It’s a new year! There are plans in the works for Lost in Translation, some that can be announced now.

The pandemic has slowed down finding potential reviews. It’s not as easy to walk down racks of DVDs for sale at a store when the stores are closed and people are encouraged to social distance. Streaming and online shopping aren’t as useful as just browsing for the purpose of finding something interesting to review. It’s how reviews like Convoy; I found the DVD for sale at a record store.

Streaming, though, is good for finding new adaptations, whether they’re fresh from the theatres, redirected to streaming because of lockdowns, or created specifically for the streaming service. It’ll take time, mainly due to the limitations of viewing, but Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop and Disney+’s The Book of Boba Fett, Star Wars: Vision, and WandaVision are on the to-review list.

Streaming isn’t the only source of adaptations. Manos: The Hands of Fate has not one but two literary adaptations. The novels, Manos: The Hands of Fate and Manos: The Talons of Fate, both written by Stephen D. Sullivan, are on the to-read pile. Both are being treated as adaptations because of the length of time between movie and novelization.

Before tackling the Manos books, I want to finish Dr. No so that the Bond project gets going again. How best to get the project going again with the movie that started the 007 franchise? The slow down is medical; I need a new prescription for glasses. However, I am getting through the original novel. Once that’s done, I can review the movie.

The oddest review I want to do is a review of Jelle’s Marble League, a video game adaptation of Jelle’s Marble Runs’ Marble League. The Marble League, essentially the Olympics with marbles, gained a wider audience after John Oliver highlighted the sport on Last Week Tonight, leading to the show sponsoring the 2020 Marble League just in time for the pandemic. One caveat with this review, though – I backed the IndieGoGo campaign to a level where I get to be a marble in the crowd. I’ll try to keep the biases to a minimum.

There is more to 2022 than the above can possibly cover, but that should keep me busy for the first quarter of the year. Regular reviews should start next week. Thank you for your patience over the past few weeks and for reading for however long you’ve been here.

Work schedule interfered with getting anything prepared this week. Lost in Translation will return next week.

Time to wrap up 2021 with a look at the box office for the year. As usual, the list comes from Box Office Mojo.

1. Spider-Man: No Way Home – sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, which itself was a reboot of an adaptation.
2. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – adaptation of the Marvel character.
3. Venom: Let There Be Carnage – sequel to Venom, an adaptation of a comic that reached top ten in 2018[https://psychodrivein.com/lost-in-translation-wrapping-up-2018/].
4. Black Widow – adaptation of the Marvel character.
5. F9: The Fast Saga – the most recent sequel of the franchise, The Fast and the Furious, itself an original film.
6. Eternals – adaptation of the Marvel characters.
7. No Time to Die – the lastest sequel of the 007 franchise.
8. A Quiet Place Part II – sequel to 2018’s A Quiet Place.
9. Free Guy – original work.
10. Ghostbusters: Afterlife – sequel to the original 1984 film, Ghostbusters.

Getting the obvious out of the way first, Marvel superheroes are represented by half the films in the list. Blockbusters are well represented on the list. With theatres opening up in 2021 thanks to vaccines and masking mandates, pandemic precautions were reduced and, in some areas, rescinded. That gave studios a chance to bring out the big guns they had waiting. Of course, the re-opening may have been too soon, with restrictions looming once again.

As can be seen on Box Office Mojo’s domestic yearly box office list, the gross at theatres is up by double over the previous year. That’s a start, but considering that 2020 saw a massive drop in theatre revenues thanks to pandemic lockdowns, double isn’t much. It’ll take time.to get people back in seats.

Back to the list, there’s an original work, Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds. The last time an original work was in the top ten was 2016’s Zootopia. With Free Guy, Reynolds is the draw. He has a charm that comes across easily in a film no matter the role. This time out, he’s playing a nameless NPC in a video game who has managed to get a glitch in his programming.

I’m adding a new category this year, the franchise sequel. The definition is still nebulous, but anything film that is part of a franchise that uses the same characters and/or situations counts as a sequel. F9: The Fast Saga is a good example of a franchise coming from an original work while No Time to Die is part of the 007 franchise. No Time to Die is also continuing the trend in 007 films of using an original story after the franchise has used almost every title it could from Ian Fleming’s works. It could be argued that some of the Marvel movies are now franchise sequels as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken on a life of its own separate from the comics’ continuity.

The two sequels of original works, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and A Quiet Place Part II are almost opposites in the approach. A Quiet Place Part II got delayed thanks to pandemic lockdowns and was kept waiting on the sidelines until things opened up a bit. The delay didn’t hurt the response, with audiences wanting to follow the family from Part I. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a sequel to Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, released thirty-two years later.

