion flying vehicles on her way down to the most uninhabitable parts of the city. The architecture in these scenes is extremely similar to certain images from The Incal. But of course, Moebius was the artist behind both projects; it makes sense that they’d have some similarities from a visual standpoint.

In The Incal, the main character is a man called John DiFool. He’s a private detective, but also your typical loser type, hence the play of words on his name. It sounds like John ‘The Fool’. He doesn’t want to be a hero, in fact, he’s an anti-hero. He saves the day anyway, but he is constantly finding a way to avoid responsibility, he seems to only want to live for fun. John Difool likes smoking, drinking and what he refers to as “homeo-whores”. In The Fifth Element the main character is also a loser type, he lives in a dingy little apartment filled with crap, he looks, un-kept. He doesn’t take shit from anybody, but he also doesn’t give a shit. He’s a taxi driver about to lose his job (and his license) because he has way too many parking tickets, yet ends up being the films hero anyways. Korben ends up making out with a god like being, same as John DiFool in The Incal.

In The Incal there’s this black liquid that’s taking over everything which is referred to as "The Great Darkness". It is turning everybody evil. Our hero John DiFool and his friends must battle it in order to save the universe, they all end up battling it together. In The Fifth Element a black planet keeps approaching the earth and if Korben Dallas doesn’t find The Fifth Element and activate it, the black planet will destroy the earth. Korben and his friends end up helping him uncover the powers of The Fifth Element. Also, same as in The Incal, the black evil takes liquid form. It can be seen two times during the film, dripping from the forehead of the films villains.

One of the chapters in The Incal is actually called ‘The Fifth Essence’, this should be enough for anyone to see the influence.

Above, a scene from The Fifth Element (1995) and below a scene from 'Harry Canyon' one of the stories on Heavy Metal (1981)

At the end of the day, I would say that The Fifth Elementborrowed a bit from The Incal, but its different enough that it’s not really a rip off; which is probably why Humanoid Press didn’t win the lawsuit. I mean if Vanilla Ice could get away with ripping off Queen's Under Pressure as blatantly as he did, anybody can rip off anything. But then again, that’s the trick of borrowing ideas, you have to change them just enough to make them your own. In fact, if we get down to it, The Fifth Element feels like a dumb as hell movie when compared to the complexities on The Incal. Speaking of rip offs, I’d say that if The Fifth Element ripped off anything it was actually a segment from Heavy Metal (1981) called ‘Harry Canyon’, which plays out note for note exactly the same as The Fifth Element (1995). If you don’t believe me check out my review for it, in which I detail the similarities between both films, or better yet, check out the segment for yourself. So while The Fifth Element blew my mind the first time I saw it in theaters, it was actually a rehash of previously conceived ideas from various films and comics. I’m still waiting for a brave filmmaker to make a film adaptation of The Incal. The one problem that an adaptation like that will confront is that The Incal is just too freaking weird, jam packed with ideas and craziness all the way through. You hardly get a chance to catch your breath when the next crazy adventure begins. The Incal is an onslaught of craziness, but in a real good way. So whoever decides to tackle The Incal's cinematic adaptation will have one huge challenge ahead of them. I hear that Nicolas Windig Refn the director behind Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013) has talked with Jodorowsky about translating the book into a film, the two have created a kinship, so let's hope this project comes to fruition at some point. Jodorowsky and Moebius never spelled things out for us, when you read The Incal, you are not treated like a fool or an idiot. It is expected that you have a brain on you and that you are fully capable of using it! So use it, and immerse your neurons in this one of a kind comic book experience.    

Make it so captain! Nicolas Windig Refn holding a copy of The Incal

Drive (2011)

Title: Drive (2011)

Director: Nicholas Winding Refn

Cast:  Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman

Review:

Drive is a film that appeals to the senses in more ways than your regular run of the mill commercial film. Nicholas Winding Refn is that rare filmmaker that knows how to make you feel with his images, something that seldom happens when watching the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster for example. With a lot of those films, even though they try, in the end most commercial films are a lot of flash, a lot of action, but no feeling, no emotion. Not so with this latest Nicholas Winding Refn film, Drive aims to please the eyes as well as the heart. But don’t mistake this one for a film without any ‘cojones’, because it’s got a lot of those too! When Drive has too, it can get damn graphic and violent! 

