Bad Adaptations, Good Product

[The Borgified Corpse]

I don't really remember MI3, because I didn't get an undistracted viewing of it, but I think MI4 is pretty entertaining, very much a descendant of the TV series, with its own bag of tricks and twists. MI4 is really nicely done, I thought.

Agreed. If you haven't seen Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I highly recommend it. I'd rank it as one of the best action movies ever made, alongside Die Hard, Speed, & The Terminator.

As for the problems with the 1st Mission Impossible movie, IIRC, isn't that the only one that doesn't have some kind of Star Trek connection? (The last 3 movies were produced by J.J. Abrams & feature Simon Pegg in a supporting role. M:I:III was the first movie to be shot on the sound stages after Enterprise was canceled. M:I-2 credits its story to Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore; IIRC their final collaboration right before their professional falling out during the 6th season of Voyager.)

Absolute Power is a passable thriller but very different from the book in that the Clint Eastwood character is killed off quickly near the start of the book and it’s about his daughter and em... someone who helps her (it’s been a while).

I read William Goldman's memoir Which Lie Did I Tell? where he talks about how adapting the screenplay for Absolute Power was such a pain in the ass. (It's a fun book. You should give it a try.)

The main thing I remember about the Damnation Alley movie is that it was one more example of Paul Winfield's characters always getting killed. I remember a Starlog article about Winfield that was specifically about how he was known for getting killed a lot, with Damnation Alley and The Wrath of Khan being two of the main examples.

Don't forget Anthony Zerbe. He always gets killed too, in fact in worse ways than Winfield did (Licence to Kill, anyone?).

Did Zerbe's character die in The Matrix Revolutions? I don't remember.

Annie is a great crowd-pleaser Broadway musical. It is also, in presenting the New Deal as a happy ending, the political antithesis of the very conservative original comic strip, which I understand was extremely anti-FDR. Which presents an interesting question: I love Annie, or at least I did as a child when I saw it twice on Broadway--but is it ethical to present an adaptation whose message directly opposes that of its original source? I mean, if the original strip had been pro-New Deal but the play presented it as a terrible thing, I'd probably have been annoyed.

I don't think it's unethical. Creativity is a dialogue between different creators' works. Every work, original or adapted, builds on ideas from earlier works, sometimes by reinforcing them and sometimes by challenging or refuting them. It isn't the job of an adaptation to be a slavish imitation of the source; the job of an adaptation is to be a response to the source, an interpretation and modification of it as the next step in the cultural conversation that it's a part of. It's not supposed to copy the original creator's voice, but to re-express the ideas in someone else's voice and thereby add to the dialogue.

And sometimes that means that adaptations critique the ideas and attitudes of the original, or even repudiate them. Heinlein's Starship Troopers is more or less an endorsement of military fascism, or at least a thought experiment examining how it might be beneficial to society; but Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is a biting satire and deconstruction of military fascism. Between them, they offer two sides of the issue, and that's arguably more valuable than if they both just parroted the same take on it.

Then again, I can certainly see how a creator who had a certain point of view behind one's creation might be offended to see it subverted to represent an opposing point of view. From that perspective, it could be seen as inappropriate -- that's not what my characters stand for, so use your own characters instead! I probably wouldn't be as philosophical about it if someone did it with one of my own creations.

If it's an intentional subversion of the ideology of the source material, that's one thing. That's legitimate. Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is a deliberate counterpoint to Heinlein's Starship Troopers. But since I doubt Annie was aiming for that level of postmodern critical depth, I would classify it as an inappropriate, disingenuous perversion of the original creator's intentions.

In a similar vein, I felt from the beginning that Zack Snyder was an inappropriate choice to direct Watchmen. I don't think a filmmaker could adapt both Frank Miller and Alan Moore and be faithful to the underlying worldviews of both. As a result, the Watchmen movie focused more on fetishizing the violence than exploring the world-building that Moore accomplished in his original graphic novel.

Would Conan Doyle have approved of turning Dr. Watson into a Asian woman? Who knows? But he's dead and past caring so where's the harm?

It's not about ethics. They're just stories.

