The one thing that 2016 is guaranteed to have is more adaptations. The current cycle may be reaching a peak, but there are a number of adaptations in the pipelines still to be released. But if the peak is near, the two things that will mark getting past the apex is quality and audience reception.
Quality is tough to quantify, but, overall, adaptations today are far more faithful now than ever before. Studios have learned that the in-name-only adaptation is doomed to failure from the outset. Word of mouth is far faster today thanks to social media. Audiences can warn others about a movie’s flaws during a screening. At the same time, a movie that hits the heart of a work will also get audiences telling others about it. Social media is a double-edged sword for studios.
Audience reception is easier to measure. Box office returns, while not the best method, is still what studios look at as a measure of a film’s success. The dollar amount isn’t the only part looked at; the amount brought in compared to a film’s budget is key. An expensive film that brings in over a billion dollars, such as Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, isn’t the only success; a lower budget movie that still brings in ten times what it was made is also successful. As long as audiences keep going to adaptations, they will be made. One flop isn’t going to kill the current trend. It will take a number of failures over a short period to convince a studio to try something different. Thus, Universal’s failure with Jem and the Holograms isn’t going to dissuade the studio from continuing with the Fifty Shades of Grey series*.
Adaptations have always been a part of Hollywood. The coming year is will be no different. A backlash against the number of adaptations may be beginning, but it’ll take a few years before it gets felt. Studios have adaptations in various stages of production; cancelling will cost money, and there’s no indication now that audiences will stay away in droves in the hope for something original. Even then, the superhero movie is becoming a mainstay. Where the Western and the rogue cop films have far too much baggage to them to be regular features, the superhero can take the appeal of the other two genres without their drawbacks.
Even television isn’t immune to adaptations. Many series, including The Librarians, The Expanse, Dark Matter, and The Last Ship, are all adapted from other works. Expect more works to be adapted as television series; the format allows for a greater depth at the expense of the fickleness of ratings. Even the fickleness can be avoided; the 500-channel universe means that a work will find its audience. A Game of Thrones has proven to be a hit for HBO, bringing in subscribers tuning in for that one series.
As mentioned above, quality is the key. If the adaptation makes an effort to be faithful to the original work, audiences will watch. Studios are learning this; the failure of Jem and the Holograms is noteworthy because it failed to meet fan expectations. Fifty Shades of Grey met fan expectations, despite the casting choices. The lesson is there to be learned.
* Issues between director and author might cause delays, though.
As 2015 comes to a close, it’s time to see how the year went in terms of adaptations. The History of Adaptations showed that adaptations are normal in Hollywood, not the exception, at least for popular films. And 2015 had adaptations, both successful and not.
Starting with the unsuccessful, we have Jem and the Holograms. The movie failed to get an audience and was pulled after two weeks. However, Universal Studios’ loss on the film, around $3 million, was a drop in the bucket for them. Universal had an amazing year at the box office, with movies such as Jurassic World, Furious 7, Fifty Shades of Grey, Pitch Perfect 2, and Minions. Jem‘s low budget, under $6 million, was a mere ripple on the profit of any one of the movies mentioned. Pulling Jem early protects the property; no one saw the film, so no one will remember what happened in it. The 2015 Fantastic Four, aka Fant4stic, also ran into problems at the box office. While it did make a profit, at least on paper, the word of mouth wasn’t good. Fant4stic had problems with characterization, particularly with Doom, while going to the desaturated colours seen in the Warner Bros. DC Comics adaptations.
With Jem and Fant4stic, the problem came from a poor adaptations. Jem had a generic plot when fans of the original series was expecting more. Fant4stic ran into characterization problems, turning a megalomaniacal would-be world conqueror into a real-world annoyance. Both films failed to take into account the existing works, dashing fan expectations. Jem had the added “bonus” of having almost no advertising. Fant4stic changed the name of Doom back to “Victor von Doom” after fan backlash.
With the successful films, Universal leads the way with Jurassic World, a sequel to an adaptation, and Fifty Shades of Grey, an adaptation. Disney’s new properties, Marvel and Star Wars, have performed well, to say the least. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is still bringing in people and, well, The Force Awakens is a force to be reckoned with. On television, Supergirl has an audience on CBS, joining Arrow and The Flash on the DC Television Universe. The Muppets got a full season ordered. Adaptations are alive and well and superheroes are still around.
There are adaptations being made even now. including the gender-flipped Ghostbusters. We may be reaching the peak of the current cycle, with adaptations being a large percentage of popular movies now. Audiences are getting antsy for something new, so expect the ratio to change in a few years. Universal is leading the way, at least for now, having had fewer blockbuster adaptations than competitors. In the meantime, though, superheroes will dominate.
Peanuts was a long-running popular comic strip. Created by Charles M. “Sparky” Schulz in 1950, Peanuts can still be read today in reruns, which are still new to many readers. The series ended when Schulz retired for health reasons in 1999. Sparky passed away February 12, 2000, the day before the last of the Sunday Peanuts strips was published.
The strip centred on Charlie Brown and his friends, a slice of life comic focused on just children. No adults appeared in the strip. Peanuts cemented the four-panel comic format in newspapers, though later in his career, Schulz moved to full panels. The comic became a hit, published throughout the world. This popularity led Coca-Cola in April 1965 asking for a Christmas special to sponsor. The result was A Charlie Brown Christmas.
The special first aired in December 1965 and was a smash hit. A Charlie Brown Christmas earned a 49 share the week it aired, second only to Bonanza. Almost half the televisions in the US were tuned in to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas; in a three-channel universe, the show dominated. The initial success led to A Charlie Brown Christmas being an annual tradition for fifty years.