Taking the above into consideration, superheroes aren’t going anywhere any time soon. While people may be getting tired of the name Marvel, the films are staying fresh by being other genres with superheroes added. Black Widow is a spy thriller with superheroes. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is wuxia with superheroes. If one Marvel movie isn’t interesting, the next one might be. As long as the studio avoids continuity lockout, where an audience needs to have watched all of the previous films for a plot point, Marvel can keep going.

The above shows what 2022 could look like, with lockdown returning early in the year before being lifted once again when the number of COVID-19 cases drops. The real surprise was seeing an original work on the list. Granted, it starred Ryan Reynolds, but with 2021 having less than half the releases that 2019 saw, there was room for an original work to sneak in, leaving the possibility open for an original work to reach top ten in 2022.

Changing up the year-end posts this year. Since 2021 isn’t over yet, getting the numbers for popular movies doesn’t make sense now. Let’s take a look ahead to 2022 and what we can expect.

Like this time last year, COVID-19 was and is a concern. Restrictions were loosened over 2021, only to have them return as infected numbers beat the peaks of 2020. Vaccines and boosters are available, but they only work if a large percentage of the population get it; that percentage is currently unknown. With Omicron and rising numbers, it’s a fair bet to say that 2022 will start the same way 2021 did, with lockdowns.

This will give streaming services an edge over cinemas. If entertainment centres are shut down, streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime can fill in the gaps. All a streaming service needs is a draw, like The Mandalorian for Disney+ and Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop. Traditional broadcast TV can ride along by developing new series that can draw a trapped audience. There’s a window, at least during the opening months of 2022, for streaming and traditional broadcast to exploit.

Afterwards, people are getting tired of being stuck inside. It’s part of the reason why there are variants to COVID-19. Cabin fever is real. Humans are a social creature. People self-isolating for close to two years are tired of being stuck alone or with a small number of the same people day in and day out. Going out to movies is as much a social interaction, even if going alone, as it is consumption of entertainment. Studios should be preparing for a massive return.

Being risk adverse, studios will go with adaptations. It is difficult to compete with a known quantity, even if people are getting tired of that quality. Marvel movies arent going anywhere in the near future. Blockbusters will draw more people than introspective character films. Explosions are popular. Superheroes can bring explosions and survive them and are a known quantity. Marvel movies aren’t going to lose money, at least not in 2022.

In short, when it comes to entertainment and adaptations, 2022 will look a lot like 2021, maybe with things being more open thanks to vaccines and boosters that were just being rolled out in early 2021. COVID-19 will loom like a spectre, though, and if people don’t get vaccinated, streaming services will be the only ones to benefit.

Due to technical difficulties this past week, there will be no review today. Come back over the next two weeks for the year end and look ahead into 2022.

Earlier this year, Lost in Translation reviewed Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team, which followed a MedTech working for the emergency medical provider, Trauma Team. The comic was based on Cyberpunk 2077, the video game successor to the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., both created by Mike Pondsmith. The games, both video and RPG, are set in a near future where corporations control the country and people are left to eke out lives either in the gilded cage of a corporate office or on the sidelines. Cyberpunk, the genre, is not a happy place to live, yet the only difference between cyberpunk and today is the lack of implanted augmentations. Maybe by 2077.

The other theme in cyberpunk and in Cyberpunk is that while it may not be possible to change the world, it is possible to change the world around you. The change doesn’t have to be for the better. In Neuromancer, Case leaves the world in a new situation, one that it has to adjust to, while his own life has changed greatly despite his efforts.

As a genre, cyberpunk began as literary but relies heavily on imagery that it was a natural to be picked up in more visual mediums. While Blade Runner didn’t start as cyberpunk, its film adaptation provided the visual esthetic that it’s part of the genre’s DNA. Moody, neon, gritty, and focused on the outsiders.

That brings us to Cyberpunk 2077: Where’s Johnny from Dark Horse Comics, written by Bartosz Sztybor, with art by Giannis Milogiannis, colours by Roman Titov, and letters by Aditya Bidikar. The plot follows Wallace, a reporter who is working to bring down the corporations, who is brought into a complex plot. The hook, a lead into who planted a nuclear bomb in Arasaka’s Night City HQ, the missing Rockerboy, Johnny Silverhand. Get proof, and Wallace has it made at his employer.

Naturally, things are never as they appear. Wallace is being played. Everyone wants to know where Johnny is, but Wallace finds out something else. A body allegedly recovered from the former Arasaka Tower, died not of radiation or being crushed but by having her throat slit. Wallace might not be able to bring down a corporation, but he can bring the woman’s killer to justice of sorts.