Arthur Conan Doyle was past caring what other writers did to Sherlock Holmes even when he was still alive.

Generally, you can shrug it off and say, "They're just stories." But what about when the story has a specific political or ideological agenda? What if someone did a pro-big government adaptation of Atlas Shrugged or The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress? Or a pro-war version of All Quiet on the Western Front?

One of Verhoeven's "problems" as a director of these action-oriented movies that he intends as satire (Robocop and arguably Total Recall, for instance) is that he's too good at the violence, and a big segment of the audience just eats that up at face value. He does often present it as comic.

Reminds me of A Clockwork Orange. That's another movie where so many viewers just responded to the violence and never seemed to realize that the story was a satire.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I went and saw the Robocop remake with a group of friends who hadn't seen the original, and I had a really hard time explaining why I was really let down compared to their 'it's okay' reactions.

Every time I tried to explain how the original handled it's humor and social commentary (and why I preferred it), it kept coming out 'You don't understand! It was really silly, there was a lot more violence and gore, and cyborg Jesus. Therefore - better!'

Funny enough, that didn't really sell the original to them.

Oh, good one to mention. I would definitely agree that the Robocop remake has nothing at all to do with the underlying satire of the original film. But I still kinda like it, mostly because of Gary Oldman & Michael Keaton.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was "suggested by" the Tim Powers novel On Stranger Tides. In reality, the only things the book & the movie have in common are Blackbeard & the Fountain of Youth. And even then, those 2 elements are portrayed in completely different ways. What's even more confusing is that I recently stumbled on an old 2011 issue of Empire magazine where one of the screenwriters talked about how so many elements in the movie were inspired by stuff in the book, like the Angelica character. There is no character even remotely like Angelica in the book. Nevertheless, the movie is at least a passable Jack Sparrow romp.

 

[Christopher]

I don't really remember MI3, because I didn't get an undistracted viewing of it, but I think MI4 is pretty entertaining, very much a descendant of the TV series, with its own bag of tricks and twists. MI4 is really nicely done, I thought.

You should definitely track down M:i:III again. It's in many ways the best of the bunch, though probably tied with Ghost Protocol overall. It's got the best character work in the franchise, though I agree with you that GP does the best job feeling like the series.

As for the problems with the 1st Mission Impossible movie, IIRC, isn't that the only one that doesn't have some kind of Star Trek connection? (The last 3 movies were produced by J.J. Abrams & feature Simon Pegg in a supporting role. M:I:III was the first movie to be shot on the sound stages after Enterprise was canceled. M:I-2 credits its story to Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore; IIRC their final collaboration right before their professional falling out during the 6th season of Voyager.)

That's right, essentially. Although Abrams, Kurtzman, and Orci (and Pegg) did M:i:III before they were hired to do Trek (in fact, they were given Trek because of their success with M:I).

If it's an intentional subversion of the ideology of the source material, that's one thing. That's legitimate. Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is a deliberate counterpoint to Heinlein's Starship Troopers. But since I doubt Annie was aiming for that level of postmodern critical depth, I would classify it as an inappropriate, disingenuous perversion of the original creator's intentions.

That's harsh. Couldn't it just have been adapting the work to fit the target audience? There are a lot of reasons to modify a work when adapting it -- e.g. getting rid of its sexist or racist assumptions, say -- without it being a "perversion."

And as a creator myself, I feel very threatened when people go around making blanket statements that certain kinds of storytelling choices are "inappropriate," especially when it's cast in moralistic terms like "perversion." Creators need the freedom to make the choices that feel right for them, and that includes creators of adaptations. Again, the purpose of an adaptation is not to be a slavish copy of the original; that would be stupid, because the original already exists. The point is to create a new work that's a transformation of the original in some way, that offers something new.

In a similar vein, I felt from the beginning that Zack Snyder was an inappropriate choice to direct Watchmen. I don't think a filmmaker could adapt both Frank Miller and Alan Moore and be faithful to the underlying worldviews of both. As a result, the Watchmen movie focused more on fetishizing the violence than exploring the world-building that Moore accomplished in his original graphic novel.

