This Charlize Theron Action Cult Classic Might Be The Best Comic Book Adaptation Ever Made
Looking back at 2017, the year presented a smorgasbord of films that surprisingly hold up to this day.
Sure, it had the regular main courses of reboots, sequels, and popular IP exploitation, but the year also provided freshly squeezed motion pictures like The Greatest Showman, Dunkirk, Coco, Baby Driver, and The Shape of Water. That last one, in particular, should have an entire column dedicated to its most infamous scene.
Another film that never gets old is David Leitch’s Atomic Blonde, starring Charlize Theron. The stylized flick draws comparisons to John Wick because of its glossy action sequences and frenetic energy, but did you know it’s actually based on a comic book?
How ‘The Coldest City’ provided the blueprint for ‘Atomic Blonde’
Atomic Blonde takes place before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) provides a debrief of what happened in Berlin to her superiors. It’s a tale rife with blood, betrayal, and B.S. as Lorraine discusses her quest to attain the List – a coveted document containing the name of all active agents. Expectedly, the mission doesn’t go according to plan – or does it?
The film is adapted from the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City from writer Antony Johnston and artist Sam Hart. The original story is largely the template for the movie adaptation, but there are a few changes that take place from page to screen. Notably, the comic takes a film noir approach in its aesthetic, as it’s all black and white and devoid of the rapidfire neon splashes from the movie. Instead, the story lets the white space and shadows fill the silence. In addition, the characters aren’t quite as stylized as their film counterparts. Lorraine, for example, doesn’t stand out with her bleached blonde hair, blending more into the background than standing out – which is what agents actually do, since they look more like Margaret, your next-door neighbor, than Tatum, the Instagram queen. However, this approach doesn’t look as cool in a movie, hence the change.
What do ‘The Coldest City’ creators think of ‘Atomic Blonde’?
Comic book creators possess complicated relationships with adaptations of their work. For instance, there’s no point asking Alan Moore what he thinks of Watchmen, or any other films or shows based on his comics, because the answer is simple: he hates it. In the case of Antony Johnston and Sam Hart, they didn’t mind the fact that David Leitch traded in the quieter, slow-burn nature of their story for a louder, bombastic approach.
“I was amazed at how they managed to visually translate the narrative,” Hart told Den of Geek in 2017. “Not necessarily each scene or each drawing, but the narrative obviously is different when you’re reading a page and when you’re looking at a screen with actors, and music and so forth. I’ve seen the movie five times and I’ve loved it every time!”
Johnston echoed Hart’s praise, crediting the team for staying faithful to The Coldest City where it mattered most but also attempting to make Atomic Blonde its own thing. “Of course [Atomic Blonde] is quite faithful in terms of story, but it’s very different in terms of feel,” Johnston said. “It’s been really exciting, and I was pleased and happy with how it turned out.”
Another element that thrilled Johnston was the fundamental understanding of Lorraine as a character. She’s a woman in a male-dominated world that underestimated and undermined her ability, and she uses that to her advantage – something that Johnston felt Charlize Theron grasped. “From my point of view, the best thing about it was that [Charlize] got the character,” Johnston said. “I could tell that immediately. The moment I met Charlize on set and saw how she was playing Lorraine, I realized that she got it; she understood what lay at the core of this character.”
What happened to ‘Atomic Blonde 2’?
Atomic Blonde turned out to be a tidy hit at the box office, making around $100 million from a $30 million budget, while also receiving critical and audience praise. A sequel was announced in 2020, but there hasn’t been any news about when or even if it’s still happening. Hollywood, right?
The good news is there’s a 2016 comic book prequel to tide fans over. Titled The Coldest Winter, the graphic novel comes from Antony Johnston and Steven Perkins. This story centers around David Percival (played by James McAvoy in Atomic Blonde) and his adventures in Berlin before the events of The Coldest City. No spoilers here, but if you remember the character from the movie, you’ll know there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye, so this is a delicious story to sink your teeth into. Whether Atomic Blonde 2 ever happens or not is another story – that’s up the execs and they operate in their own little world.
