Exactly, so it would have no business calling itself Romeo and Juliet.
That example was slightly tongue in cheek, I also try to ignore the changes. I wish I’d never heard the Greedo thing, as I don’t think I’d have noticed otherwise, and I can’t help seeing it now. I have to skip the awful scene with Jabba though, where Han steps on Jabba’s tail because it was shot with a fat bloke playing Jabba instead of a giant slug, and Han walks right behind him. Hardly the action of a man trying to placate a mob lord, and not something Jabba would take.
Not to mention that the Jabba scene is almost word for word the same scene that Han played with Greedo just five minutes previous. At least get in some fresh dialogue, George.
Maybe that’s why they cut it the first time around?
I think you’re right, though, it’s still a throwaway scene even with the new CGI-Jabba. But I guess by the mid-1990s they couldn’t entirely re-shoot it (late 1970’s Harrison Ford was unavailable, I believe he had a snake victims support group to got to that day), and dubbing new dialogue over the old would have looked silly. They could have put in a CGI-Han Solo in addition to the CGI-Jabba, that would have been interesting.
Also, people who are fans of James Bond tend to be fans of the James Bond movies; not nearly as often of the books even if they’ve read them at all. Whereas there weren’t any fans of Starship Troopers or I, Robot except the literary ones, because that’s all there was to be a fan of in the first place. James Bond fans aren’t offended by the movie not matching the book because that wasn’t what they wanted or expected or were even familiar with in the first place; the exact opposite of Asimov and Heinlein fans.
IIRC, the Starship Troopers movie originally had nothing to do with the book, nor was it named that; then a few details were changed so they could slap the name on it and claim a connection.
That’s what bothers me about a bad adaptation or remake - it hurts the reputation of the original. I’ve seen people say that Watchmen was a bad movie because it was based on a comic book. Which is wrong, Watchmen was a bad movie because it was a bad movie - it was a great comic book.
In a certain way, the claim is true. Watchmen is a bad adaptation[sup]*[/sup] in large part because it tries way too hard to look like the comic book. There’s no inherent reason a movie based on a comic would be bad, although it’s perhaps slightly easier to screw it up (than say, a book without pictures). Some books are probably more adaptable just based on the writing and structure, although that doesn’t mean they will make a better movie. A good example : Dan Brown is much easier to adapt than Umberto Eco, but I’d say (of the movies) that The Name of the Rose is marginally better than The DaVinci Code.
*Changed on edit: As a movie, I think it’s fairly okay, but it is a poor adaptation for the reason claimed.
That’s an interesting view, considering how many comic book movies are critically acclaimed (e.g. Dark Knight). Do those people mean that all comic books are bad? Or just Watchmen?
Perhaps the problem with Watchmen is that it didn’t have as much of a reputation among the general public that many other comic series did. Daredevil was a mediocre movie but when it came out I didn’t hear anyone saying that Daredevil was a crappy superhero or that the comics sucked.
When the Dark comes rising
Six shall turn it back
Three from the circle, three from the track
Wood, Bronze, Iron, Water, Fire, Stone
Five will return and one go alone
I have spared myself the pain of attempting the movie, as I was warned aforehand.
I definitely agree that no matter how atrocious a remake or adaptation is, we’ll still have the original, so it’s stupid to say that the original is somehow ruined. It’s still there. But:
News of an upcoming adaptation causes anticipation. The original material is well loved, so there is expectation that the new version will be a serious bonus. First because it’s like experiencing the original work again, but also because the new work is in a different possibly more sensory pleasing medium (i.e. text -> audiovisual). So if it sucks, it’s like a broken promise.
OTOH I don’t think there’s much justification for whining about a remake. That has built-in expectations that it will be a different take. There’s no reason to expect something better. At best you can expect something timelier with better effects.
There’s the issue of respect to the original material:
2a) If you badly adapt it, that implies something bad about the original. If you hire a portrait artist to paint your wife, and the portrait is ugly, that kind of implies that the artist sees your wife in a different and less positive way than you do.
2b) Different interpretation - every adaptation includes a point of view of sorts. If the consumers of the original see the original as having a certain point, and the new work makes a different point, it’s off putting. For example, my reading of the novel Sphere I interpreted as being wholly anticipatory to the passage where the point-of-view character finally enters the sphere in question and discovers what’s inside. And that passage was extremely satisfying as a denouement of the built up anticipation. But in the film, we never see in side the sphere! So obviously the director had a different idea about what the anticipation and denouement were about. But the viewer is left… unsatisfied in that regard.
2c) If it’s especially overdone with regards to changing things, it begs the question of “why bother”? Just fucking make your own movie that you want to make that’s vaguely similar, and don’t bother paying for the rights to my story if you are just going to change everything anyway.
OTOH I understand that a film can’t cover the same ground as a novel. It will have to shorthand some things. But it does kind of need to at least convey the core or spirit of the original work.