Now, that's just nonsense. Lots of filmmakers are capable of adapting their style and voice to different works, or doing works that represent different value systems or points of view. It's called being flexible. Stretching yourself and trying new things is an important part of a creative career.

I don't think Snyder was a good choice for Watchmen, no, but that's got nothing to do with working on Frank Miller films. For me, the problem was that he was too faithful to the source, that he focused too much on the surface aspects of replicating individual panels and recreating everything as exactly as possible. I also feel he made it too slick and constructed when a more gritty, verite style of cinematography would've probably fit the story better.

Generally, you can shrug it off and say, "They're just stories." But what about when the story has a specific political or ideological agenda? What if someone did a pro-big government adaptation of Atlas Shrugged or The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress? Or a pro-war version of All Quiet on the Western Front?

And who are you to say they don't have the right to tell whatever kind of story they want? Just because you don't personally like a creative choice, that absolutely does not give you the right to say it shouldn't even be permitted to exist. Nobody has the right to impose their preferences on others' creative freedom.

Hell, the right to be transgressive and offend people's sensibilities is essential if there is to be true freedom of speech, because everything is offensive to somebody. Whether or not you like a story or think it's a good idea has no bearing on whether or not the creator had the right to do it. They're allowed to tell the story and you're allowed to say you don't like it -- or simply not to read or watch it. That's how free speech works.

Oh, good one to mention. I would definitely agree that the Robocop remake has nothing at all to do with the underlying satire of the original film.

Well, it was trying to be satirical with the Samuel L. Jackson pundit character, but it didn't really extend to the rest of the film.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Lots of filmmakers are capable of adapting their style and voice to different works, or doing works that represent different value systems or points of view. It's called being flexible. Stretching yourself and trying new things is an important part of a creative career.

I don't think Snyder was a good choice for Watchmen, no, but that's got nothing to do with working on Frank Miller films. For me, the problem was that he was too faithful to the source, that he focused too much on the surface aspects of replicating individual panels and recreating everything as exactly as possible. I also feel he made it too slick and constructed when a more gritty, verite style of cinematography would've probably fit the story better.

Of course lots of filmmakers are capable of being flexible but not all of them can stretch out in all directions. And sometimes even great directors can be totally the wrong choice for a particular piece of material. (E.g. Steven Spielberg was just too optimistic and sentimental to direct a misanthropic satire like 1941.) Zack Snyder applied a Frank Miller sensibility to Watchmen, which totally missed the point of what the original graphic novel was supposed to be about.

Now, it's one thing for an artist to adapt something and say, "I know what the original is about but my version is going to say something different." It's quite another thing for an artist to misinterpret the original work and then think he's done a faithful adaptation. Remakes and adaptations need to be done with some kind of deliberate intent. If that intent is to refute the original intent of the original creator, then they need to be upfront about that. And if the intent is to convey the opposite ideas of what the original creator intended, that seems deliberately disrespectful. I'm not saying they can't do it, but the readers and viewers are then entitled to ask the question, "Why are you doing this? What's the point?"

 

[Trekkin]

I like Watchmen more than most, but I didn't mention it because of how faithful it was. You know, the lack giant squid aside...which I thought was a good thing. *runs and hides*


The Robocop remake was an okay movie in its own right, but I don't feel like I'll ever want to watch it again. I guess it's my Jurassic Park 3 of the Robocop movies.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

It's been 30 years since I've read it, but the only difference I can think of between the novel and movie 'First Blood' is that the ending of the book has Trautman kill Rambo after Rambo has killed the sheriff. In the movie both men survive. The rest was a fairly faithful adaptation as far as I remember.

 

[Trekkin]

Rambo is pretty much the villain of the novel. He's a bit of an asshole from the start, and ends up with a body count that would make a serial killer proud. For eg. There's a scene in the movie where he's spooked and tackles what turns out to be a kid. In the book, he stabs the kid on purpose. He lacks the relationship with Trautman, and actually kind of hates him when they're finally put in touch.

The Sherrif is still a bit of a jerk, but there's a bit more dimension to him.

