By this I mean stories and media that were markedly better than may have been expected given their premise and origins. Of course this is somewhat subjective so this thread isn’t really about arguing if something had a poor origin or not.
I would mention the movie Battleship which originated from, of all things, the board game. Personally I found it a much better and more entertaining movie that the similar themed ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ of the same year. Unlike most alien invasion movies it really felt like a battle with both sides making moves and counter-moves, with victories and defeats. I’m not American but I have to admit I almost stood up and cheered when the Battleship Missouri came around and launched a broadside. Rihanna was also much better in her role than I would have expected. So basically a big, silly, but exciting and fun movie from a boardgame.
I wasn’t expecting anything other than a silly comedy from the movie Dogma either, though it was that it was also surprisingly thought-provoking and interesting in places. It depicted angelic beings in a much more ‘realistic’ way than the common contemporary idea of what they are like, in Christian, well dogma, people don’t die and become angels, they are a seperate race of created beings and would actually be pretty frightening creatures to meet. There are also several other aspects of the movie that are unexpectedly clever and well-written, I’m thinking of the boardroom and parking lot scenes in particular. So again not what I personally expected and a pleasant surprising.
My last example is going back some and won’t be familiar to an American audience. In the 1980’s in the UK a comic book called ‘Eagle’ was launched, one of the longest running strips was ‘Computer Warrior’ about a boy called Bobby Patterson who had discovered the ‘real life’ facility and was drawn into his computer to play video games for real.
Although obviously intended as a marketing exercise and tie-in to game releases it was actually one of the best strips in the comic, over the years creating a compelling and thought-provoking storyline with a likeable and believable protaganist. The basic idea was that another reality existed inside the electronic realm of the computer, in it a war was taking place between good and evil (more accurately with retrospect between Chaos and Order, the leader of the forces of Order, The Warload, was actually a pretty frightening character in himself) and those playing computer games were being selected as Champions to fight the forces of Chaos with the fate of the world at stake, for those who failed they would be delivered into the hands of Chaos as part of the agreement, and the results were pretty nightmarish. As a child in the 80’s it was really neat to see computer games that I was aware of ‘brought to life’, it wouldn’t have nearly the same impact today with almost photo-realistic 3-D games but back then it was fantastic. I recently re-read the strip as an adult and even now it holds up pretty well. It was also surprisingly forward-looking with the main character befriending a female gamer and a black boy who acted as his allies and helped out when on more than one occassion he totally screws things up, another realistic touch, although an excellent gamer he is also rash and impulsive and wants nothing more than to withdraw from the championship, which is forbidden under the rules. To summarise an obvious marketing exercise became an interesting and compelling story, rising above what would have been expected from its origins. It kind of fell apart after the main storyline came to its natural conclusion and ultimately had a very weak ending, but personally I tend to ignore everything after the former point.
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/bobby-patterson/4005-80654/ (with list of all games played in case anyone is interested)
Anyone have any other examples?