The graphic novel is definitely using elements from Cyberpunk 2077. Johnny Silverhand is a legacy character, showing up first in the Cyberpunk 2013 Night City supplement then in the Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. core rules as an established character before being portrayed by Keanu Reeves in the video game. Johnny has gone through a lot, including a few deaths; thanks to technology, it is possible to back up memories to be implanted in a clone if you can afford the medical insurance. Johnny’s trademark is a chromed cybernetic arm and hand; in 2020, he often treats it as a separate entity, a reflection of a loss of humanity due to its implantation.

The arrival of the Silverhands poser gang brings in an element that doesn’t really appear in the videogame. Poser gangs get cosmetic surgery to look like a celebrity or a group of celebrities. In 2020, sample poser gangs include the Gilligans, who look like the characters from Gilligan’s Island and the Bradies, based off The Brady Bunch. WHile most poser gangs are considered annoyances, especially by other types of gangs, they can be a problem. Witnesses giving a description after an organized snatch-and-grab are going to all describe Gilligan in different ways. The videogame didn’t include because of issues with permissions, though if the Silverhands appear after an update, they would fit in well.

In the end, not much changes by the end of Where’s Johnny. Corporations are still warring. People are still oppressed. But Wallace does get in justice for the dead woman in a way that could not have happened through regular channels. And this is at the heart of the game. Wallace is still the same, but he can live with himself at the end. It’s not the large change, but the series of small changes along the way that will improve life for people. Cyberpunk 2077: Where’s Johnny mixes up elements from tabletop and video game, mixes them up, and provides a story that fits in both.

Lost in Translation will return next week.

Concluding Lost in Translation‘s look a adapting tabletop setting is Shadowrun. Originally published in 1989 by FASA, Inc, the game is currently on its sixth edition, called Shadowrun Sixth World and published by Catalyst Game Labs. The game is a cross between cyberpunk and high fantasy, with elves, dwarves, orks, and trolls being subspecies of humanity and dragons control major corportations.

The core idea is that magic returned in 2011 in an event known as the Awakening, an event marking the shift from the Fifth World to the Sixth as per Mayan calendars. This Awakening of maigc leads to a year of chaos across the globe and the first dragon sighted on Mount Fuji in Japan. However, this is just the topping to other problems going on. In the US, the Shiawase decision of 2000 allows for corporations to claim extraterritoriality, where a properly demarked site is its own corporate sovereign nation. With a pandemic in 2010, the economy is strained and governments collapse. In North America, the First Nations take advantage of the chaos to reclaim land, forming the Native American Nations. Naturally, Canada and the US take umbridge with that and strike back. What the military forces weren’t expecting was the use of the Great Ghost Dance to be magically backed.

In short, the world is hosed, governments have no power over corporations, and the threat of a new pandemic makes living look bleak. Relevant to our times.

In the game, players are shadowrunners, the cut outs and go-betweens as corporations use every possible advantage to get an edge over the rest. Shadowrunners are freelance deniable expendable assets, dirty deeds done for reasonable rates, taking on corporate security to extract valuable information or personnel for a paycheque. Characters can be magically active or they can be cybered so much they vibrate while standing still. Hackers, called deckers, can tear through intrusion countermeasure, or IC, like tissue paper. Riggers are the getaway drivers becoming one with their vehicles and capable of commanding an army of drones. Corporations, though, get the same access to equipment as player characters, possible more as business has the budget and characters have to find someone willing to sell or out and out steal the gear.

The default approach for a campaign is that player characters are shadowrunners, being hired for a number of jobs. The characters can come up with their own ideas, either for payback or to assist someone, but the typical game session will follow the same standard format. However, there are other possibilities. Characters can work for the main medical provider, Doc Wagon, as a High Threat Response Team, and be on the lighter side of grey. Or the characters can be members of a gang trying to protect their turf. Perhaps they could be corporate troubleshooters with a steady salary and medical benefits. There’s room for variation.

Adapting the setting shouldn’t be difficult. The presented game play is perfect for a movie; a heist along the lines of Oceans Eleven, Leverage, or The Italian Job provides the scaffold to build from, then add elements from the game. One of the characters is one of the subspecies. The muscle of the team has cybernetics. Use one of the Triple-A corporations in the game as the victim. Add the cyberpunk in, mix with the fantasy elements.

