Where the mid-90s adaptation of Tank Girl stands today

A writer at Men's Journal talks about the 1995 film adaptation of the British comic called Tank Girl, which was not a success, but is apparently the kind of movie that's since found a "cult following", as could probably be expected of some films of the times:

Arriving decades before the box office successes of Wonder Woman (2017) and Captain Marvel (2019), Tank Girl (1995) was a pioneer of the female-led comic book film, or pushed back their popularity for another 20 years — depending on who you asked.

There's just one thing not brought up - despite the huge box office gross 7 years ago, the Capt. Marvel movie is not considered an artistic success, and the sequel certainly buried any further chances for additional sequels for now.

Tank Girl was based on the British comic book series and strips of the same name by artists Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett — the latter of whom would go on to further global prominence as the visual co-creator of the virtual band Gorillaz — first published in 1988. Set in a post-apocalyptic Australia, the series is led by the titular character (real name Rebecca Buck), who, along with mutant Kangaroo boyfriend Booga, navigates the lawless outback in a series of misadventures in an abandoned military tank.

[...] With predominantly non-Australian accents and actors, alongside the rejection of the dry British humor of the comic and its overt violence and sexuality, the Tank Girl film was a far cry from what the fans of the comic book expected. With abysmal critical reviews and a revenue of $6 million against a $25 million budget, the movie venture was largely considered a total failure, particularly by Hewlett and Martin.

Hewlett, who was just 22 years old when MGM studios first approached him about a film adaptation, reflected in 2006: “The script was lousy – me and Alan Martin kept rewriting it and putting Grange Hill jokes and Benny Hill jokes in, and they obviously weren’t getting it. They forgot to film about ten major scenes so we had to animate them … it was a horrible experience.

In a 2017 interview with Vice, Hewlett elaborated, “They played that game of looking for things that are cool, buying those things and then turning them into something else.”

“Which is what Hollywood does. If they were to stick to the actual storyline of the original idea of Tank Girl, then you’d probably have an X-rated movie on your hands, and what they want is a family movie they can open and have a big box office weekend with,” he continued. “They take out all the essence – all the good ingredients – and then turn it into something else.”

There have been R-rated adaptations of several comics over the years, and IIRC, the 1998 Blade movie may have been a rare example to date for a Marvel adaptation. So, while the statements given by the comic's creators may be a bit naive, the fact is that given the chance, Hollywood will dumb down these adaptations considerably, or just plain make a shoddy film. It reminds me that a few years before the Tank Girl film was produced, there was an adaptation of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski novels starring Kathleen Turner that was similarly catastrophous, and stuff like that makes me wonder if some Hollywood studios have so much money, they're not against injuring the popularity of the source material with an awful film. Undoubtably, there are plenty of abortive adaptations whose producing studios have only so much contempt for the zygotes and creators, they're willing to damage the original product's potential. With some early female-led adaptations being the biggest victims of a Hollywood studio's refusal to comprehend what made the source material work in the first place. Just this year of course, we saw how well the new Supergirl adaptation worked out. And that was based on a story written by a very bad writer, by contrast.

It would be far better if some creators would prove they can resist the temptation to have a film adapted to live action, and depending on the situation, even to animation. After all, there's still plenty of examples today where a notable creation can be watered down very badly in Hollywood, and it's gotten considerably worse in an era where stuff like that is described as "woke". So maybe the time's come for comics creators to start reevaluating whether it's even a good idea to begin with, to have their properties adapted to the silver screen. If there's a chance a bad adaptation could send the comic into obscurity, that's why it's just not worth it to approve an adaptation. That said, it's interesting how it's become another film to find a cult following in the 30 years since it was made.