A Charlie Brown Christmas follows Charlie Brown as he deals with the Christmas blues. He’s feeling that the holiday has gotten too commercial, with friends and even his sister, Sally, and dog, Snoopy, forgetting the meaning of the season. Snoopy has entered a home decoration contest to win cash, and Sally’s dictated list also mentions money. The blahs send Charlie Brown to Lucy’s psychiatrist stand. She determines that what he needs is to get more involved and all but shanghais him into being the director of the Christmas pageant.
The pageant rehearsal is chaos. The cast is busy dancing and barely pays Charlie Brown any notice. Lucy gets their attention, but once Charlie Brown is down his speech, the cast is right back to dancing. Charlie Brown does get the roles handed out, but he still doesn’t feel any better. Lucy, figuring that the set isn’t Christmas-y enough, sends Charlie Brown and Linus to find a tree. Others in the cast tell him to get a nice, shiny aluminum tree, preferably pink.
At the tree lot, all brightly lit and full of fake trees, Charlie Brown finds a lonely real tree. Feeling for the scraggly tree, he buys it and takes it back to the rehearsals. The cast isn’t impressed and laughs at him. Charlie Brown bemoans that there’s no one who knows the true meaning of Christmas. Linus then quotes from the Gospel of Luke*.
Charlie Brown takes the little tree back home. Snoopy’s doghouse, all decked out with lights and ornaments, won first place in the contest, but Charlie Brown tries to put the display out of his mind. He adds an ornament to his tree, which bends over under the weight. This turns out to be the last straw for Charlie Brown. Dejected, her slumps away.
Linus walks by and sees the tree. He wraps it in his blanket, which helps the tree gain strength. The rest of the cast arrives and helps redecorate the tree, turning it from scraggly to beautiful. Charlie Brown returns to see the result and to hear everyone say, “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!”
The special, as mentioned above, was well received. Along with the amazing ratings, A Charlie Brown Christmas won both an Emmy and a Peabody. The results came as a surprise to the creators. They had six months to pull together the special, a time frame that was far too short to result in any quality. The network felt that the voice talent sounded amateurish; given that almost all the voice actors were children the age of the characters, the accusation was accurate. The one adult, animator and director Bill Melendez as the voice of Snoopy, did the role just to fill the need; his work was kept because what he did as Snoopy worked well.
The audience, though, found that the special had charm. A Charlie Brown Christmas maintained the characterizations found in Peanuts. While Schulz had finished with the special and went back to working on the comic strip, Melendez and producer Lee Mendelson worked to bring the characters alive during the animation process, keeping true to Sparky’s creation. The decision to use children instead of older voice artists acting as kids was to keep an authentic voice for the characters. Only two of the actors, the voices of Charlie Brown and Linus, had worked professionally before the special.
The music also played a large role in the special. Jazz musician and compose Vince Guaraldi created and adapted the music in A Charlie Brown Christmas, including the now iconic piece, “Linus and Lucy“. He adapted Christmas classics, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and “O Tannenbaum” to great effect. While the network wasn’t sure of the music, feeling that it didn’t fit, the audience and critics praised it.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is a great example of what can happen when production staff take pains to keep to the vision of an original work. Melendez went to great effort to work out how the characters would move when animated, even when keeping to a simpler animation because of time restraints. The result is a Christmas special that has aired every year since its first appearance in 1965.
* And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said until them, “Fear not; for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel amultitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on Eartrh, peace and goodwill towards men.
– Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 8-14, King James version.
Sometime back, Lost in Translation looked at the intricacies of adapting tabletop role-playing games to a different medium. There haven’t been many such adaptations. Lost in Translation has looked at three, the Dungeons & Dragons movie and the animated adaptations of Heavy Gear*, and Dragonlance. There aren’t many more; Fox aired a short-lived Vampire: The Masquerade series called Kindred: The Embraced, and Dungeons & Dragons and BattleTech both had their own cartoons.
The usual approach with adaptations and tabletop games is that the RPG is adapted to a video game. From the earliest Rogue-like games to massive multiplayers like World of Warcraft owe a lot to Dungeons & Dragons. But adaptations in other media are next to non-existent. The failure of the Dungeons & Dragons movie may have a role, but other factors are at work.
The biggest factor is name recognition. D&D is the 800 pound gorilla in tabletop RPGs, with name recognition outside the hobby. Few games even come close to the sales figures or the longevity of D&D. In the 80s, TSR even bought television ad time for the game. D&D, though, is atypical. Marvel tried releasing a game, Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game, but cancelled the publication when the RPG did not see the returns of D&D or Marvel’s own comics. RPGs are a niche market; the built-in audience is not enough to risk a budget on.
Next, the nature of a typical RPG means there aren’t many iconic characters and next to little plot to adapt. Most games allow players to create their own characters, with the Games Master creating the plot and adjusting it in reaction to the players’ actions. A few games, including D&D, don’t come with a setting, though they are in the minority; even those games have published campaign supplements for groups that don’t have the time to create their own world. Even the published settings take on different lives once the players and GM start playing. The Traveller fandom even has acronyms for this phenomenon – OTU, or Original Traveller Universe; IMTU, In My Traveller Universe; and IYTU, In Your Traveller Universe. Movies, books, and stage plays all need characters and a plot. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a typical adventure for RPGs. The classic D&D adventure involves exploring an underground structure fill with monsters while a Traveller adventure has the players travelling the space lanes earning money through speculation and working for patrons. It just takes more effort to come up with a plot and characters that fit a setting than adapting a work that falls under a more traditional form of storytelling.
