# Assassination of a literary character by means of movie or television **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 29, 2020, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677 "2020-05-29T15:37:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/1 "2020-05-29T15:37:24Z")
NOTE: Parodies/mockeries do not count. I realize that it is difficult to transfer literary characters from the printed page to the silver screen, but I usually appreciate it when a sincere effort is made to do so. Sometimes though the portrayal is haphazard at best(and absolute shit at worst). As an example, there is The Asylum’s _Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes_(2010). The title character looks like a grown-up Alfalfa, acts like dandy, and is not particularly intelligent. Leaving aside the giant mechanical dinosaur and the roboctopus, they fuck up the very basics of Holmes’ history, because the villain of this bastardpiece is his brother…Thorpe?? You know-the brother that worked alongside Lestrade in Scotland Yard. Frankly, if they had removed all references to A.C. Doyle’s characters and had merely made this an unassociated steampuck pic, at no time during those 85 minutes would you have said, “Y’know, that little bit right there kinda sorta reminded me just a tiny bit of Sherlock Holmes.” Anyway, that is just a small example of what this thread is all about, so if you have anything to add when it comes to the mistreatment of your literary faves, feel free to jump in. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/2 "2020-05-29T16:11:54Z")
I assume you mean something more like character assassination than literal assassination? A complete misrepresentation of a literary character? It would help if you told us what you were looking for, rather than just giving an example (that I’m not familiar with). ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/3 "2020-05-29T16:14:29Z")
In Egyptian folklore, [Imhotep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep) was a good guy. In _The Mummy_ (both the original, with Boris Karloff, and the remakes, with Arnold Vosloo), Hollywood turned him into a villain. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/4 "2020-05-29T16:18:27Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I assume you mean something more like character assassination than literal assassination? A complete misrepresentation of a literary character? It would help if you told us what you were looking for, rather than just giving an example (that I’m not familiar with). I of course mean character assassination, and I am surprised that it wasn’t obvious by the example given. If I thought that someone might have taken that I meant slamming an actual television or movie screen onto the head of a fictional character with the purpose of killing them, I would have tried to make it clearer. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/5 "2020-05-29T16:20:43Z")
In the Arabian Nights stories, [Jafar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja%27far_ibn_Yahya) is generally portrayed as a good guy (or at least a loyal servant of the Caliph). Hollywood usually turns him into a villain. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/6 "2020-05-29T16:22:14Z")
Remember that when someone asked James M. Cain, author of **The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce,** among many others, “How do you feel about Hollywood ruining your books?” responded “They didn’t — they’re all right up there, on the shelf.” That being said, I think Walt Disney should have been shot for what he did to **Alice in Wonderland.** ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/7 "2020-05-29T16:48:03Z")
Disney for what they do to just about everything they adapt. Among its countless other sins, _Starship Troopers_ turns Sergeant Zim into a mindless sadist, rather than the complex and nuanced character of the book. Zack Snyder and Superman. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/8 "2020-05-29T17:06:40Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > As an example, there is The Asylum’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes(2010). I felt the same way about the Robert Downey 2009 _Sherlock Holmes_. I stopped watching it in the first few minutes, when Holmes was in some kind of MMA cage match. For all I know, it’s a good movie, but I was looking for something about Sherlock Holmes. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/9 "2020-05-29T17:11:29Z")
Robert Altman’s [The Long Goodbye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Goodbye_(film)). If he wanted to put down the cliched private eye movie, he should have created his own character. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/10 "2020-05-29T17:21:26Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > That being said, I think Walt Disney should have been shot for what he did to **Alice in Wonderland.** I assume you are referring to the 2010 film rather than the 1951 animated version. I don’t think the latter seriously changed the character of Alice. In both the book and the 1951 film, Alice is brave, adventurous, and challenges authority, standing up to the Red Queen even as she threatens to execute her. The 2010 film was incredibly unimaginative in how it tried to “update” Alice. At the end it made her into an action hero who defeated the Jabberwock through violence, rather than intelligence and cleverness. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/11 "2020-05-29T17:53:26Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > I felt the same way about the Robert Downey 2009 _Sherlock Holmes_. I stopped watching it in the first few minutes, when Holmes was in some kind of MMA cage match. For all I know, it’s a good movie, but I was looking for something about Sherlock Holmes. While Downey was hardly Conan Doyle’s Sherlock, those elements come in part from the books. Holmes was described as being exceptionally strong (capable of bending an iron fire poker), an expert amateur bare-knuckle boxer, a skilled swordsman and singlestick fighter, and adept in Japanese martial arts. (The fact that he was a cocaine addict is also from the books.) IMO, a much worse assassination was Nigel Bruce’s depiction of Dr. Watson in the Basil Rathbone Holmes movies. Bruce’s Watson was slow-witted, fat, and bumbling. The original Watson was a former soldier and strongly built, frequently called upon by Holmes to back him up against dangerous criminals. He was an excellent doctor and quite intelligent, sometimes contributing to the solution of cases, but just didn’t have Holmes’s deductive abilities and specialized knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/12 "2020-05-29T18:15:01Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > IMO, a much worse assassination was Nigel Bruce’s depiction of Dr. Watson in the Basil Rathbone Holmes movies. Bruce’s Watson was slow-witted, fat, and bumbling. The original Watson was a former soldier and strongly built, frequently called upon by Holmes to back him up against dangerous criminals. He was an excellent doctor and quite intelligent, sometimes contributing to the solution of cases, but just didn’t have Holmes’s deductive abilities and specialized knowledge. Jude Law really captured that in the Downey Sherlock, too. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/13 "2020-05-29T18:39:03Z")
I loved both Downey movies. Criminally under-rated. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/14 "2020-05-29T18:49:00Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Jude Law really captured that in the Downey Sherlock, too. Yes, whatever you might think of the movies in general, Jude Law’s Watson was a reasonably faithful version of the original. I rather enjoyed the first few series of the Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman _Sherlock_, when the cases were recognizably based on some of the original stories, although I felt it went increasingly off the rails in the later series. I thought the Cumberbatch’s Holmes and Freeman’s Watson were fun updates on the characters, and usually based on their characteristics in the books. However, Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes essentially had nothing to do with the original character, and Mary (Morstan) Watson was an absurd travesty (even though Watson’s wife wasn’t a significant character in the books). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/15 "2020-05-29T19:05:02Z")
Tarzan, a very intelligent polyglot has been portrayed repeatedly in movies as barely being able to speak to humans. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/16 "2020-05-29T19:05:30Z")
What HBO’s D&D did to Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones is unconscionable. I mean, they screwed the pooch on a lot of things with that show, but I think the way they handled Stannis was the worst. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/17 "2020-05-29T20:31:36Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > The original Watson was a former soldier and strongly built, frequently called upon by Holmes to back him up against dangerous criminals. He was an excellent doctor and quite intelligent, sometimes contributing to the solution of cases, but just didn’t have Holmes’s deductive abilities and specialized knowledge. Well, I’m with you up to the word ‘quite’ (and maybe ‘excellent’). Clearly, Watson is intelligent enough to write well, but I’m not sure there’s any example of him demonstrating any significant intelligence other than that (though of course, he’s obviously modest enough that he’d leave it out, anyway, so we can’t say absence of evidence is evidence of absence in this case). We have no idea how good a doctor he is, either, other than he seems to be able to maintain a medical practice in London. ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/18 "2020-05-29T20:50:00Z")
Hollywood does this often, and not just with literary characters. The entire character of Gene Roddenberry’s universe, from people to institutions, have been maligned and destroyed by modern incarnations of Star Trek. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/19 "2020-05-29T20:54:54Z")
Well, he’s intelligent enough to be a doctor, at least. He only looks like a bumbling fool by comparison to Holmes, but then, everyone looks like a bumbling fool compared to Holmes. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677/20 "2020-05-29T21:19:50Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > I felt the same way about the Robert Downey 2009 _Sherlock Holmes_. I stopped watching it in the first few minutes, when Holmes was in some kind of MMA cage match. For all I know, it’s a good movie, but I was looking for something about Sherlock Holmes. Everything in that film was in the canon. They were careful. But it wasnt in those horrible Basil Rathbone films which showed Watson as a blithering idiot, as \*\*Colibri \*\*pointed out. So, there is one example for the OP. (Mind you, Rathbone was a great actor, it is not really his fault) Watson was by no means in Holmes class, of course. Next is League of Extraordinary gentlemen, by Alan Moore, where the heroic Allan Quatermain is turned into a drug addict. Alan Moore also did that to Alice, Dorothy and Wendy in his weird kiddy porn travesty. For some reason, Moore has troubles coming up with his own characters. ☹ Another example is Gregory Maguire and his assassination of the Wizard and others in his travesties. The Wizard is at worst a well meaning conman, hardly a fantasy Hitler. Zack Snyder and his hatred of superheroes. I concur with **CelticKnot** - the Chris Pine version of Capt Kirk is a assasination. Not to mention the really bad Spock. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assassination-of-a-literary-character-by-means-of-movie-or-television/854677.md?page=2)