Hollywood movie adaptations of video games have a poor reputation. The expectation is that the movie won’t capture the essence of the game. The reputation stems from three movies, the first three Hollywood video game adaptations. Street Fighter: The Movie, the third made, is reaching cult classic status, thanks to the strength of Raul Julia’s last movie performance. The second, Double Dragon, was panned by audiences and critics and received a 0% at Rotten Tomatoes. The first video game movie adaptation, though, set the tone.
As a video game, Super Mario Bros. introduced North America to one of the biggest video game franchise produced. Mario first appeared in 1981’s Donkey Kong video arcade game where the goal was to rescue Pauline from the clutches of the titular ape. Luigi joined his brother in 1983’s arcade game Mario Bros. where the pair fought against monsters coming up from New York’s sewers. Their big break through came on the Nintendo Entertainment System in Super Mario Bros. in 1985. The goal in Super Mario was to search through the Mushroom Kingdom and numerous castles to rescue Princess Toadstool from the evil Bowser. Along the way, Mario and Luigi would have to dodge obstacles and enemies, defeating the latter by jumping on them.
The franchise bloomed, adding game sequels, cartoons, spin-offs, and the Hollywood film. Mario has been on every Nintendo console, from the NES through to the Wii and on every handheld system since the Game Boy. The cast of characters has grown as well, with Princesses Daisy and Peach appearing, plus helpers such as Toad and Yoshi, and the Koopa family as villains. Mario, already the world’s most famous plumber, picked up tennis and go-carting, and even got a second career as a doctor. Mario, as a franchise, has done well for Nintendo.
Twenty-one years and nine days ago, the film adaptation of the video game was released. Super Mario Bros. starred a solid cast, with Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi, Samantha Mathis as Daisy, Dennis Hopper as Koopa, Fisher Stevens as Iggy Koopa, and Mojo Nixon as Toad. The plot of the movie had Mario and Luigi Mario, the proprietors and sole employees of Mario Bros. plumbing, cross paths with a young paleontology student named Daisy. Daisy, an orphan raised from an egg by the nuns who found her, gets stalked by Spike and Iggy, who are responsible for a number of women disappearing from Brooklyn. As the pair of kidnappers move in to grab her, she gets a ride from Mario and Luigi, the latter inviting her out to dinner. Iggy and Spike, not really smart enough to know the meaning of the word “quit”, keep following, but wind up grabbing Daniella, Mario’s date, instead after being taken home by the plumber.
Daisy had been working at a dig site in Brooklyn where unusual dinosaur bones had been found. Anthony Scapelli, who owns the Scapelli Construction Company and Scapelli Plumbing, owns the land where the dig is occurring and wants to end the delays. Since Daisy has a court order allowing her to complete her dig, Scapelli uses other means, including sending his own plumbers into the dig site to sabotage it by opening pipes. Fortunately, when Daisy discovers the sabotage, Luigi is with her. Luigi gets Mario and together they shut off the water pouring in. However, they are so focused on their work that Iggy and Spike are able to sneak up, knock the plumbers out, and kidnap Daisy. Mario and Luigi aren’t out of action for long; they’re able to give chase until they run into a chasm and lose track of Daisy. The kidnapped girl, though, appears in a rock, leaning far enough out that Luigi can take the piece of meteorite Daisy wears as a necklace.
Luigi, with a leap of faith, leaps across the chasm and through the rock. Mario hesitates but does follow his brother through what turns out to be a dimensional bridge. Mario lands in a strange world with unusual people driving electric cars. The Mario Bros. get bumped around, mugged, and arrested before they can get their bearings. One of the people they’re arrested with is Toad, a anti-Koopa protest singer. Toad babbles about the fungus covering the city, claiming it’s really the former king and it’s fighting to regain the throne. This earns Toad the sentence of de-evolution, turning him into a Goomba. The Marios do escape and are able to fight back against Koopa, recover the meteorite piece, rescue Daisy and Daniella, and prevent Koopa from merging his dimension with the Earth’s.
The biggest problem with Super Mario Bros. is that it only has a passing resemblence to the video game. Koopa’s world is unlike the worlds in the video game; instead, it’s a dingy, brown place that makes Brooklyn look bright and cheery. When an 8-bit world has more colour than half a movie, something’s gone wrong. The cast does what they can with the script. Dennis Hopper chews the scenery everytime he’s on screen while Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo are fun to watch even if they were drunk on set. Can’t blame them, really. Hopper was meant to be there five weeks, but wound up shooting over seventeen instead. Hoskins and Leguizamo both have excised the movie from their resumes; Hoskins biggest regret was doing Super Mario Bros.
The problems just start with the script, though. The Mario elements are shoe-horned in. Koopa looks like Dennis Hopper with mutant cornrows in his hair instead of the dragon-like Bowser. The Marios don’t get their signature coveralls until the climax. Until then, Mario doesn’t wear red and Luigi doesn’t wear green; the colours the characters use in the game. The Goombas, evil mushrooms with fangs in the video game, became large humanoid dinosaurs with tiny heads, which would better fit a Koopa Troopa, though not really. A viewer would get the feeling that key people in the crew had never played or see played the video game at any point in the twelve years between the release of the game and the release of the movie.