For television, follow a team of shadowrunners. Leverage was able to present a heist movie in about forty-five minutes in every episode. The draw was the characters and how they’d execute a job. Of course, the setting has its darker side, as if being a corporate-run dystopia wasn’t enough. With magic came beings beyond humanity’s ken. Insect spirits looking for host bodies. Blood magic. Magically changed viruses that lead to vampirism. Adding an episode or two to focus on the magical side of the setting allows for horror to be added to the cyberpunk/fantasy mix.

The main drawback to adapting the game is the setting. Describing it to Marketing would be trying to explain cyberpunk, Tolkien fantasy, heist movies, and then combining them. High tech and magic tend to sit in separate worlds, with exceptions such as Star Wars. Even that movie, A New Hope took time and effort before being picked up by a studio.

Once past the hurdle called Marketing, the next problem is budget. The different realms of the setting will have a different look. Reality is going to have contrasts between clean, glistening corporate enclaves and the grimy streets the characters live in. The virtual world is going to need its own look, with icons for everything without necessarily looking like a clone of Tron. The magical realm should look appropriate, beckoning, waiting, eerie, and dangerous.

Even the mundane world will require work. To reflect the game setting, the core metahumans – elves, dwarves, orks, and trolls – need to be seen. With how metahumanity came about, it’s possible to have a Caucasian dwarf, a Black elf, an Indigenous ork, or an Asian troll. Diversity is going to be needed; everyone gets downtrodden except the one percent. That said, unlike BattleTech, there aren’t centuries of history to choose from. It’s easiest to take the world as per the current edition. Shadowrun is always in the now, whether the now is 2050 like in the first edition or the 2080s of Sixth World. It may be easier to hand wave the technology in the setting by using the later date.

Shadowrun would be a challenge for a studio to adapt, but the setting is rich enough to make the effort pay off. As with all adaptations, the success depends on the effort made by studios to recognize why a work is popular and to keep that the heart of the new work.

Continuing Lost in Translation‘s look at adapting tabletop gaming settings, let’s jump into the future, a future where mankind has been at war somewhere in the galaxy for several hundred years. A future where feudal lords vie for control of all human space. Welcome to BattleTech.

Lost in Translation has covered the BattleTech animated series. While the series had issues, it did show off the then-current Clan Invasion metaplot the game was going through. In universe, the cartoon is anti-Clan propaganda by the Lyran owned Tharkad Broadcasting Company, with the characters based on real people in the setting. The BattleTech setting has several hundred years of history, providing a number of eras of play for players, from the Aramis Civil War and the end of the Star League in the late 2700s, the four Succession Wars, the Clan Invasion of the 3050s, the FedCom Civil War of the 3060s, and the Word of Blake Jihad of 3067. Conflict is built into the setting.

BattleTech has something few other tabletop games provide, giant stompy mechs fighting each other. No matter what form the adaptation takes, the draw will be war machines stomping their enemies into paste. The MechWarrior series of video games has focused on putting the player into the pilot seat of a BattleMech, controlling one of the engines of war. The recent BattleTech video game puts the action at the lance level, giving the player control of four `Mechs to fight against enemy units.

The question becomes, what level should an adaptation look at? Will the adaptation follow a lance of ‘Mech pilots getting in over their heads? Or will it take a top level approach, using the different Houses and their machinations to become the one ruling the known galaxy? Are the Clans threatening to invade, a threat not yet looming, or a pacified enemy that is now in competition with the Great Houses?

At the lance level, the best choice of unit is mercenary. House units tend to be in garrison unless either the war arrives on their world or they’re sent to the front. Mercenaries have more choice on what sort of job they take. In film, it’s almost traditional that the hired guns aren’t told the full story about what they’re getting into. The plot could be taken from other genres, from heists to Westerns. The smaller cast allows for more focus on just the unit, not worrying about the politics going on at the galactic level.

However, with the Great Houses, it’s possible for a BattleTech version of A Game of Thrones, The five Great Houses – Steiner, Davion, Kurita, Liao, and Marek – along with some Minor Houses such as Centralla of the Magistracy of Canopus, Calderon of the Taurian Concordat, and O’Reilly of the Marian Hegemony. Not only is there conflict between the Houses, there is conflict within the Houses. Conflict that bleed out to the battlefield, fought by BattleMechs. To continue the comparison with A Game of Thrones, the Clans can represent the White Walkers, lurking, ready to strike.

The Clans provide yet another approach to the setting. The Clans themselves are alien in thinking to the Inner Sphere, but they are still human. The differences is how Clan culture evolved, with scarcity, ritualized combat to prevent unnecessary losses of MechWarriors, and a stratified caste structure placing warriors at the pinnacle. Following a Star, the Clan equivalent of a lance, of new MechWarriors as they fight for position in Clan society, figuratively and literally, and dealing with how the Inner Sphere does things provides a conflict to build a plot on.

