I sat down to watch King Solomon’s Mines on TV last night. It was the 2004 version starring Patrick Swayze, and it was terrible.
It had absolutely nothing in common with H. Rider Haggard’s novel beyond the fact it was set in Africa and had a Great White Hunter called Allan Quatermain in it.
They shoe-horned in a love interest (there are only two women in the novel and neither of them are love interests), threw in some random nonsense about Russian agents of the Tsar looking for King Solomon’s Mines, gave Quatermain a rival in the form of an Australian hunter/tracker (again, not present in the novel)… I could go on.
Anyway, here’s my point: When I see “Based on a story by…” in the opening credits, it should really mean more than “The Main Character has the same name”. If that’s about the only thing the two versions have in common, then rename it- don’t try and pretend it’s an adaption of the source material when it clearly isn’t.
Not that anyone except me actually cares, of course. I can’t even muster up enough outrage to throw some choice swear-words in, to be honest. It’s just annoying. Harumph.
I’m fine with “Inspired By”- it’s a nice shorthand way of saying “We took the main character and the setting and the similarities end there.”
“Based On”, IMHO, says “This is substantially similar to the source material, except for certain liberties taken in the interest of making a more accessible film”, or something similar.
I agree. “Based on…” should at least use the main plot points. “Inspired by…” should be used for instances of “We paid money to the estate of X to rip off their character names so we can have some vestige of credibility for this dreck.”
Likewise we have never seen a true Lovecraftian movie. Instead they either devolve into braindead monster gorefests, or camp comedy (Reanimator, tho I liked the first one at least for what it was). I would die if such actually got made. It seems every 5-10 years or so we get rumors that, now, finally, we will get to see H. P. 's visions in all their original glory, but the promise is never delivered on.
The Earthsea movie was also pretty bad as adaptations go.
I remember seeing a film once wherein the opening credits actually said something like:[ul]
[li]Liberally Adapted from the Novel by . . .[/li][/ul]
Might have been 90s version of The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore.
I was incredibly impressed with The Call of Cthulhu, it’s almost perfectly faithful to the story, it’s beautifully made, and it just feels like an actual 1920s Silent Film and not something basically thrown together by fans in the 21st century. Well worth seeing and highly recommended.
The funny thing is that after we’d switched off the TV last night, I turned to my wife and said “Well, that’s settled. I need to win Lotto and use some of the winnings to make an absolutely faithful film adaptation of the novel. I’m thinking Simon Pegg or Clive Owen as Quatermain.”
You’re right, though, the book would be an awesome film as is- I really wish the Film Industry would stop insisting on Love Interests in almost every adventure movie. They’re not really needed, IMHO.
I laughed at the way the musical Spamalot was described as being “Lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python & The Holy Grail.” So very true.
Language like that is generated by lawyers, so they don’t get sued. So maybe we should be advocating more creative writing classes in law school.
And who knows, “inspired by” could be the exact literal truth. “Patrick! I just saw an old flick and I had the thought we could make into a vehicle for you. We’lll have to add a chick for you to fight over, and maybe some dance scenes, but we can make this work!”
One of my courses --my current favorite course to teach–is actually in this exact subject. I show a film, then ask the students to read the book that film was based on. Mostly the films are about historical figures and events, but sometimes (Citizen Kane) not really, and I ask them to explain why, for example, Ron Howard couldn’t have been “inspired” by John Nash’s touching story of overcoming mental problems but, after he realized that he wanted to change some parts of Nash’s story and character and issues for legitimate cinematic reasons, he couldn’t have simply filmed it as the story of Jim Mash or Joe Bash (and still have paid whatever fees he paid to the inspiring figures and inspiring biography)? What is the cachet, IOW, of saying that A BEAUTIFUL MIND is “based on a true story” or whatever language they choose?
It strikes some of my students as vaguely immoral to distort history and only let people know which parts you distorted beyond recognition if they’re willing to read up on the movie’s sources. Some of them are quite angry to learn that Rubin Carter had been in jail plenty before his murder trial or that he’d gotten a dishonorable discharge from the Army when the movie strongly implies otherwise. Again, the best solution is to make the same damned movie, only about a wrestler named Cuban Barter or a rapper named Human Martyr, and distort away. Any thoughts on why that tack is so rarely taken by filmmakers?
I had a similar problem with the BBC’s recent series adaptation of the King Arthur myths, Merlin. Yes, Merlin could use magic, but that’s about where the similarities ended (not that there’s really any single definitive Arthur myth, mind, but there are some common themes and traits). They essentially took the names and assigned them to completely different characters. It ended up being a bit of a guilty pleasure, so I can’t fault them too hard for it, but still, the whole thing would have worked just as well with different names.
As for why this is done at all, I think there are two different cases to be considered: one where the name is all that’s kept in an effort to reel an audience in based on that name, and one where a story is embellished in order to make it (as the filmmakers probably feel) work better on the big screen; both are ultimately meant to maximize revenue, which comes as a shock to precisely no-one.
Oh, and as for quite alright-if-not-exactly-faithful Lovecraft adaptations, I kind of liked Dagon, which oddly enough is largely based on the story Shadows over Innsmouth.
That’s what I was thinking; the first time I remember seeing “inspired by” rather than “based on” was the abysmal Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter. I remember thinking, “Uh oh, this can’t be a good sign.”
I guess the part of this that I don’t get is–did anyone really hear about John Nash’s backstory before the movie came out? I hadn’t. I saw it because it was Russell Crowe, and Ron Howard and it was supposed to be good. i couldn’t care less whether it was true or not, or whether it was based on a real person, not based on a real person, semi-based…That was no part of the attraction for me. I would have shelled out my $8.50 in any event. Did you ever, in your life, say, “No! Absolutely not! I want to see THIS one because it’s based on a true story”?
The original novel HAS a love interest, only no American studio could have filmed it before the 1970s: Captain Good and the native girl he rescues, Foulata, fall for each other.