Game play may be the most difficult part of adapting a game, though it may not be as important as the above. The main goal for a gaming group is to have fun, whether through mindless mayhem, intense angst, or delving into the unknown. It’s a gathering of friends who can take the time to catch up with each other and josh around. There’s banter both in-character and out, with inside jokes coming up. Action in-game can take less time than it does for the players to resolve the action. Combat taking less than a minute can eat up most of a gaming session. Conversely, some actions that would take hours can be resolved with a die roll or two. The pacing is different to traditional storytelling. The dice introduce an extra element; chance. There isn’t a sure thing in RPGs; sometimes, the dice just roll poorly. In a narrative, random failure is jarring. Failure has a purpose in a plot, and doesn’t come up otherwise. An adaptation, though, can throw the equivalent of a failed die roll as a setback for the characters. Failure isn’t always fatal.
Game mechanics, however, do need to be adapted well. Not necessarily the die rolls, but the appearance of details such as spells, weapons, and opposition. The Dragonlance animated movie has a scene where the adaptation got a spell detail wrong; Fizban in the novel cast fireball but, on screen, the spell shown looked more like flaming sphere. While the two spells sound similar, fireball is the more potent of the two, being more explosive and damaging. Details are the devil that make or break an adaptation; getting something like a spell’s appearance wrong can lose a knowledgeable audience, leading to poor word of mouth.
Given the above, it is still possible to adapt a game well. As mentioned above, tabletop games have been adapted and adapted successfully as video games. D&D was one of the first with the gold box series of computer games and both Vampire and Shadowrun have had success in the electronic realm with Bloodlines and Shadowrun Hong Kong. The ability for a player to create a character is a plus in the video game realm, allowing the player to personalize the experience. There have been tie-in novels for several game lines. But of the existing adaptations, only one, the BattleTech cartoon, came close to having the right feel. Even Kindred: The Embraced had issues, such as vampires out in broad daylight, and lasted eight episodes.
Adapters need to understand the source material, no matter what the original work is. With tabletop RPGs, the nature of the games have a different focus. The storytelling in interactive with rules acting as framework and setting physics. Failing to take the mechanics into account leads to characters that don’t quite fit the setting, a setting that only has superficial resemblance to the original, and action that just isn’t possible in the game. The result can be much like the D&D movie, disappointing to fans of the game and incoherent to the casual audience. Adapting a tabletop RPG well will take an effort that may be more than potential returns, leading to the dearth of adaptations made.
* Technically, Heavy Gear was written to be both an RPG and a wargame when it was first released.
** Not all, but, in general, audiences appreciate at least a token plot even in a character piece. Something needs to happen.
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens coming out later this month, it’s a good time to look at another adaptation in preparation. Today, it’s a look at the pilot episode of the CG-animated Star Wars Rebels.
Several months ago, Lost in Translation reviewed Star Wars: The Clone Wars, covering the issues that come up when adapting from film to television. In brief, the difference is time available, pacing due to commercials, and budget. The Clone Wars, though, filled in details between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, strengthening the latter through giving spotlight time to characters that get brief moments during Order 66.
The pilot episode of Star Wars Rebels, “Spark of Rebellion”, introduces new characters to the setting. The Galaxy Far Far Away is huge, capable of containing a large number interesting folk. It starts with Ezra, a young boy living outside the capital city of Lothal, watching as a Star Destroyer comes in over the city as “The Imperial March” plays.in the background. Ezra heads into Capital City to see what is happening and runs across Imperial officers bullying a simple fruit peddler. After a bit of sleight of hand to gain a communicator, Ezra redirects the Imperials with a false call for backup. He keeps watch, and notices several shady figures passing along silent communications. He also senses something about one of them.
The shady miscreants, Kanan, Zeb, and Sabine, are after a number of crates the Imperials have. hooked up to speeder bikes. Sabine, wearing colourful Mandalorian-style armour, creates a distraction through an explosion. While the would-be thieves deal with the stormtroopers guarding the bikes, Ezra slips in and steals one of the speeders himself. Thus begins a chase involving Ezra, Kana in pursuit, and the Imperials chasing both. The Imperials play their trump card and bring in a TIE fighter. Kanan has his own trump, Ghost, piloted by the Twi’lek, Hera, and maintained by the astromech C1-10PR, or Chopper. Ghost takes out the lone TIE, but four more have caught up. Ezra grabs his crate and leaps to the cargo ramp, a leap that should have been impossible.
Ezra gets a quick breather and discovers that the crate he brought on board is filled with blaster rifles. The TIEs don’t give up, and chase Ghost up to orbit. `Kanan takes one turret to discourage pursuit. Ezra, placed into a storage locker by Zeb for safe keeping, gets into Ghost‘s ventilation system and falls into the second turret. The kid’s first time off-world and into space is marred when he sees two of the TIEs attacking. Sabine arrives to take over the turret, and clears a path to let the ship enter hyperspace.
With time finally to rest, the crew comes to a decision about Ezra. They can’t take him back home just yet; their timetable is too short to allow for that. Instead, they take him to a location on Lothal known as Tarkintown, named after Governor Tarkin and populated by people displaced by the Imperial war machine. One crate, the one Ezra tried to keep, is filled with blasters to be sold to raise credits for the Ghost‘s operation. The rest contain food that is given freely to the residents of Tarkintown. Confused, Ezra returns to the ship. Elsewhere, Kanan and Hera make a deal with a middleman, who offers information about the location of Wookiee prisoners being transferred to become slaves.
Back on Ghost, Ezra gets another odd feeling, drawing him into Kanan’s cabin. Ezra searches the room, finding a lightsabre and a holocron. Kanan appears and relieves Ezra of the lightsabre, but appears to miss the holocron. With the prisoner transfer, there’s no time to return Ezra to his home. Ghost lifts off to intercept the transport ship.
Getting close to the transport is simple enough. Hera name drops Governor Tarkin, which is enough for the transport to call off its TIEs and allow Ghost to dock to transfer another Wookiee. Kanan, Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper head to the airlock to meet the stormtroopers waiting. The attempt to pass Zeb off as a rare hairless Wookiee goes as well as expected, leading to Zeb decking both stormtroopers. The group splits off in pairs, with Kanan and Zeb going to free the Wookiees and Sabine going with Chopper to handle the technical side.
