Talking of movies with tectonically powered suckitude starring Sean Connery why oh why did anyone bother remaking The Avengers? It’s true that the original TV series was a triumph of style over content, but the remake a more of -how can I put this politely?- a giant steaming turd :mad:
What’s the point of making an adaption at all, then? Why make a Superman movie, if there’s already a Superman comic? Why not just read the comic?
For most people, the answer is that they want to see a treatment of a familiar property in a different medium. The experience of reading a comic is markedly different from that of watching a movie. What makes an adaption interesting to most people is the way that a different medium alters your experience with a familiar subject. If the adaptation makes significant changes that are not necessary to the medium then you’ve lost the entire point of creating an adaption in the first place. You might as well invent an original character and tell a story about him, instead.
I don’t have a problem with changes that either work better than the original (Boromir’s characterization in Lord of the Rings was much better in the movie than in the book, and made his death both more tragic and more heroic) or is necessary for the dicatates of your medium (Giving Spiderman organic spinnerets obviated the need for two origin stories: Peter gets bitten by the spider, and Peter invents brand new super-adhesive, allowing the film to get into the action that much quicker.) However, if the change is noticably worse than the original, and not necessary because of the changes in medium, then it’s a dumb thing to change. Again, by all reports, every change in the League movie was both unnecessary and dumb as fuck.
Sorry, I don’t get your meaning here at all.
In the movie, doesn’t he eat the livers of his victims? What merit badge does that cover?
Although, now that I think of it, I may have read Crow Killer long ago, so maybe I’m just pointing out one of the dumbing-down changes.
The Donner badge, of course.
I resolved not to rant about LOTR when I started this thread, so I’ll only address your Spider-Man comment. I think you’re understating the case: it makes MUCH more sense for Peter to have gained organic spinnerets than to have invented him. Doing the latter in the matter of a few days makes him a Richards-Doom type super-genius, which he isn’t supposed to be; and, in addition, also raises the question of why he doesn’t sell the process and get rich early on. Since Spidey’s basically a working class hero who’s extremely bright but no super-genius, the movie explanation makes much more sense that the Lee-Ditko explanation.
:eek: Okay, now THIS I have to see for myself! I’m a-gonna go unwrap that copy of Call of Cthulhu and watch it tonight.
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!
All true, but it’s also a good example of streamlining a plot to move the story along in the different constraints of a movie. If they’d kept the original origin story, they’d have had to have a scene where he gets bitten by a spider, and discovers his new powers, then a scene where he invents his web shooters, and discovers how they work. By condensing them into one scene, the film is much more briskly paced than it would other wise. The other concerns are just as (if not more) valid reasons for the change, but that was the best example I could come up with off the top of my head to illustrate the point I was trying to make.
To do a different take on the character. Which the movies did - there was no need to depict Krypton as they did, rather than the then canonical, and familiar 4 Colour Science Fiction way. But they added the colourless clothes, and the crystals, and had Jor-El wearing the S-Shield instead of an image of their sun (except for Marlon Brando wanting to wear it) - all of that would later become comics canon, but that’s beside the point.
And I’d much, much rather no adaptation to one that cleaves slavishly to something I could just go and read or watch again.
That I grew up with multiple versions of stories, most of which were not direct translations from one medium to another - and in several cases were mutually exclusive versions within the same medium - Earth 1 and 2 Superman, the 60s Spider-Man cartoon vs Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, the two different Wizard of Oz cartoons, Wizard of Oz vs Return to Oz - and not only did I have no trouble accepting all of them as different takes on the idea, but thanks to devouring all of these mutually exclusive versions of the same story, has given me a preference for not slavishly following existing versions when doing a new one.
Hell, for more examples - look at all the movies based on some of the LoEG source materials. There’s gods know how many Dracula movies, none of which are particularly similar to eachother, or faithful to the novel in any way shape or form.
A bad movie is a bad movie. Period. That it was based on a book makes it no better and no worse.
Langella indeed played Clare Quilty in the technically-more-accurate-but-soulless remake. Peter Sellers played the same role in the much-censored-but-creepier-&-funnier original. And I am glad to report no sighting of Sellers’ frank&beans.
I was not surprised that the 1998 film adaptation of Zola’s Cousin Bette changed the ending of the book. I knew they would have to eliminate and condense characters. But I couldn’t deal with the fact that they changed the beginning. In the novel, Bette is driven, throughout, by her jealousy and hatred of her cousin Adeline. Every single decision she makes and action she takes is based on this premise. In the movie:
The opening scene is Adeline’s funeral.
The Two Towers was a constant cringefest and mostly a pile of crap. Return of the King wasn’t much better. Gollum’s ‘split personality’ and Puck-like soliloquy got under my skin. That and there was one chapter on the battle of Helm’s Deep. The over-emphasis on that siege made the one in the last flick redundant.
:faints:
My…favorite…part!
There seems to be a mistaken opinion prevalent about Moore’s version of Rupert Bear – i.e. that he made it up. He didn’t.
Reference: here. (See the notes on “Page 4, panels 3-5”.) In short, the sex-and-Rupert line in League refers to an underground magazine from the 1960s that featured Rupert having sex with a gypsy grandmother. The magazine was the subject of a much-publicised obscenity trial at the time. Moore tossed the idea into League as a throwaway line to show he’d done his research. And because, let’s face it, it fit the general mood of League like a glove.
The real point is that there is very little in League that is not a reference to something. All speaking parts, for example, are characters from period fiction. So, in the cases of Rebecca and Pollyanna … Moore needed young girls to get raped, and picked those two for the black humour value. If I’d been writing it, I might have done the same. 
You mean the silent movie that came out in 2005? I have to see this.
I don’t know what all of you are talking about in regards to a “plot” in LXG. I’ve seen that movie tons of times and there was no plot! It’s a collection of scenes of Stuart Townsend and Shane West looking hot, and then there’s some other stuff that I skip.
Also for some reason that is unclear to me, they had Peta Wilson remain clothed for the entire movie. I shall have my vengeance.
That’s the point, I think. It’ s not that the Siege of Helm’s Deep sequence in TTT isn’t well done. It’s that it UNDERCUTS the even more important Battle of Pelennor Fields.
Which is particularly odd, considering that she isn’t shy about exposing skin. The movie could have definitely been improved with more nudity and sex. Had they gone a more Sin City route with upping the sex and violence, it would’ve been closer to the source material. It boggles my mind that they took such an edgy series and neutered it!
Why do you think I’m swearing vengeance?
Of course I’m also swearing vengeance on LOTR for not showing Arwen’s bachelorette party, which, I happen to know, began with a drunken Evenstar taken Eowyn’s virginity (using a carrot supplied by Pippin) and concluded with the Aragorn’s 2 loves together ravishing Frodo.
5…4…3…2…1
How about Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley, about the tough-as-nails Hells Angel biker who travels across a postapocalyptic America on his chopper to deliver medicine to a distant city, fighting mutated beings and various whatnot, transformed into a bunch of soldiers in an armored RV? Why did they dump this great antihero who could have out-madded Mad Max for a B-team version of the A-team? Because they were morons, that’s why.
And the Gor movies, Gor and Outlaw of Gors, bestselling fantasies of their time. Folks, the thing that separatse the Gor novels from any other sword and sorcery fantasy is the hawt & nawty slavegirls. So of course you dumped them, more or less, in favor of silly hats. Then you let Harry Alan Towers, noted hack, write the scripts. The result – very badly done generic sword and sandal movies about silly hats with not plot or characterization. No narrative really, just a series of events. Dull ones, mostly. Wat to go, morons.