Drive is all about a nameless man who earns a living as a stunt driver for the movies. But that’s just his day job, during the nighttime he gets paid for driving criminals in and out of their heists. Eventually, word gets around about his driving skills, and so mobsters want to use him, so they can make good money off of his driving skills. At the same time, the mysterious Nameless Driver falls for his lonely next door neighbor, whose husband just so happens to be away in jail. So she’s a lonely parent, raising her kid on her own. One day, her husband finally gets out of jail and returns to live with her. He tries living a ‘normal’ life, but being good and normal just isn’t in this guys genes. You see, the husband owes money to some thugs, and these thugs have gone as far as threatening his wife and kid if he doesn’t pay up. What will the Nameless Driver do about this? Will he selfishly walk away from the situation, or will he help his babealicious neighbor find the money to pay the debt that her husband owes the mob?

Nicholas Winding Refn has amazed me with each and every one of his films. I’ve only seen three so far: Bronson (2008), which is a film about the most famous convict in England and Valhalla Rising (2009), a trippy film about a barbarian who gets stranded in a strange new land filled with deadly natives who don’t exactly take kindly to strangers. And now Drive a simple, yet visually poetic film. Refn has so far proven himself to be the kind of director who places a lot emphasis on the visuals, and what they can evoke. There are moments in Drive where the main character doesn’t talk for long periods of time; he simply drives around town, taking in the lights, the sights and sounds of the big bad city landscape. He doesn’t talk, but you kind of get an idea of what he is thinking, or maybe you come up with your own idea of what’s going through his head. Point is, the silent scenes evoke some sort of response out of you even though nothing is said. In this way, these long moments of silence work like the silent films of the past. A lot can be said through visuals and performance alone and Drive does it exquisitely.

This strong silent type of character is nothing new to Refn who had a similar character in his previous film, Valhalla Rising. On that film we meet a character called ‘One Eye’, a barbarian character who very rarely spoke. In fact, he had a kid tagging along beside him that spoke for him as some sort of ‘Jiminy Cricket’ or something. With Drive, you can expect a film that exploits it’s moments of silence to the fullest, Refn uses yet again a strong silent character to tell his story. The Nameless Driver brings to mind Clint Eastwood’s legendary Man With No Name from all those spaghetti westerns he made. In those westerns, The Man With No Name , never spoke much and he was never a squeaky clean character. He was always walking the fine line between savior and bandit. The same can be said of the Nameless Driver in Drive. Here, we meet a lonely type of character, but one that is focused and knows exactly what his doing and why.

Drive is a film that has many influences attached to it. Like a Tarantino film that draws from many others that came before it, Drive draws a lot of it’s awesomeness from equally great films of the past. It has a bit of Bullit (1968), The Driver (1978), Le Samourai (1967), and by Refn’s own admission The Day of the Locust (1975). These are all a bunch of films that I will definitely be looking into in the next few months, just to see where Drive came from. With a title like Drive, a lot of people where probably expecting something along the lines of the Fast and the Furious movies, when in reality, Drive could not be further from those formulaic action flicks. Though it does have about two cool chase sequences, I don’t consider Drive to be action flick at all. It’s more of an introspective piece, almost entirely focusing on its one main character. One look at this film and you immediately know it’s not going to be your regular run of the mill pop corn flick. I mean, two of the production houses that joined to make this film are called “Odd Lot” and “Bold Films” so right off the bat we know were going to be in for something that thinks outside of the proverbial box.

Drive feels like a film both from the 70’s and 80’s. The credits are in pink neon letters, obviously as homage to films from the 80’s. The music in the film has a real retro-feel to it; the synthesizers make it sound like something straight out of the 80’s club scene, but interestingly enough the songs were all recorded post 2007, so it’s a deliberately retro soundtrack. By the way, this is the kind of soundtrack you’ll want to make a permanent part of your collection. Most of it is abstract music that sets the mood for the well orchestrated visuals. And man, this is one of those movies that perfectly matches both music and visuals. There’s a scene in which the Nameless Driver is silently driving around town, and he’s gone through a lot of shit, and this song plays in the background. The song is called “A Real Hero” by Johnny Jewel. Wow, that song perfectly picks up what the film is all about. Behind all its car chases, and shoot outs and Italian gangsters, this is really a film about a good guy trying to survive in an imperfect world. About a person who is struggling to do what is right, to be a real human being, a hero. To feel and love and care. And even though in the end, the Nameless Driver doesn’t seem to be destined to live “the good life” at least he tries.

Rating: 5 out of 5