Isabel Greenberg’s 2016 graphic novel The One Hundred Nights of Hero is the kind of queer, feminist folktale that delights in its sharp wit and unapologetic politics: clever, subversive, and committed to exposing how women are maligned across generations. Greenberg serves as an executive producer on Julia Jackman’s film adaptation, which stars Maika Monroe as Cherry and Emma Corrin as Hero. The movie evokes the novel’s whimsical spirit, but too often it smooths the edges of the original into something more palatable—and less fierce.
The story opens in a vaguely medieval fantasy world where gods walk among humans. Birdman (Richard E. Grant), the deity at the center of this tale, rules with iron certainty. His daughter Kiddo (Safia Oakley-Green) fashions humankind, and Birdman’s cult installs the Beaked Brothers, a male-controlled religious order that enforces heteronormative, patriarchal codes and polices women’s lives.
Centuries later we meet newlywed Cherry and her husband Jerome (Amir El-Masry), who are handed a brutal ultimatum by the Beaked Brothers: Jerome has 100 nights to make Cherry pregnant, or Cherry will be put to death. Jerome’s friend Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine) offers to try. The men strike a cruel wager—Manfred gets 100 nights to seduce Cherry; if he fails, he must sire an heir for Jerome by other means and keep his honor, but if he succeeds, he gains Jerome’s castle and Cherry still faces a grim fate. Either way, Cherry’s future rests in the hands of men who view her as a prize.
Image: Independent Film CompanyCherry’s loyal maid and closest companion, Hero, is the film’s storytelling engine. In a society that forbids women from reading and writing, Hero’s narratives become a form of resistance—their performances protect Cherry and keep agency alive. Together they scheme to thwart Manfred’s attempts and preserve Cherry’s life.
Jackman retains the graphic novel’s core idea that storytelling can be defiant. Women, and crucially women of diverse identities, pass down and reshape tales that the Beaked Brothers have historically twisted into tools of oppression. That message feels urgent in an age where some people lean on AI-generated content—often inaccurate—rather than engaging in the difficult work of original creation. For the women in 100 Nights of Hero, oral tradition is not merely cultural preservation; it’s a corrective, a way to assert the truth in a landscape that depicts them as witches or whores. Still, where Greenberg’s novel is blunt and uncompromising, Jackman’s film sometimes retreats from the sharper edges.
Adaptations necessarily alter elements, and Jackman handles some changes gracefully. For instance, the film lets Cherry and Hero’s romance unfold slowly rather than presenting them as an established couple. That slow-burn allows the actors to build palpable chemistry and tenderness. But in a compact 90-minute runtime, dedicating so much screen time to the courtship can feel like a concession; it comes at the expense of grappling with the harsher aspects of the book—namely the homophobic and sexual-violence threats that drive much of the graphic novel’s tension. Given the contemporary rollback of LGBTQ+ safeguards—when rights are under pressure, some Pride events face bans like the one in Budapest, and anti-LGBTQ+ laws are proliferating—there’s understandable value in foregrounding queer joy. Still, it softens the story’s political bite.
Image: Independent Film CompanyOther alterations feel less defensible. In Greenberg’s book, Manfred is older and flagrantly predatory—his lines reveal the hypocrisy of a man who denounces women as sluts while threatening them with rape. That bitter irony is a crucial provocation in the graphic novel, illustrating how prejudice can be irrational and self-serving. Jackman’s film, however, recasts Manfred as a man who genuinely cares for Cherry, humanizing him in ways that diminish the original’s critique. There are sympathetic male figures in the movie—the guards who show compassion, the father in one of Hero’s tales—but turning the novel’s central monster into a misguided lover blunts the story’s moral clarity and feels like an unnecessary concession to mainstream palatability.
Cherry herself is softened in the adaptation. In the comic, her apparent innocence is a strategic mask she and Hero deploy, part of a Scheherazade-like gambit in which storytelling and performance become instruments of control; they even take pleasure in deceiving Manfred. In the film, Cherry is more genuinely naïve, and Hero’s stories are used to educate and embolden her. That choice produces tender moments, but it also dilutes Cherry’s agency. Where the book gives Cherry power through her role, the movie often positions her as someone who must be taught to be strong—an editorial choice that feels like an unnecessary diminishment of a complex female protagonist.
With a story so proudly pro-queer and pro-woman, bringing Greenberg’s indie fable to a wider audience was always going to require compromise. The film’s cast—boosted by names like Felicity Jones (known for Rogue One) and Varada Sethu (of Andor)—adds gravitas and visibility. Still, those strengths don’t entirely mask the film’s tendency to apologize for the harsher truths the graphic novel confronts head-on. Where Greenberg refuses to flinch from depicting women under siege by a brutal patriarchy, Jackman’s adaptation often pulls its punches—leaving a feminist story that, while heartfelt, feels tamer than its source material demands.
100 Nights of Hero is in theaters now.
Source: Polygon