In Ghost‘s cockpit, Hera loses contact with Kanan. The transport is jamming the signal, letting Hera deduce that the information was faked and the entire situation is a trap. Ezra gets a bad feeling moments before an Imperial Star Destroyer appears from hyperspace. Hera and Ezra argue about staying and telling the others about the trap; Ezra is far too used to being on his own and not sticking his neck out, but he does go. He finds Kanan just before the cell door is opened; on the other side, stormtroopers await. They hear the conversation and burst out.
Kanan’s plan included contingencies in case of stormtrooper pursuit. He orders Sabine to turn off the gravity in the transport. Kanan and Zeb take advantage and flee, dragging Ezra along as the stormtroopers and the Star Destroyer’s commander float helplessly. They don’t have much time; the Imperials recover quick enough, but Kanan knows when the gravity is returning and is ready to run when it does. The two groups reunite and race back to Ghost with the Imperials close behind. Ezra falls behind and is taken prisoner by the commander. Not knowing that the kid isn’t on board, Hera undocks and makes the jump to hyperspace. Kanan takes stock. He feels that Ghost has to go back to rescue Ezra, having been responsible for the kid getting involved in the first place.
On the Star Destroyer, the Imperials take most of Ezra’s belongings, but miss the holocron. The Star Destroyer’s commander introduces himself as Imperial Security Bureau Agent Kallus, who is after Kanan’s group because of their effectiveness. Resigned, Ezra takes a look at the device and is able to open it. The holocron begins to play a message from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Buoyed a bit, Ezra comes up with a plan to escape. The first part involves luring the guards into the cell, done with some acting. The second part involves recovering his belongings and hiding inside the ship. He grabs a helmet to listen to the comms chatter. Ezra hears news of Ghost returning, and does what he can to distract the stormtroopers.
Kanan, Zeb, and Sabine head off Ghost to find Ezra, only for him to be waiting for them. Kallus arrives with his troopers, but Kanan’s people escape, this time with Ezra. On board, Ezra informs the Ghost‘s crew of where the Wookiees are going; he overheard the captain of the transport mention Kessel. Kanan orders Ghost to Kessel. Kallus, though, shows that he’s deserving of a Star Destroyer and realizes that he was overheard by the kid, and heads to Kessel as well.
On the spice moon of Kessel, Kanan leads a daring breakout, distracting the stormtroopers guarding the Wookiees long enough for Ezra to sneak past and free them from their shackles. However, TIE fighters appear behind the landed Ghost. Hera and Chopper need to take off to deal with the TIEs, leaving Kanan and his people and the Wookiees on the ground. Kallus appears and orders his stormtroopers to fire. Kanan realizes the best move is the 22-Pickup. The goal, get the Wookiees into a cargo container while keeping the stormtroopers attention on himself. To do this, he walks out into the barrage of blaster fire and draws his lightsabre.
Meanwhile, Ezra realizes that one Wookiee won’t go unless his young son returns. Ezra runs after the young Wookiee, who is already being chased by a stormtrooper. The Wookiee runs to the end of a docking platform with nowhere to go but into the pit. Ezra leaps over the stormtrooper and hits him with his laser slingshot. The stormtrooper falls over the railing with a Wilhelm scream. Kallus, though, saw Ezra and followed. The ISB agent sees an unusual opportunity, killing a Jedi and his apprentice. Kanan arrives in the nick of time, riding on the hull of Ghost to pick up Ezra and the Wookiee.
The Wookiees are freed and given a ride home. Ghost returns to Lothal and the abandoned tower that serves as Ezra’s home. Ezra lifts Kanan’s lightsabre again and leaves. Up in his home, he looks around at the various souvenirs he has taken. Kanan appears behind him to explain the Force and gives Ezra a choice; either add the lightsabre to the other items to gather dust, or to join the crew of Ghost and learn to use the Force and become a Jedi. When Ezra turns around, Kanan has disappeared.
On Ghost, Kanan meditates while listening to Obi-Wan’s message, the warning sent during Revenge of the Sith to avoid the Jedi Temple. Ezra walks in and returns the lightsabre, joining the crew. On board the Star Destroyer, Kallus reports his findings to an Imperial Inquisitioner, who is most interested that a Jedi has been found.
Expecting one episode, the pilot episode at that, to be able to do what the entire Clone Wars series did is unreasonable. In television, the pilot episode exists to set up the series, including introducing characters, show the possible situations the characters get involved in, and set the tone. The key here is to see how much Star Wars Rebels holds up to expectations. To this end, the pilot pulls in elements already familiar to Star Wars fans. The music used shows inspiration from A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Unlike Clone Wars, where the music had a martial tone, Rebels uses the more hopeful themes from A New Hope. The speeder bike chase used music from the similar scene on Endor in Return of the Jedi.
The characters pull their weight, as well. Ezra becomes a hero despite himself, setting up a Hero’s Journey arc. Kanan has a roguish streak in him, but is still a mentor figure. He and Hera get along like a married couple; bickering but without heat and around for each other. The dialogue would fit in A New Hope without difficulty. Sabine, despite the Mandalorian armour, isn’t dour. Instead, she has the heart of an artist, albeit one whose medium is explosions. Even the holographic Obi-Wan is shown as between his appearance during Clone Wars and Alex Guiness, with James Arnold Taylor returning for the role. The eye to detail is there.
One detail I noticed was with Ezra. His character design and his character arc is similar to the title character in Disney’s Aladdin. Given that Rebels is also a Disney production, the similarity may be deliberate. Ezra, though, doesn’t have a wish-granting genie to help him mature. Instead, he has one of the last Jedi. The shorthand, though, for people who make the connection help with understanding Ezra’s character.
