DMZ creators made radical changes to the DC comic to be HBO Max ready

When fans of Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s DMZ watch the TV adaptation debuting on HBO Max on March 17, they’ll find a much different story than in the DC comic of the same name that debuted in 2005.

Although it takes place in Manhattan’s fictional demilitarized zone, created following a second American civil War, all of the images and wartorn emotions are gone. Gone also is the comic’s protagonist, journalist Matty Roth, and his story of chronicling the early years of the DMZ and anchoring the many stories within.

Ava Duvernay has significantly reduced the size of the HBO Max miniseries’ story. Following the pilot episode’s debut at SXSW, the actors and showrunner of DMZ They spoke on the platform about how the show was made, what they did to get four full episodes and the identity of their new protagonist.

DMZ digs into a comic minor character

Photo: Richard DuCree/HBO Max

New version DMZAlma Ortega, portrayed by Rosario Dawson, is the protagonist. As she attempts to locate her missing son and navigate the DMZ with him in hopes of doing so, she also becomes involved in a power struggle within the DMZ that could lead to an election.

These connections allow her to be in touch with many key figures at the DMZ. Her role is also more active than that of a journalist merely monitoring events. She finds herself almost instantly in the middle of it all, in a clinic, and witnessing the violence in the DMZ from a close-up.

“We decided that this story meant something different 10 years after it was first published,” said showrunner Roberto Patino. “So we took the most interesting character, a background character with no name, and built her personality and a story around her. We decided to make this as personal a story as possible, about a fearless mother looking for her son.”

The DMZ Updates Drama for 2022

Photo: Eli Joshua Adé/HBO Max

Original comic clearly responded to post-9/11 war-focused cultural Zeitgeist. It transposed the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan onto the U.S. to guilt the viewers into understanding what other people are going through. A story of civil war in the nation and rising militias across it hits different in 2022 after the Jan. 6 rebellion. This is why the series adopts a post-apocalyptic, generic aesthetic. It trades in a warzone for a Last of UsLooks like a place where the vegetation is everywhere. There are no streets and only a few jaguars in residential neighborhoods.

Patino says that the changes were necessary to reflect the different meanings of the themes and allegoria from the source material after September 11. Now, DMZ This show is about breaking free from violence’s cycles. It also focuses on nature versus nurture as well as violence and traditions in abandoned and underdeveloped areas. According to Dawson, this made the show a very personal story for her, who grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the ’80s and ’90s. “It was war-town,” Dawson said. “I grew up in an abandoned building. I knew what it was like where poor people helped poor people and never expected anyone else to come and rescue you.”

The miniseries deals with how toxic masculinity — and the violence and power that comes with it — could be passed down between generations. “The driving force for the characters is whether they can break certain cycles or not,” Dawson continued. “It was important that in the middle of this civil war, to show the humanity amidst the conflict.”

Benjamin Bratt (playing the role of Parco Delgado as governor candidate) also described how the show helped him to deal with bigger problems. The DMZ has many other problems. “It’s a global problem that these societies all around the world give in to this male toxicity that is clearly leading us in directions that have never worked historically,” he said.

Why only four episodes?

Photo: Richard DuCree/HBO MAX

As if making a show wasn’t already hard enough, this story about a post-apocalyptic world also had to deal with its own global phenomenon when the pandemic hit. Although many aspects of the story seem timely in light of recent years, it was actually shot prior to SXSW. The pilot wrapped in March of 2020, and filming didn’t resume for another year and a half.

“The script for the first episode was an explanation of a much larger bible of what was going to be an ongoing series,” explained Bratt. “And it was only after the pilot was put together, with the limitations that came about as a result of the pandemic that we learned that it was going to be sized considerably downwards into a four-part miniseries.”

Dawson said that the dramatic changes meant that a lot more fat was removed for the story. However, rather than exploring the macro implications, the concentrated story allowed the actors to concentrate on the characters they were portraying.

“We had a lot of time to deliberate on the story and these characters,” Dawson added. “The pivots in the story come quite quickly because all that space was crunched into these four episodes. Every beat is intense. There are filler episodes in a television show. There’s no filler moments in this entire thing.”

It is disappointing to see the show reduced to a miniseries. However, it does not mean that there cannot be new episodes or anthologies. Matty Roth, as well as all other stories in the comic’s original comic, are still available for exploration.