The movie might have been better if it hadn’t been tied to the video game. The basic plot – stop a villainous overlord and his henchmen from merging his dimension with ours – is more than enough for a Hollywood movie. Given that Iggy and Spike don’t have a brain cell between them, the movie could be played as a comedy and aimed at children. Koopa’s dimension was created by the meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs; some of the beasts survived by being pulled to the parallel dimension. The electric cars reflect that there would be no oil from extinct dinosaurs. Even that concept, though, isn’t fully explored. Koopa’s scheme was to save his world; Mario and Luigi, by defeating him, doomed a dimension. Congrats! The Earth is saved, but Daisy’s world must keep suffering.
This isn’t to say that the movie didn’t try to include elements from the video game. The movie starts on a promising note by using the video game’s own soundtrack to open. Yoshi makes an appearance as a pet, and the fungus covering the city does sprout mushrooms to help Mario and Luigi, including providing them with a Bob-omb. Super Mario Bros. was meant to be a prequel, an origins movie. The movie is closer to the earlier arcade game Mario Bros. than it is to Super Mario Bros. For all it’s faults, the movie did win two Saturn awards, one for Best Costume and one for Best Make-Up. But, it’s not a Super Mario movie. The details serve to remind the audience on what could have been. There’s a feeling of a reuse of script or scripts with Mario shoved in.
The main problem is the one seen with Battleship, there are a lot of good ideas being squished into an adaptation that just doesn’t need them and getting wasted. Super Mario Bros. is a mess that can’t use its strong cast to save itself.
Next week, a fan’s take on Mario.
And speaking of the fan take, there is a webcomic based on the work done for the non-existing sequel. The artist has had discussions with the script writers about the aborted sequel and has continued the story.
The plays of William Shakespeare have long been the go-to source for adaptations. Some plays, like Julius Caesar, can be treated as historical drama. Others can transcend their original setting and be placed in almost any setting, with Romeo and Juliet as the exemplar. Romeo and Juliet has been adapted as written, transplanted in time as in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, as an action movie with Romeo Must Die, as science fiction with Romie-0 and Julie-8, as a ballet, as a musical with West Side Story, and even animated, as in the aforementioned Romie-0 and Julie-8. This one play could sustain several months’ worth of columns here at /Lost in Translation/ on its own. If you go back to The Nature of Remakes, I brought up the idea that remakes and adaptations should bring something new to the work. Gnomeo & Juliet is not the first animated version of the play, nor is it the first musical.
What it does bring is garden gnomes.
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies and is typically the first that high school students run into in English classes. The play tells the story of the star-cross’d lovers whose love runs into the feud between their families. Shakespearean tragedies tend to have a body count, and Romeo and Juliet is no exception, albeit having a small number of deaths. Two notable deaths, though, are the title lovers, thus turning the play into a tragedy.
Gnomeo & Juliet, though, is a animated film meant for family viewing. Family fare of late, though, avoid death, especially of the lead characters*. Characters are allowed to be in danger, even in mortal peril, but a “happily ever after” ending is the rule, not the exception. However, older family members may be familiar with Romeo and Juliet as they watch. There are expectations. How does Gnomeo & Juliet fare?
The movie starts with one of the gnome chorus introducing the film, saying that the story has been, “one that has been told. A lot.” Right away, the movie itself is aware that /Romeo and Juliet/ is the most adapted of Shakespeare’s plays. But, the gnome continues, “We’re going to tell it again, but in a different way.” Fair notice that the movie isn’t going to be faithful. However, the gnome then starts with the prologue from the play, ending only when the stage’s trap door opens underneath. The line that got interrupted? “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”
The story takes place in the gardens of Ms Montague, who lives at 2B Verona Drive, and Mr. Capulet, of Not 2B Verona Drive. The Blues, ruled by Gnomeo’s mother Lady Bluebury, maintain Ms Montague’s garden. The Reds, bitter rivals to the Blues, are led by Lord Redbrick, Juliet’s father, and keep Mr. Capulet’s garden in top shape. Gnomeo, who is a combination of Mercutio and Romeo from the play, first appears in a lawnmower race against Tybalt. The race goes to Tybalt, who wins through a low blow. Meanwhile, Juliet is being kept safe by her father and is chafing to get off the pedestal, metaphorically and literally. With help from her confidante, a ceramic frog named Nanette, taking the role of the nurse from the play, Juliet sneaks out to recover a flower in an abandoned yard. Romeo, too, sneaks out, meaning to exact revenge on Tybalt but is distracted by a figure in the moonlight.
