That movie character's name is wrong -- Change it!

Cafe Society
1

Sometimes when they adapt a book or a story or a play, the Powers That Be in charge of it decide that the name’s just WRONG. It’s too long, or it sounds too silly, or it has Bad or Inappropriate Associations. So they change it.
1,) Too long – In John Farris’ novel The Fury the Bad Guy is named Childermass. For the movie they shortened it to Childress.

2.) Too silly-sounding. – James Fenimore Cooper introduced the character of Natty Bumppo in his novel The Pioneers, where we see him as an old, somewhat comic guy. When he later wrote about him in his youth, where he’s an Action Hero and a Crack Shot, he usually avoided the name and called him by one of his nicknames – Hawkeye or Deerslayer or Leatherstocking. But that’s not what I’m pointing out here. When Daniel Day-Lewis plated him the 1992 version of Last of the Mohicans they cleaned up Natty Bumppo to Nathaniel Poe

3.) Too Political – in the Philip K. Dick short story We Can Remember it for You Wholesale the lead character is Douglas Quail. When Paul Verhoeven cast Arnold Schwartzenegger in the part in Total Recall, Dan Quayle was the Vice President, so they changed the name to Douglas Quaid. When they remade Total Recall in 2012, Quayle was long out of office, and they could’ve gone back to Quail, but they kept the same name.

4.) Too unpronounceable – In Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s first thriller, Relic, the monster known to the Kothoga tribe in South America is called the Mbwun. When they turned it into the 1997 film, they must’ve figured that nobody likes a name that starts with three consonants that are never together in English, so they appropriated the tribe’s name for the monster and called it the Kothoga. (As I recall, they simply never named the tribe)

5.) Sounds incorrect – In Harry Bates’ science fiction story Farewell to the Master the giant robot is named Gnut, which sounds kinda Scandinavian. For the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, he became Gort, giving us the classic line “Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto”. True to form, when they remade the film in 2008, they kept the name Gort.
I know that there are plenty of other cases where they changed the names for the movie or TV show, sometimes for No Apparent Reason. Whaddaya got?

2

Bruce Banner became David Banner for the TV version of The Incredible Hulk, reportedly because the original name sounded too gay.

3

In the original Black Mask Magazine version of The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett named Sam Spade Sam Coon Ass N****r. No one knows why.

It was changed for the films.

4

In the live-action TV Incredible Hulk, Bruce Banners’ name is changed to David, leading to a Mad Magazine panel that doesn’t quite play the same way today.

5

(To defend myself against charges of racism, this is a tribute to the great and forgotten and hilarious 1970s film The Black Bird, in which George Segal played Sam Spade Junior.

In the opening scene, Segal walked through the dilapidated streets of his dad’s old office area, and the black derelicts hailed him with “Hey, spade!” When he gets to the police station, the (black) chief says “When did we start letting spades in here?”)

6

When they adapted Ross McDonald’s novel The Moving Target to film, they changed the detective’s name from Lew Archer to Lew Harper. It was partly because the producers had only bought the book and not the Lew Archer series, so didn’t want someone else to cash in. Plus, star Paul Newman liked movies with character names beginning with “H.”

The movie was thus named Harper

7

I love this so much.

8

When Universal made their version of Dracula in 1931, they apparently thought that the name “Lucy Westenra” had too many syllables, or something. They changed her to Lucy Weston. Even for the parallel Spanish version, filmed at the same time, the name was Lucia Weston.

For a 1968 TV version starring Denholm Elliot (Yes! Marcus Brody as Dracula!), Susan George played Lucy Weston.

9

Speaking of Universal horror, it’s always seemed weird to me that Victor Frankenstein and his friend Henry Clerval in Mary Shelley’s novel ** Frankenstein** became Henry Frankenstein and Victor Moritz (with a last name stolen from the nursemaid, Justine Moritz, in Shelley’s novel). I suspect they thought that Americans would have a hard time relating to as European a name as “Victor”, but would be just fine with bucolic, homey “Henry”.

10

I’m not too surprised to find that there’s a TV Tropes page devoted to this – * Adaptation Name Change*:

11

Shouldn’t Indiana Jones at least have been named Oklahoma Jones, if not something like Montana, Wyoming, or Texas Jones?

12

I knew an archaeologist named John Jones who used to call himself Ohio Jones.

13

Because those are not good names for a dog.

:smiley:

14

The novel Build My Gallows High (1946) was adapted by its author as the classic film noir Out of the Past (1947). The femme fatale’s name in the film was Kathie Moffat. Her name in the book was Mumsie McGonigal. The change was certainly for the better.
In the first three AIP Beach Party movies, Jody McCrea plays “Deadhead.” For the last two films, he is “Bonehead.” Not sure why, but the change having a connection to the Grateful Dead’s fans is not implausible.

John Jones? The name sounds kind of Martian.

15

Considering that Colin Clive paid so little attention to the relatively hot Mae Clarke in Frankenstein and the totally hot Valerie Hobson in Bride, Universal could have called him “Baron Limp Wrist.”

16

When originally introduced in the Batman comics, the villain Two-Face was named Harvey Kent. After a few years, the name was changed to Harvey Dent, probably to avoid the questions as to whether he was related to Jonathan and Martha Kent.

Speaking of the Kents, the first episode of The Adventures of Superman (possibly using footage from one of the serials) called them Sarah and Eben Kent.

17

Kenneth Johnson’s (the producer’s) version is that he hated all of the alliterative names in the comics, like Reed Richards, Matt Murdock, Peter Parker, and yes, Bruce Banner, so he decided to buck the trend by changing Bruce to David.

18

Grease the musical’s leading lady was Sandy Dubrowski. Grease the movie’s leading lady was Sandy Olsson, because how could Australia Olivia Newton John have a Polish last name. Totally destroyed the “Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee” joke.

I hadn’t thought of Caitlyn Jenner in reference to that panel. Thanks for the laugh.

19

In Raymond F. Jones’ novel This Island Earth the lead alien is named Jorgasnovara, which sounds like the result of an Indian-Scandinavian cross. For the movie they changed it to Exeter, which sounds British and classy (thereby revealing a bias by the filmmakers). There was no Metaluna in the book, by the way, which is way more mature than the stupid movie (although the novel sort of peters out, rather than having a distinct end). Jorgasnovara’s people are the Llanna*, not the Metalunans, and their opponents in the interstellar war are the Guarra, not the Zaygons. “Zaygons” has that Flash Gordonish sound that I suspect the guys who made the film were going for – it sounds “science fiction-y”.

I suspect a similar desire for “science fiction’y” sounding names lead the folks making When Worlds Collide to change the names of the two new, catastrophe-bringing planets from the rational names Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta** to the pointless Bellus and Zyra. Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie wrote the novel.

  • is there a three-L-Lllanna?
    *Well, after all, Bronson discovered them.
20

“Now, I don’t know much about anything, but I think some of American’s best young men served in this war. There was Dallas, from Phoenix. Cleveland, he was from Detroit. And Tex was, well, I don’t remember where Tex come from.”