Warning: Massive spoilers for the Losers movie and the comic
For those of you who want to think during their movies, don’t go see the Losers. Just don’t. The mindset you want to have when entering the theatre for this flick is that you have no expectations. You want to see lots of boom, you want to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan get it on with Zoe Saldana, and you want to see Chris Evans escaping a hostile situation to the tune of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ ‘. If you’re expecting a semi-decent plot, please go see another movie. Most of all, if you want to see a movie that keeps the themes and nuances of the comic, don’t, don’t, don’t go see this movie.
In fact, if you have read the comic at all, spare yourself the brain hemorrhage and just pretend the film doesn’t exist.
I got lucky. I didn’t even know a comic existed when I heard of the movie. All I knew was Jeffrey Dean Morgan played a black ops commando, there were lots of slo-mo explosions, Zoe Saldana fired a rocket launcher in a black-stretch cami top, and I had to see it.
When I found out about the comic, I read it (all 32 issues), and realised just how lucky I had gotten. Imagine when Starship Troopers, the movie, was released. Because the book had been written in 1959, many of the target audience had never even heard of the novel. They went, they enjoyed the movie, and when they realised there was a book, read it, and wondered ‘what was the director thinking!? Why aren’t there any suits in the movie!?’
That is basically the reaction I had after I finished the comic. The comic was so confusing, so twisted, so politically, emotionally, psychologically deep that I wondered how exactly the director expected to pay homage to such a brilliant bit of work. There was no possible way the director could squeeze all of the comic themes into a two hour movie. Even a four hour movie would have trouble. Even a two hour movie with a three hour sequel would have problems fitting everything into the screen time. The movie set up for a sequel, but the way they handled the plot doesn’t leave much room for the political intrigue that follows in the comic.
We’ll start with the similarities, because they are the quickest to get through. Aisha exists. Clay and his unit are called the Losers. They were screwed by the CIA and are out for revenge against a ghost handler named ‘Max’. And… that’s it. Oh, except the explosions and guns. One thing the movie did handle better was the epic take-down of the private jet. Flaming Ducati into the cockpit of a private jet followed by massive explosion makes Lor one very happy fangirl.
The comic, on the other hand, was so twisted I had a hard time keeping up with it. Seeing the movie first helped me keep things straight until the long exposition in issue #31 that laid everything out. A few things I noticed right off: Aisha was one crazy bitch. While she was lying and manipulative in the movie, the screen time did not do justice to the complete level of batshittery she displayed in the comic. I mean. Wow.
Another thing I noticed (because Cougs was my favourite. I enjoy the quiet, guilt-ridden ones) was the lack of character development on Cougar’s end. Sure, in the movie he’s the quiet one. The one everyone has to watch out for (because it’s always the quiet ones, yea?). The movie doesn’t explain how he got so quiet. They take it as an innate aspect of his character, which the comic didn’t entertain. Cougar started out as chatty as the rest of the guys. The incident in Bolivia (in the comics it takes place in Afghanistan, I believe) is the turning point in Cougar’s character. The comic sets it up so that Cougar experiences the most amount of personal angst in the unit, being intimately connected to the kids when the chopper goes down. He carries the most angst, and the trauma from the experience is what makes him lose his voice. Add ten minutes to the movie and they could have added miles of depth to Cougar’s character. I’m still scratching my head as to why this was cut from the movie.
Max is also a big sticking point for fans of the comic who saw the movie. In the movie he is a CIA agent working to maintain America’s dominance by instigating a war that will let America wipe Muslim extremists from the face of the planet. All right, this is a pretty reasonable motivation for rogue CIA agents. The comics take him one step further. For a bit he is the man who is profiting from provoking acts of terror (he owns a company that bets on stock markets in the middle east and owns a company that provokes acts of terror so he’s basically funding his own operations in one giant corporate loop of craziness), but as the comic series draws to a close he is revealed to be something much more dangerous.
Think HAL9000 from 2001: Space Odyssey.
Max is still a CIA agent, sort of, and is determined to protect America from itself by destroying the current landmass and opening up a new one free of the fallacies that had dragged the former Land of the Free into a state of timid diplomacy. Just as HAL figured that the only way to protect humans from themselves was to terminate, Max plans to resurrect a true America from the ashes of the current nation. Yes, this sort of political discussion would never fit into one movie, but the way the Losers movie!verse went, I can’t see how they are going to bring in the comics concepts of government corruption. Yes, Max is still alive, but now the movie!verse becomes more of a hunt and chase than a game of political corruption and absolute power corrupting absolutely. Especially given the cutesie soccer scene at the end of the movie, lulling the audience into a false sense of security. That everything would turn out all right. They’d get Max and things would be happy (And then Aisha would eat their ears for lunch. Yum!).
The take-away from this is, if you’ve read the comics do not go see the movie. You’ll just hurt yourself. If you want a thinking movie, don’t go see this movie. Again, you will walk away wanting to hit your head against a wall. If you would like to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Zoe Saldana get hot and heavy on the big screen, by all means, high-tail it to the theatre as fast as your little legs can carry you. I personally loved the movie. JDM and the whole cast did a great job, and the movie was tons of fun. I loved the comic series. It was twisted and ridiculous and crazy-awesome. I recommend both, but see the movie first. Then read the series. Please, for your sanity.