The sequel novels follow on from the movies.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

@ Hela
Oh well it was 30 years ago. I read a lot of books on that trip that summer. I'm surprised I even remembered reading it.

 

[martok2112]

Rambo is pretty much the villain of the novel. He's a bit of an asshole from the start, and ends up with a body count that would make a serial killer proud. For eg. There's a scene in the movie where he's spooked and tackles what turns out to be a kid. In the book, he stabs the kid on purpose. He lacks the relationship with Trautman, and actually kind of hates him when they're finally put in touch.

The Sherrif is still a bit of a jerk, but there's a bit more dimension to him.

The sequel novels follow on from the movies.

Yeah, the movie tie-in novel for Rambo: First Blood Part II had Rambo even with a little bit more of a sense of humor. (If I recall correctly...I only read a few pages)

 

[Trekkin]

@ Hela
Oh well it was 30 years ago. I read a lot of books on that trip that summer. I'm surprised I even remembered reading it.

You're the normal one. I went through a brief Rambo 'phase' in my teens and tried to collect everything there was to know about it. I think I accidentally branded that useless trivia directly to the brain.

Though funnily enough, I was never really into II or III.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think I'd call Rambo the hero of the film First Blood. More a tragic antihero, a victim of the system that programmed him into a killer and then abandoned and ostracized him for it rather than helping him become a functional member of society again. There's kind of a "Hulk just want to be left alone" dynamic to it, since he only lashes out when provoked, but he does overreact badly and needs to be talked down from bringing things to a destructive finish. It's basically the same story as "The Hunted" in Star Trek: TNG.

Yeah, the movie tie-in novel for Rambo: First Blood Part II had Rambo even with a little bit more of a sense of humor. (If I recall correctly...I only read a few pages)

That's definitely a change. That's one of the most humorless movies I've ever seen. (The only reason I ever watched it was for the Jerry Goldsmith score, which is still the only thing I like about it. Ironic that it's one of my favorite Goldsmith scores ever.)

Heck, you want to talk about unfaithful adaptations -- the reason I became aware of Goldsmith's scores to the first two Rambo movies is that they were tracked into the Rambo cartoon series from 1986, which was basically an attempt to turn Rambo into G.I. Joe. It featured an unusually articulate, compassionate, wisecracking Rambo (voiced by Neil Ross) leading a multiethnic team of experts called The Force of Freedom (James Avery, Mona Marshall) to battle the evil General Warhawk (Michael Ansara!) and his toyetic minions all over the world. Every episode would have Trautman (Alan Oppenheimer) helicoptering in to Rambo's idyllic forest cabin where he was doing something peaceful and woodsy and saying "You're needed." I thought the action was actually decently done, except that it consisted mainly of characters shooting thousands of bullets in each other's general direction and never hitting anything but inanimate objects. I'm a bit surprised they were actually allowed to use bullets instead of laser beams. The animation wasn't bad, the voice cast was impressive, and it had that fantastic music from the films (supplemented with new cues by Shuki Levy & Haim Saban mimicking Goldsmith's style), but it was your classic formulaic '80s action show, and a pretty radical departure from the films, especially the first one. But then, it's kind of the logical culmination of how the sequel turned things around and made Rambo into more of a jingoistic hero. Well, the film itself still painted Rambo as troubled and haunted, but the way Reagan-era pundits and commentators embraced the film as an uncomplicated patriotic rallying cry is pretty much as simplistic as the cartoon was.

 

[Silvercrest]

Wisecracking Neil Ross? Did Rambo sound anything like Shipwreck?

 

[Christopher]

Wisecracking Neil Ross? Did Rambo sound anything like Shipwreck?

No, Ross is a more versatile voice actor than that. He basically did it with a tough-guy Noo Yawk accent, broadly Stallone-ish but without the slurred speech. You can find the series on YouTube and hear for yourself. Here's the premiere episode.

 

[Trekkin]

Hey, don't you know that's an Arizona (Arizonian?) accent?

 

[martok2112]

I watched a couple of episodes of that Rambo cartoon. It was....okeeday.