Star Wars Rebels has the potential to strengthen A New Hope much like Clone Wars did with Revenge of the Sith. The feel of “Spark of Rebellion” had the right touch; humour, a dangerous threat, and villains with great potential for evil. The pilot has laid down the map for the series, and it should feel very much like A New Hope.
Apologies for the unannounced hiatus. I do have a review coming up, but with how busy the past week has been, I did not have the time to properly watch the work I wanted to analyze. Lost in Translation will return next week.
In the meantime, let me know if there’s an adaptation coming up you’re looking forward to, or even one that you’re dreading.
Next week, Star Wars: Rebels.
Last week, Lost in Translation looked at the problems Jem and the Holograms live action adaptation had at the box office. The same week that Jem was pulled from theatres, Mark Wahlberg announced that he would be involved with a remake of The Six Million Dollar Man, Today, a look at what such an adaptation needs to beware of.
The remake, The Six Billion Dollar Man, appears to be working from the TV series. However, The Six Million Dollar Man was an adaptation itself, based on book Cyborg by Martin Caidan. Will the remake acknowledge the original work is still a question. Another catch is the forty years since the original TV series aired. Time is seldom gentle as it progresses. Can The Six Billion Dollar Man update the series without losing what made the original popular?
Technology may not be a problem. Computers are far smaller and far more powerful now than in the mid-Seventies. Thanks to the silicon chip and advances in miniaturization, computers no longer need to take up an entire floor and can fit inside an artificial limb with space leftover. Steve Austin’s bionic arm, legs, and eye are still beyond current commercial technology, but advances available today in artificial limbs now allow for fine motor control. Small cameras are available to all, with infrared available at low extra cost. Web cameras are built into many computing devices, like laptops, tablets, and cameras. Putting a military version of commercially available camera types into an artificial eye isn’t far-fetched.
The real problem, seen with every adaptation, is getting the feel right. Jem and the Holograms failed there by going for a generic plot with no connection to the characters. The Six Billion Dollar Man needs to acknowledge the feel of the original, even as it tries to be its own work. The problem there is the Seventies. Steve Austin didn’t just deal with rogue agents. He went up against robots with his capabilities, against terrorism in ersatz versions of Northern Ireland, South America, and the Middle East, against psychics and mind readers, and against aliens. The Seventies explored ideas that never panned out and are seen as bizarre today.
Compounding the issue of the Seventies is the change in how stories are told. This was also seen in the remake of The Mechanic, which went from a character study with a deliberate pace to an action movie without changing the plot. The Seventies saw longer shots, almost foreign to today’s near-constant cuts through editing. Yet, for some effects, the camera may have to linger.
Another issue that could cause problems is the change of tone seen in adapted works, eschewing the tone of the original in favour of a darker, grittier story that sometimes misses the point. The Caidin novels had Austin as a super secret agent, sent in where regular agents wouldn’t succeed. The TV series followed that idea, but with a lighter touch. The Six Billion Dollar Man could fall back to the Caidin novels or even just the first pilot movie. The Six Million Dollar Man saw a shift in tone between the first of the TV movies and the actual series. Colonel Austin stopped using weapons during the series, but does use grenades in the pilot.
The passage of time may be of help to The Six Billion Dollar Man. The series ended almost forty years ago and is no longer in syndication. While the TV series has been released on DVD, not everyone in the audience will have a copy. This will allow the remake movie to recreate the general feel of the series – a bionic man working as a top agent for an agency – without necessarily getting all the details correct. The main elements, the bionic sound effects, can be used to create a genuine feel, even if some details get changed.
The goal of Wahlberg’s remake should be to blend the sensitivies of both today and the Seventies without either treating the source material as a source of jokes or to go down the dark and gritty road without having some of the TV series’ levity. Both have a place in The Six Billion Dollar Man.
If you haven’t seen Jem and the Holograms in theatres, and going by the numbers, you haven’t, you missed your chance. Universal has pulled the film after just two weeks. In its second week, Jem was getting $160 per movie screen* it was shown on. With today’s movie ticket costs, that’s about ten to fifteen per showing. The movie just did not get an audience.
Early reviews indicated that the movie had one of the most generic plots possible, with a “Remember Your Friends When You Are Famous” theme and having little connection to the Jem and the Holograms cartoon beyond just the name and being about an all-girl band. People saw the trainwreck coming and decided that they had better things to do, like wash their hair or dig a hole and fill it back up.
There may have been a fundamental disconnect between producers and audience. The Jem movie was based on the dolls, made by Hasbro. The audience was expecting a movie based on the 80s cartoon, with a heftier plotline that involved crooked music producers, a bad-girl band wreaking havoc, and a love triangle where two of the interests were really the same person. The audience who wanted to see the cartoon done in live action had no reason to go, and the generic plot may have kept away the younger set.
Might have been the targeted set. Advertising for the movie was minimal. It’s possible that Universal, the studio behind Jem, knew exactly what it had and went for a contractually-required minimal effort to promote the film. The pulling of the film may have been in defense of the Jem brand. This Jem and the Holograms movie was a flop, but it was one no one saw in theatres. In five years time, the movie will be forgotten enough to try again. Universal gave the film a $5 million budget. Given what Universal made from Jurassic World, Furious 7, and Minions, the loss from Jem is minimal. While Jem failed at the box office, it wasn’t the bomb Gigli was. The movie won’t hurt the brand, especially after being pulled after two weeks**. The IDW comic series is doing well and will keep the brand alive.
