#themaskdarkhorse

With the recent news of both the possible sequel to the Jim Carrey adaptation as well as the more comic accurate gritty reboot I want to explain my thoughts more on the reboot and what I think would be best for it tone wise.

For those who know of the Mask’s darker comic origins you know full well on how more violent and messed up it can get especially when it’s worn by someone who was already unstable to begin with. Even some of the folks who have good intentions on using it aren’t immune to it’s effects to inflict crazy violence that can make Deadpool jealous.

Which is why that for the first drafts for the 1994 movie adaptation was more akin to the Nightmare on Elm Street movies to be more of a horror franchise but later on they felt like it didn’t work which is why we have the comedy that we have today.

The reason I brought this up is because I’ve seen some fan films or at least some clips of them of the Mask being taken to it’s dark comic roots which is a neat idea but at the same time the way they’re executed actually does show me why the people behind the original movie didn’t feel like the horror take wasn’t working.

It’s mostly because they had little to no humor to them which in a lot of ways takes away what arguably is also part of the original comic run. Reading the original comics for myself,I can tell that despite the more darker and violent take on the character it’s still had plenty of comedic moments to them that didn’t take itself too seriously given how the Mask or Big Head as he’s called in the comics is basically a living cartoon character. Think Bugs Bunny fused with the Terminator. Granted it’s a very black and violent form of humor but it’s humor nonetheless. Making The Mask into a typical horror movie character would be the same as making Deadpool into a typical grim comic book character. It just wouldn’t work at all.

Speaking of Deadpool if there’s anything the Mask reboot should actually take notes from it’s from the Deadpool movies since they’ve shown it’s very possible to be dark,edgy and violent while also having some of the funniest moments black or otherwise. They know when to not take themselves too seriously and know when to get serious when they need to be which is funny enough was how the original comics were made. If they go that route for the reboot that’s already a great start.

Some recent news are saying that WB could possibly look into doing another Mask film with Jim Carrey returning. Not sure if this is true or not but still this sounds interesting since we also got news of another Mask project that’s closer to the original comics with a female lead doing it a while back which means we’re possibly looking at a huge Mask revival in general since we also got a new Mask comic Series from Dark Horse as well called I Pledge Allegiance to the Mask.