It’s about damn time Swamp Thing got a live-action adaptation that treats the character with the care he deserves, isn’t it?
For those of you who’re not familiar with him, he’s a plant-based superhero who was memorably re-invented and re-worked by Alan Moore in his first major comics project for DC. Prior to Moore’s arrival, he was a pretty stock man-trapped-as-a-monster type cliche dealing with small scale menaces. In Moore’s hands, however, he was revealed as a plant who thought he was a man and proceeded to become a psychedelic emissary of The Green, quickly becoming an environmentally focused plant-elemental.
Now, it seems that the upcoming TV show featuring the fan favorite will do him justice as a horror character. Some had feared that the hero would have to be realized entirely through CGI, though their fears have now been allayed by writer Gary Dauberman. Speaking with /Film, he explained that “Swamp Thing himself looks incredible […] So it’s going to look amazing and less of the “man in suit” that you’ve seen in the movie and the other TV show.” The scribe also went on to explain that the show is aiming for a hard R-rating, saying:
“We always set out to make Swamp Thing as hard R as we could and go graphic with the violence, with the adult themes and make it as scary as possible. Because we’re doing it through the DC streaming service, they really pushed us, although they didn’t have to push hard, for us to go as extreme as we could. We really took our inspiration from the Alan Moore run in Swamp Thing, this landmark I think run. Fans of that series will know it gets pretty weird and extreme and scary.”
This is music to my ears. At any rate, it should be an improvement on the previous adaptations of the character. Wes Craven’s 1982 Swamp Thing isn’t without its upsides, but it’s hardly one of this best films. Return of Swamp Thing, meanwhile, is just a crappy B-movie and the 1990 TV show is mainly noted as a camp classic. The animated children’s series is similarly rubbish (though its theme song is pretty incredible).
With the project set to start shooting at some point in 2019, it’ll still be a while before Swamp Thing hits DC’s streaming service. In the meantime, though, I highly recommend catching up with Alan Moore’s groundbreaking run with the character, which is one of the best in comic book history.