Heh....Hey, Christopher, you know what the original concept was for the Rambo cartoon? (I kid you not...this was about a year before the show actually hit TV) He was a peaceful nature boy who would try to teach "social values" PSA's at the end of each episode. I'm glad they went more the G.I. Joe route (sans PSA's...or did he still do PSA's? God, I can't remember...and maybe I don't wanna.)

Yeah, I remember seeing the pilot ep, and seeing Trautman show up in a helicopter whilst Rambo was snoozing in a hammock, or something....and he says: "Rambo, your country needs you!" Yeah...that didn't really sell me, even as a kid who loved First Blood and Rambo First Blood Part II.

Heh...I remember when theaters were much looser with the rules back then. I was only 15, and got to pay for, and walk into a showing of Rambo FBP2 all by myself. No parent or adult guardian necessary, and of course, it was an R rated movie. Back then, the MPAA was merely an industry standard....not law.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I remember seeing the pilot ep, and seeing Trautman show up in a helicopter whilst Rambo was snoozing in a hammock, or something....and he says: "Rambo, your country needs you!"

Snoozing in a fishing boat with an open book over his face. Yes, kids, Rambo likes to read!

I love how over-the-top super-earnest Alan Oppenheimer's Trautman is. "Only one man can save us. Get me... Rrrrambo!"

And what's extra-weird is that in one scene he gets on the phone and says "Get me... Rrrrambo!", but then in the next scene he's the one in the helicopter, getting Rrrrambo himself. So who was he calling? His own answering service?

 

[martok2112]

Yeah, I remember seeing the pilot ep, and seeing Trautman show up in a helicopter whilst Rambo was snoozing in a hammock, or something....and he says: "Rambo, your country needs you!"

Snoozing in a fishing boat with an open book over his face. Yes, kids, Rambo likes to read!

I love how over-the-top super-earnest Alan Oppenheimer's Trautman is. "Only one man can save us. Get me... Rrrrambo!"

And what's extra-weird is that in one scene he gets on the phone and says "Get me... Rrrrambo!", but then in the next scene he's the one in the helicopter, getting Rrrrambo himself. So who was he calling? His own answering service?

Definitely been years....oh, say....30....since I've seen that cartoon. LOL! My memory faileth, yet again.

And on your ending question. Good one, sir!

 

[Captaindemotion]

Has anyone mentioned Die Hard and its source novel Nothing Lasts Forever, by Roderick Thorpe?

The original book is a sequel to Thorpe's The Detective, which was filmed with Frank Sinatra in the lead (yes, imagine old Blue Eyes as John McClane). The book was written in the 1970s and the lead character is not McClane but Joe Leland. Leland is older than McClane is in the original DH film, he's a WW2 veteran and he's visiting his daughter, Stephanie Leland Gennaro, not his wife. So Gennaro is her married, not maiden name. She's sleeping with an executive in the company she works for named Harry Ellis (presumably the inspiration for slimy yuppie Ellis in Die Hard). The company is called Klaxon, not Nakatomi.

The German villain, here Anton Gruber, is known to Joe through WW2 but there is more of a genuine political/terrorist motivation for their raid than Die Hard's heist. Al Powell is a 22 year old rookie cop, not the old hand played by Reginald Veljohnson. Some of the other characters - Hans, Karl, Dwayne Robinson - appear in both. Some of the film's action sequences, including the famous jump from the building, secured by a firehose, come from the book.

However, while McClane is a likable and human, if smartass character, Leland is slightly disturbed and has a sort of journey of darkness as the book continues. It's implied that nobody would have died had he not become involved.

Die Hard 2 is adapted from a book called 58 Minutes, not at all connected to Thorpe's book and the main character is called Frank Malone. The baddie is another German terrorist called Willie Staub and the film really only has the plot of the power to an airport being cut by the bad guys. There's no south American or special forces connection and the book is set in New York rather than Washington. 58 Minutes was to be an unrelated film adaptation of the book until someone in the studio noticed its similarity to Die Hard and proposed that it be retooled into a sequel.