Introduction

What is the relationship between technology and narrative? Does technological advancement determine changes in the way we tell stories, or is it rather a need for a change that makes us seek new tools to tell them? Given that, both in science and art, humans have always created on top of what already existed, it could be argued that the evolution of bot technology and narrative is interconnected in a loop. Maybe the sudden availability of a certain technology determines a change in the way we approach a subject, a character or a story much like the invention of the telescope changed the way scientists approached astronomy. But at the same time, the very need to investigate, experiment and adopt new storytelling techniques can force us, or at the very least push us, to try and invent new tools, just like the invention of the car fulfilled a need for mass transportation, but then the car itself redefined the paradigm of mass transportation leading to new, different needs.

In this blog we will try to illustrate how the evolution in filmmaking technologies, and in particular the advent of digital compositing, has influenced the creation of narratives in relation to the comic book movie genre. To better understand this evolution we will examine two major comic book movies that, each one in its own way, have adopted an innovative and original approach to the adaptation process: Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie (1978) and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (2005). For each one we will talk about the technologies involved in the adaptation, production and post production processes, trying to understand to what extent the availability of new technologies helped the filmmakers in the creation of an original form of narrative. From that analysis, we will then try to extrapolate the relationship between technology and narrative, and understand which one is the driving force that pushes the other towards new and previously unexplored territories.