For the hypothetical movie in five years, what lessons can be learned from this attempt at a Jem movie? First, forget the generic plot. Jem has established characters, thanks to the cartoon and comic. Each character has her story, from Jerrica’s work to keep her father’s record company afloat to Pizzazz’s family issues. Tailor the film to the characters, not the other way around. Second, at least ask Christy Marx to be involved. Fans of the cartoon were dismayed when Marx wasn’t involved at all. Ignoring the creator and writer of the original Jem cartoon may have kept more people away from the film than anything else, including a lack of marketing. Even if Marx is brought in as a script consultant to make sure the characters feel right.
As Lost in Translation keeps finding, it’s the eye to details that make or break an adaptation. The generic-ness of Jem and the Holograms that caused audiences to just not go. The fans of the cartoon didn’t see their characters on screen, just their shells.
* Not the full theatre, but the actual theatre room in the multiplex where the movie played.
** In comparison, Gigli was pulled after three, but theatres were cutting the number of showtimes by then.
Spin-offs, as mentioned before, are another form of adaptation. Instead of taking a work and translating it to another medium, a spin-off takes a popular* character and presents him or her as a lead, exploring how the character would react and develop. Today, Lost in Translation will look at the 70s TV series, The Bionic Woman.
The Seventies saw a break out of science fiction on the big screen and on television. Star Wars had its debut in 1977, but Star Trek turned into a force thanks to syndication, leading studios to realize that science fiction had a loyal audience. Helping the interest in science fiction was actual science happening. The Space Race between the US and USSR drove interest in the probes launched and led to the first American space station, Skylab, and the first probes, from the Russian Venera series, to land on Venus.
Along with the interest in space exploration came the use of computers. The integrated circuit had made huge improvements since its first development, allowing for the reduction of computer size. Computers still weren’t ready to be on everyone’s desks; the furniture still couldn’t deal with the weight. The banks of computers, though, had more processing power. The silicon chip led to the idea of miniaturization of computers; can they be made small enough to bring the Dick Tracy wrist communicator and the Star Trek electronic clipboard to reality**?
Science fiction has the benefit of not needing to be tied to what current technology can do. If current technology is leading in one direction, science fiction can extrapolate not only the technology but the reaction to it. Even if the story doesn’t get every detail right, it is impressive at what it predicts. Science fiction is also a reflection of the time when it is written. With Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel, Cyborg, it reflects the Space Race and the Cold War in its lead character, Colonel Steve Austin, former astronaut and test pilot. Col. Austin became the first cybernetically enhanced human after his test plane crashed, leaving him with severe injuries. With his bionics, Col. Austin became one of America’s top secret agents, dealing with threats to the nation.
Hollywood is known to adapt, to understate the matter. Glen A. Larson licensed the idea in Cyborg and turned the book into a series of TV movies, the first being called, The Six Million Dollar Man, airing in 1973. Once again, former astronaut Col. Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors, suffered a horrific crash during a test flight, requiring bionic replacements for his right arm, both legs, and his right eye. The success of the TV movies led to a proper TV series, also called The Six Million Dollar Man.
The series was lighter fare. Col. Austin was still a bionically enhanced agent working for the Office of Scientific Intelligence and Oscar Goldman, played by Richard Anderson. His foes were terrorists from various national stand-ins***, rogue Soviet agents, greedy businessmen, robots, and even aliens and psychics. Several characters returned, including Bigfoot, as played by André the Giant, and the Seven Million Dollar Man, played by Monty Markham. One character, though, wasn’t originally planned on being brought back.
A two-part season two episode, “The Bionic Woman”, introduced Jaime Sommers, played by Lindsay Wagner, an old flame of Steve’s from his hometown of Ojai. Jaime had also left Ojai to pursue her dreams of being a professional tennis player, and had great success in doing so. When both she and Steve returned to Ojai to visit friends and family, their long dormant romance rekindled, leading to an engagement.
But first, “The Bionic Woman” needed a bionic woman. During a skydiving outing, Jaime’s parachute failed. She survived, barely, but lost the use of her right arm, both of her legs, and her right ear. Steve convinced Oscar and Dr. Rudy Wells, played that time by Martin Balsam****, to give Jaime bionics, which they reluctantly did. Jaime’s recovery mirrored that of Steve’s in the first TV movie; slow, steady, and then reaching beyond human capabilities. However, Jaime had fallen victim to the Cartwright Curse.
Television in the Seventies and, indeed, through most of its history until recently, was episodic. A series featuring a single person had to leave room for the romance of the episode. Marrying the main character meant limiting some subplots. The Cartwright Curse, named after the main characters on Bonanza, would see any serious relationship end, usually through the death of the woman. With “The Bionic Woman”, the engagement reduced Jaime’s life expectancy. One of the fears mentioned in the original TV movie was the chance of Steve’s body rejecting the bionics. While Steve didn’t have those issues, Jaime did. She was rushed back to the clinic, but died.
The two-part episode aired near the end of season two. Over the hiatus, the production company realized how popular a character she was. Bringing her back meant doing something so that she was alive again. The season three opener for The Six Million Dollar Man was the two-part episode, “The Return of the Bionic Woman”. The key question for the audience; “How are they going to have Jaime not die when we saw her die on screen?” The answer was a new medical procedure, one that slowed down brain death long enough to adjust her bionics. The solution came in just as Jaime’s heartbeat flatlined and, since the camera was focused on Steve and his reaction, having a new character call Dr. Wells out to the hall was easily missed. Jaime Sommers would live again!
Steve slowly learns that Jaime hadn’t died. He was kept out of the loop because Oscar and Rudy didn’t want to put him through a second emotional wringer if the experiment failed. Jaime did lose some of her memories. Older memories weren’t a problem and she remembered everything from recovering from the surgery. The trauma surrounding her parachute accident, though, caused memory loss before and after the event. The engagement, in particular, became a painful memory. Steve and Jaime get a second chance at the failed mission from “The Bionic Woman”. This time around, the mission is successful.
