I agree entirely.
But I like the telepathic space octopus
I should point out that any film with tentacles invariably gets plussed up on Rotten Tomatoes. And a +2 if it has tentacle sex.
I don’t hate it, but I do get why they changed it in the movie version. I’d forgotten the show maintained the book ending, by the way.
It took me a moment to realize this wasn’t related to the word “nonplussed”.
but if he was raised by apes, how can he know–or speak–ANY English?
In the original novel, I kid you not, he taught himself to read English by eventually associating the marks in picture books with the illustrations. So in addition to all his other admirable traits, Tarzan has a 210 IQ.
It’s all just evidence of the superior genetics of the English Aristocracy, of course.
I’ve got a collection of all the original Holmes stories, including the original illustrations by Sidney Paget. You’re right – I’m pretty sure that story is the only one in which he’s drawn wearing the deerstalker. In the stories that take place in London he’s usually drawn wearing a bowler hat, as would have been the fashion at the time. Or sometimes in situations that would require more formal attire he’s drawn with a top hat.
Well, heck, he wasn’t doing anything that the Frankenstein creation hadn’t done.
Interesting trivia note – the first human spoken language that Tarzan learned was French. He only knew how to read English, until he was taught later.
And since he spent most of The Return of Tarzan traveling in French colonies, I think he learned most of his English from Jane. So he probably spoke English with a Maryland accent.
What did Marylanders sound like, in the fin de siècle?
I really enjoyed Mads Mikkelson’s version.
Does anyone remember a novel called Nothing Lasts Forever? You probably know it better today as the movie Die Hard.
Despite the risk of Harlan Ellison jumping up out of his grave to file another lawsuit or two, I am compelled to mention the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever”. Ellison also had some claim to stories that become The Terminator and he is credited at the end of the movies.
Admiral Greer from The Hunt for Red October was not specified as being of any particular race. In Clancy’s novels this by default means white because if Clancy intends to include a black character he is certain to make note of it. But in the film, the legendary James Earl Jones plays Greer which made the character black in later adaptations. I’d speculate this is because the filmed adaptations are combining Greer with Robby Jackson who is Jack Ryan’s black best friend in the novels but who only appears once in the films (played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson) and not at all in the TV series.
There are similarities between The Terminator and two episodes of the original Outer Limits that Ellison wrote – “Soldier” (which opens on a futuristic battlefield just like Terminator does, and involves two warriors from the future being sent back to present-day America) and “Demon with a Glass Hand” (my all-time favorite piece of SF television, which also involves warring sides being translated backwards in time to the present). Cameron mentioned that they’d influenced him in writing The Terminator, and that’s all it took for Ellison to sue. I still think this was a lunkheaded move – Cameron didn’t steal the plot of either show, even if they influenced him. Now any future filmmaker is going to keep mum about his influences, all so that Ellison could get his name in the credits.
I’ve read it, and now I’m annoyed at myself for not thinking of it first. Has anybody read 58 Minutes which was the basis for Die Hard 2?
There’s also an amazing similarity between an early Saberhagen “Beserker” series story* and Terminator, one I thought was a lot closer than anything Ellison ever wrote.
And per the OP, the episode City on the Edge of Forever is way better than the original screenplay. Thank goodness they made those changes.
*I have no idea what it was, or I’d reread it and see if I still thought that. IIRC, it was published in Omni magazine. It involved a time traveling Berserker robot that ends up in Victorian England.
In the original “Arabian Nights” stories, Jafar, the grand vizier, was usually portrayed as a good guy. Movies always make him a villain. The real-life Jaʽfar ibn Yahya al-Barmaki was probably a bit more complicated.
The original story of Aladdin was set in China, not the middle east. (Granted, it was a version of China where everybody had Arabic names, and practiced Islam, but still.)
The original version of “Aladdin” also had two genies: the Genie of the Lamp (who can grant wishes of unlimited scope, but only three of them) and the Genie of the Ring (who can grant unlimited wishes, but only modest ones).
An even closer resemblance is between thePhilip K. Dick story Second Variety and the future “flashback” (Flash Forward?) scenes in The Terminator — the killer robots are built to mimic human beings so that they’ll be able to get inside their protective hideouts and kill people. I think this is the first appearance of the trope. Dick asked himself why anyone would go to the trouble of building robots that looked exactly like people, when most functions didn’t require it. (I note that neither of the Ellison scripts feature human-killing robots, unlike the Dick story and The Terminator)
It’s a complex situation. The ones who started the “evil Jafar” were the ones who made the second version of The Thief of Bagdad (1940), where Conrad Veigt (Major Strasser in Casablanca, among a great many other roles) played the Vizier. Disney took a lot from this version when they made their version of Aladdin (also taking the childish sultan obsessed with toys), including the Evil Jafar. I also suspect that Aladdin owes a debt to the 1959 UPA cartoon 1001 Arabian Nights, which features the story of Aladdin and had an evil Vizier, voiced by Hans Conreid, although he wasn’t named Jafar. But he had a secret underground lab where he palled around with animals.
As for Aladdin:
1.) Althoug nominally set in China, the story really reflects a Middle Eastern origin.
2.) The story is actually very layered and well old. I highly recommend it.
3.) It’s NOT one of the stories of the Arabian Nights – it’s not in any classic collection of those stories
4.) Antoine Galland, who was “translating” the Arabian Nights, inbluded it because he needed a story
5.) The story isn’t some medieval Arabian or Persian fairy take. It was composed by Hannah Ditab, Galland’s source for many of his stories. Galland himself considerably expanded and rewrote it, but Diyan, a Maronite storyteller from Aleppo who had come to Paris, appears to have made it up himself, using elements from Middle Eastern stories and events from his own life. Aladdin, as we have it, therefore, is the synthesis of an Aleppan storyteller and a French author, composed circa 1708.
6.) Don’t get me started on Genies living in magic lamps (or jinnis, if you prefer). They didn’t. Although it makes a sort of logical sense, jinnis being beings of fire, it’s not a major element of Arabian folk stories at all. There is one example of a jinni in a lamp, but it’s a mosque lamp, not at all like our idea of an arabian lamp. The story of the jinni trapped i a bottle by Solomon’s seal in the story of “The Fisherman and the Jinn” – a story that IS in the original Arabian Nights – is more in line with middle eastern folklore.
I recently read an account of another filmmaker…someone who made “In Time” (I don’t know if it was the director or screenwriter) and was afraid of Ellison suing because minor conceptual similarities with “Repent, Harlequin.” They reached out to him through an acquaintance and met with him, showed him the movie and Harlan shrugged and said it was “fine”(*) and everybody moved on.
(* that hurt the filmmaker because he wanted to Ellison to like the movie but he clearly did NOT)
The acquaintance who set it up explained that Harlan’s issue is with “professional courtesy.” Cameron was flippant about the subject apparently even jokingly saying he “ripped off” Outer Limits so… Harlan went after him.