Suffice to say, BattleTech provides a wide range of potential for adaptations. The catch, like with most tabletop games, is that the game isn’t widely known. The video games, however, give the setting a boost in recognition. The other problem is the expense of special effects. The animated series had a limited number of BattleMechs for use during the enhanced imaging portions of a battle. Granted, the cartoon came out when CGI was in its infancy; it’s possible to have more models available for scenes now, especially if there’s assistance from the video games. Introducing the setting to a new audience shouldn’t be difficult; all works need to go through that, especially genre fiction, original or adapted.

BattleTech has a rich setting to plunder for adaptations, with the only common factor being oversized walking tanks ruling the battlefield. The BattleMechs are the draw; the story is what will keep the audience. Getting the existing fans onside shouldn’t be difficult, especially with the volumes written about all the factions that exist within the setting. A studio just has to choose an approach.

Last week, Lost in Translation looked at ways to adapt a Dungeons & Dragons setting. Dragonlance was built around the War of the Lance and its aftermath, so the plot tends to be locked in. This week, a look at a different D&D setting, The Forgotten Realms.

The Realms, also known as Faerûn, was created by Ed Greenwood in 1967 as a setting for his children’s stories. When D&D came about, he adapted the setting for his home game, expanding the setting. He sold the setting to TSR, the owner of Dungeons of Dragons, and continued to contribute to the setting through published setting books detailing parts of the Realms and through Dragon magazine in his column, “Pages from the Mages”. The Realms are the epitome of D&D fantasy – high magic both arcane and divine, warriors wielding magic weapons and wearing magic armour, and rogues sneaking around with magical cloaks. Unlike Dragonlance, the Realms had no ongoing plot, just various organizations both good and evil plotting.

Through novels set in the Realms, a number of characters have become breakthrough stars, from the dual-wielding drow elf Drizz’t Do’Urden to halfling bard Olive Ruskettle. There isn’t one core cast, which will help with any adaptation. DC Comics took advantage of this when they published the short-lived Forgotten Realms comic, bringing a mix of characters that wouldn’t feel out of place at the gaming table.

The question becomes, what can be done? The different parts of the Realms provides different answers. Waterdeep allows for intrigue and has an entrance to the Underdark, the part of the Realms under the ground where monsters roam. The Dalelands are a pastoral area with a number of nations around it looking at invading, not all of the potential invaders being evil. There is a nation, Thay, ruled by evil wizards, including an undead necromancer. Any number of fantasy antagonists can be cooking up a plot that needs to be thwarted.

The advantage of the Realms as a gaming setting becomes a drawback for adaptations. There is so much potential, where would a studio start? Movie or TV series? Start in a large city or in the middle of nowhere? Dungeon crawl or surface quest? With a film, the story can get to the action faster, showing the characters in action, then introducing the main plot, along the lines of a 007 opening. Television gives time to develop the characters, show them growing.

Dungeon crawls are what people associate with D&D. At some point, the adventurers head underground to clear out monsters. Even the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie had a couple of dungeon crawls including a decent scene at the thieves’ guild. But all dungeon all movie means a cramped movie where the expectation is that the full screen will be used. Even if at the end of the crawl is a dragon’s layer – the game is called Dungeons & Dragons after all – a crawl doesn’t allow for many character moments.

Television is much more set for character moments. What would be seen as a filler scene in a movie becomes required on TV. There’s room to learn more about the characters, give everyone a moment to shine, even episodes focusing on a specific character. The drawback is budget. Television episodes don’t have the budget that film can get. There may not be an appetite for a fantasy TV series. A Game of Thrones succeeded, but was on HBO, so ratings weren’t as important as new and returning subscribers. Broadcast TV lives and dies on ratings, even with the ability to shift when an episode is watched.

The Forgotten Realms has name value among fans, but audiences might not have heard of the setting despite the sheer number of tie-in novels released. The result could be a flop; it doesn’t matter how good a movie is if no one goes to see it. With television, the stakes are higher; if ratings for the early episodes are low, a network will cancel to replace with something else. That said, the Realms provides a wide open sandbox to play in. There’s no overall plot to worry about when creating new stories in the setting, giving the Realms a slight advantage of Krynn.

And since the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie was mentioned, a new D&D movie has been filmed and is due for release March 2023. The new film was originally scheduled for July 2021, but was pushed back first for the latest Mission: Impossible entry then by pandemic response. Normally, a film being pushed back is a cause for alarm, but the last two years have seen many movies, good and bad, delayed thanks to COVID-19.