The Bionic Woman first aired in 1976, during The Six Million Dollar Man‘s third season. Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks appeared in both series, with Anderson getting starring credit in both shows. The two series crossed over a few times, including the three-part episode, “Kill Oscar”, introducing the Fembots and the two-part episode, “The Return of Bigfoot”. The series ran three seasons total, ending in 1978 due to the network wanting a different demographic than what the show was drawing.
With the two shows working closely with each other, shaing core cast members even after The Bionic Woman switched networks, they were able to maintain a continuity, as seen with the crossover episodes. But if Jaime was written and portrayed as Steve in a dress, the show wouldn’t have done as well as it had. Steve, with his military background, was more likely to resort to violence, though it isn’t his first choice. Jaime, whose was an Education major in college and had no military background at all, seldom resorted to violence, preferring a more human approach.
The Bionic Woman was its own show, taking the situations seen in The Six Million Dollar Man and adapting them to fit the character of Jaime Sommers. The show was successful, despite the network’s beliefs.
* Usually popular, but there have been spin-offs based on characters whose popularity have been misread. The short-lived NBC series, Joey, spun off from Friends, is a good example.
** Yes. Apple now sells the iWatch, which, when connected wirelessly to an iPhone, works like Dick Tracy’s watch. Star Trek‘s electronic clipboard was available first as the Apple Newton then as Palm Pilots, both of which have been superceded by smartphones and tablet computers.
*** No real country name was used for the terrorists, though locations were obvious. Some areas were Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Central America, but not called as such.
**** Three actors played the role over the run of both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Martin E. Brooks took over the role in season three of the former and the entire run of the latter.
Going slightly off-topic today. Technically, Spaced Invaders isn’t an adaptation, but it owes its existance to the Orson Welles radio broadcast, The War of the Worlds. The radio play itself is an adaptation, based on the HG Wells story and transplanted to the United States.
The Mercury Theatre production of The War of the Worlds was a live broadcast in an age where radio was the entertainment system of the masses. Breaking news could be aired without too much trouble, allowing critical events to be heard far and wide shortly after they occurred. The War of the Worlds presented itself, at first, as just another music program, featuring a live orchestra. However, news kept interrupting the show, first of meteor strikes, then of oddities occurring. The station is then commandeered by the US Army to help broadcast their own messages. The audience is then treated to calls for help from a soldier as alien machines march forward unrelentlessly. The act ends with the soldier asking, “Is anyone there?” as background sounds fade. The rest of the radio play, for listeners who hadn’t panicked, picked up with a survivor, played by Welles, wandering the blasted countryside and finding other people who had also survived the onslaught. One man turned insular, not trusting anyone. Others weren’t as distrusting. The reveal of the fate of the Martian invaders showed that they were still vulnerable, if not to the mighty weapons of war that mankind fielded, than to the tiny bacteria and viruses omnipresent in our air.
I mentioned “panicked” above. Listeners who hadn’t paid attention at the beginning or assumed that Mercury Theatre wasn’t on air for some reason got a shock when the Martian attack began, all from the view of soldiers on the front line. Confirming a news story today is easy; there are multiple TV channels including twenty-four hour news channels, radio stations, and online news papers, all capable of updating as news breaks. Even social media will explode with news as it happens*. In 1938, radio was it. Tuning a radio station in took some effort, so changing the station to get a second feed meant time lost. Few people would see a need to change the station during breaking news**. Someone turning the radio play on after it had started would have no idea that what he or she was hearing was a work of fiction. With tension building in Europe, the breakout of a war was a strong possibility. The reaction was unprecedented and became breaking news itself. The War of the Worlds is memorable, thus it became a classic radio play.
As with so many other classics seen over the run of Lost in Translation, The War of the Worlds was remade and adapted to other media. There has been two movies, one in 1953, the other in 2005, and a TV series in 1988. The radio play has been influential, leading to works like the 1983 NBC TV movie, Special Bulletin, and the 1989 movie, Spaced Invaders. The latter was a comedy, released in 1990, starring Royal Dano, Douglas Barr, and introduced Arianna Richards. The cast comprised of solid comedy character actors. Douglas Barr was best known from his work on the TV series, The Fall Guy, as the sidekick to Lee Majors’ bounty Hunter, Colt Seavers.
The movie begins with the Imperial Atomic Space Navy Battle Group Nine. The admiral in charge has been replaced because of how poorly the Martian fleet is faring against the Arcturans. A new edict is in place; all Martian ships, no matter the size, are to be equipped with an Enforcer Drone, to ensure that all orders are carried out to the letter. A Martian who fails to follow those orders to the letter will, like the admiral was, be subject to “disciplinary termination”.
In the space between the orbit of Mars and Earth, a small scout ship carries our little green heroes – Captain Bipto, the commanding officer; Lt. Giggywig, the second in command; Blaznee, the ship’s pilot; Dr. Ziplock, the ship’s scientist, and Corporal Pez, the designated redshirt. They pick up a broadcast of The War of the Worlds, mistake it for a cry for help from the pathetic humans, and decide to go help the invading forces. Even the ship’s Enforcer Drone agrees with this plan of action, provided that it succeeds. Failure, as always, would result in a disciplinary review.
The source of the “distress call” is traced to Big Bean, Illinois, an agricultural town celebrating both Hallowe’en and the opening of their new exit on the Interstate. The town’s deputy, played by Fred Applegate, waiting for the town’s first speeder, finds it, clocking at 3000mph, well over the speed limit. The speeder crashes on the Wrenchmuller farm and the group, except Blaznee, exit the ship. Bipto takes the lead thorugh fields to a long black patch on the ground. Pez is volunteered to cross it, but he refuses, citing that the patch could be a minefield. Fortunately, Ziplock has a solution, a mechanical scout launched from a mortar. Shortstuff, as the robot gets named, walks out on to the long black patch and promptly fails to explode. Bipto takes the lead and boldy strides on to the patch, where he gets hit by a Cadillac. Giggywig immediately takes command, and orders the rest of the Martians to march on.
