Priest: How The Movie Compares To The Korean Comics

Priest: How The Movie Compares To The Korean Comics world 

2011’s Priest is a busy take on the vampire hunter genre, but the film significantly departs from its Korean comic source material.The vampire hunter genre seems to always be popular with audiences, but 2011’s atmospheric Priest actually strays a fair bit from its Korean comic roots.

Priest is a horror-action hybrid from 2011 that was directed by Scott Stewart (Legion, Dark Skies) and put Paul Bettany in the role of the pious vampire slayer priest. Many people may not realize that Priest is actually an adaptation of a Korean comic of the same name by Min-Woo Hyung. Despite how both the comic and the film deal with a renegade priest who fights the undead, the two are basically entirely different entities.

It’s exciting when a comic property like Priest can be faithfully adapted, but situations where they completely re-invent the story are much more confusing. Despite how Min-Woo Hyung actually visited the set while filming, 2011’s Priest might as well be an original property. Min-Woo Hyung's Priest has 16 volumes worth of material to adapt, and it features a compelling, rich story. Instead of adapting from this wealth of source material, the movie decided to forge its own path and follow more in the footsteps of action-horror movies with big-budget CGI, like Underworld.

Min-Woo Hyung's original series blends together horror, action, and western genres as it tells the story of Ivan Isaacs—a Man With No Name-type figure—who finds himself cursed with half a devil’s soul as he tries to exterminate a growing vampire threat. As Isaacs makes headway with his undead research, he must also confront the very religious beliefs that define him as he heads into the unknown. Hyung's Priest tells an epic story that goes all the way back to the Crusades. It may not be perfect, but it has an impressive scope and an entertaining lone anti-hero. Interestingly, Stewart's Priest doesn't even take the protagonist's name from the source material as an obligatory sign of respect.

In the movie, Bettany's character is cryptically known only as "Priest". Immediately, the movie establishes its own canon and story and informs audiences that this universe is an alternate history where vampires exist in tandem with humans, but have been confined to walled cities. The protagonist is still a priest who fights evil, but he operates with a group of like-minded priests who have been trained as assassins to deal with the vampire threat. Priest decides to disobey his organization and head right into danger, but here the protagonist doesn't suffer from any kind of curse. He's also not alone and instead has support and a family here. Priest still retains the western aesthetic that's present in the comics, but feels more like a post-apocalyptic setting; it even skews toward science fiction at times.

Stewart’s film tells a much smaller and more concise story in an effective way, but as a result, it blends in with the rest of the genre. Hyung’s Priest may be messier at times, but its story is more unique. Retaining more of the story’s essence from the comics could have helped the movie find a bigger audience. Priest is a classic example of studio tampering and mainstream cinema erasing what makes a property original.