Mr. Wrenchmuller (Dano), the owner of the farm where the Martian ship crashed, is facing the loss of his farm. The crops were terrible this past season, and he’s about to lose the only home he knows. The crashing of the Martian saucer gives him a bit of hope. If he can get photos or even capture a live Martian, he could get the money to save his home. With the help of his dog, he sets up a booby trap to catch a Martian.
The invaders find a group of small humans being loaded into a car. The trick-or-treaters include the sheriff’s daughter Kathy (Richards), who dressed as an Alien, and Brian, played by JJ Anderson, who is dressed as a duck. Kathy and her father are new to Big Bean, and neither have quite integrated into town culture yet. The Martians try to threaten the Earth scum, but Mrs. Vanderspool, the evening’s chauffeur played by Patrika Darbo, thinks the costumes are adorable and doesn’t recognize the weapon that she shoves up from Giggywig’s hands. The weapon still discharges, into Giggywig instead.
The Cadillac that hit Bipto goes to the town mechanic. The car’s owner, Klembecker, leaves the Cadillac behind and picks up his truck. Vern, the mechanic, removes the roadkill from the Caddy’s front grille and gets to work repairing the vehicle. Bipto recovers from his injuries, and takes Vern as prisoner. The mechanic is turned into Verndroid, Bipto’s loyal servant, doing everything the Martian bids.
The deputy manages to track the speeding spaceship to the Wrenchmuller farm. Still dazed, he falls back to basics and starts writing tickets – no headlights, no taillights, no license plate, no wheels, and going 2945mph over the speed limit. Blaznee, well aware of the traps set out by Wrenchmuller, gets the deputy to step back to realize just what is happening and to set off one of the traps. The deputy has a moment of clarity just before the bale of hay hits him.
Kathy, who may be the most on the ball person in Big Bean, finds Shortstuff and discovers that the three new kids in alien costumes are really Martians. She covers for them, calling them her surfer cousins from California. Giggywig is still dazed, but Ziplock and Pez get into the tasty ritual they’ve lucked into. Kathy lets Brian in on the secret, that the new kids are invaders, so that she has some help keeping an eye on them. Giggywig recovers, though, and threatens Mrs. Vanderspool again, this time launching a missile. Rightfully upset, Mrs. Vanderspool kicks Giggywig, Ziplock, and Pez out of the car. Kathy says she should go, too, and drags Brian with her. Brian isn’t happy with this; he has to share any candy he gets with his younger sister and his bag is only half full.
Back on the ship, while Blaznee is making repairs, he hears the end of the “distress call”. He gets a sinking feeling, one that gets worse when the Enforcer Drone mentions that there will be a mission review after they leave the planet. Blaznee heads out, more to escape the Drone than anything else.
The townsfolk are starting to piece things together. Wrenchmuller, with photos of the ship, speeds to town to tell people about the invasion. The deputy recovers and heads to town as well. The sheriff tries to keep the calm, but Giggywig makes his television debut. Giggywig has found a target to attack to cow the townsfolk. His first target, though, riles the locals; the new exit is destroyed. The second target, though, lets the townies know exactly where he is. Giggywig has Ziplock and Pez set up a heat ray to attack what he thinks is a missle silo. The attack backfires, and Giggywig hits the emergency summons for the ship.
The rest of the Martians eventually realize that what they heard was fiction, there was no Martian attack on Earth, and that they messed up badly. The ship’s hyperdrive malfunctions, requiring it to return to zero gravity before it implodes, making Big Bean some other universe’s problem. The Enforce Drone decides that the crew needs to be subjected to disciplinary termination. The sheriff listens to Kathy, and, after a call to Strategic Air Command that goes nowhere, becomes the voice of sanity and helps the Martians with their ship. He realizes, with Kathy’s help, that they’re more a danger to themselves than to Big Bean. To quote Kathy, “They’re not evil, just stupid.” By the end, the Martians are back in space. They had to dump everything to achieve orbit. The last item dumped helped out Mr. Wrenchmuller, providing the fertilizer needed to give him a crop to sign over, saving his farm.
Spaced Invaders is a comedy at its heart, and doesn’t try to overreach. The creators, though, did toss a few little details for flavour. The opening credits have Gustav Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War, from The Planets. There are off-hand references to the TV series, My Favourite Martian, including Bipto’s line, “What in the name of my Uncle Martin…” Giggywig marches out at the co-op like George C. Scott did in Patton. The movie may not be in any great movie lists, but it is a fun watch.
As to The War of the Worlds, the radio play appears every so often, acting as counter-point and as punctuation to what is happening in the movie. The movie takes the ideas in the radio play and twist them. What if the Martians weren’t competent? What if the human townsfolk weren’t cowed by Martian weapons? What if the heat ray was used on a corn silo? It’s not a faithful adaptation of the radio play or even of HG Wells’ original work, but Spaced Invaders uses those works to create its own fun story.
Next week, The Bionic Woman.
* With social media feeds like Twitter and Facebook, it’s best to find another source. The general populace isn’t known for wise decision making.
** This still happens today. When major news breaks, people tend to flip to their preferred news provider, be it television, online, or radio. NBC experience this in 1983 while airing the TV movie, Special Bulletin. The movie was set up as a news broadcast, though with fake network names, about a terrorist threat that involved a nuclear bomb. Even with disclaimers, people were fooled into believing that the movie was a real news broadcast, thanks to the use of videotape and the actors adding verbal tics before speaking.