For a movie promising to tell the tale differently, it does follows the play. The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet appears and, while not in the same language, it does carry the same sentiment, the pull between duty to family and desire for the young gnome. The feud escalates, leading to the smashing of Tybalt during a fight with Gnomeo and Gnomeo’s exile. It’s only when Gnomeo runs into a statue of William Shakespeare is the audience told the movie isn’t beholden to the play. Even then, the destruction of Juliet’s pedestal by the Terrafirminator while Gnomeo trying to free her was big enough for good old Bill to shout, “I told you so!”
Gnomeo & Juliet is an odd movie. It bounced from Disney to Miramax to finally Starz Entertainment before getting the green light. With music by executive producer Elton John, expectations were mixed. At the same time, the casting was both inspired and ecletic. The title characters were played by James McAvoy, a Shakespearean actor, and Emily Blunt. Maggie Smith, another Shakespearean actor, voiced Lady Bluebury, and Michael Caine provided his talents as Lord Redbrick. Patrick Stewart, also Shakespearean, played the statue of William Shakespeare. Adding to the cast, we have Jason Statham as Tybalt, Ashley Jensen as Nanette, Matt Lucas as Benny**, the counterpart to Benvolio from the play, Jim Cummings as Featherstone, a plastic flamingo, Ozzy Osbourne as Fawn, taking the role of Peter in the play, Dolly Parton as Dolly Gnome, who started the first lawnmower race, and Hulk Hogan as the Terrafirminator Announcer. Add in the gnome chorus working for Lord Redbrick and the ceramic bunnies*** helping Lady Bluebury, and the casting is impressive.
As an adaptation, Gnomeo & Juliet is a little loose with the original, though it does hit the major points of the play up to when the movie says it’s deviating. The biggest change is in tone; the original tragedy is turned into a musical comedy. Yet, there are moments when the original play shines through to add drama. The beats of Romeo and Juliet are still in the movie, and the survival of the leads does become doubtful.
Gnomeo & Juliet did well enough at the theatres that a sequel has been announced. Gnomeo & Juliet: Sherlock Gnomes will introduce the world’s greatest detecting ceramic gnome consultant to solve a mystery haunting the families.
Next week, Super Mario Bros.
* There are exceptions, but they are rare.
** Benny did indeed have a scene where “Benny and the Jets” played. The scene was related to the plot.
*** When the feud breaks out into open warfare, the bunnies paint themselves blue like the extras in Braveheart.
During my review of Dredd, I touched upon the idea of a work being influenced by the current events of its day. Judge Dredd was influenced by movies like Dirty Harry, the beginning of Thatcherism, and the fascism of Spain’s Francisco Franco to become the dystopian future shown in the pages of 2000 AD. While some works can be seen in their historical setting, fantasy and science fiction is meant to transcend the era of creation while still providing a look at society and humanity of the day. Other works, already historical, like Westerns, can still reflect the mores of the time of creation.
Society isn’t static. Mixed-race marriages, for example, was scandalous in 1910 but is mostly a given in 2014*. Adaptations need to adjust for changes in sensibilities. The casual racism in early works such as 1929’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. just won’t fly today and didn’t in the 1979 television adaptation. At the same time, as seen throughout Lost in Translation, the best adaptations come when the crew of the new work respect both the original work and its fans. While the loss of the racism in Buck Rogers didn’t hurt the series, the same couldn’t be said for an All in the Family remake. Groundbreaking for its time, All in the Family looked at bigotry and bigots through the character of Archie Bunker. A remake of the series might not be possible today.
Westerns are in a similar bind. Once the staple of serials, movies, and television, Westerns went through years of desconstruction, especially with Spaghetti Westerns like Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy** before being mostly abandoned after Heaven’s Gate bombed. Westerns would return, reconstructed, but no longer had the cachet that they had in the early years of Hollywood. Even then, many early tropes had been disproven by the advancement of history and the changing view of the era from Wild West to the march of civilization across new states.
Science fiction, as mentioned above, is also vulnerable to the passage of time. I’ve touched on changing technology in an earlier column, but this goes beyond just tech. Take Star Trek. The original Star Trek aired during the Space Race and the Cold War, where exploring the final frontier just beyond Earth’s atmosphere was a competition between the US and the USSR. When Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired in 1987, the Soviet Union had just started a policy of peristroika, reformation of the Communist Party, and glasnost, openess, essentially bringing the Cold War to a close. Space exploration was being done through unmanned probes, satellites, and ground-based installations. Skylab, launched in 1973, had fallen from orbit and disintegrated in the atmosphere in 1979. The trend of cocooning, where people stayed home with families instead of going out, was starting, though wouldn’t get named until the 1990s. Star Trek: TNG reflected the changes. Gone was the maverick captain, commanding the only ship in the sector. Captain Picard reflected a new style of management, one where he weighed the opinions of his officers and crew, and acted in a more deliberate manner.
What happens when the era of the original isn’t taken into account? Or, what if the era of the original is seen as irrelevant? Let’s take a look at two recent financial flops, 2014’s Robocop and 2013’s The Lone Ranger. Please note that I have not yet reviewed the movies as adaptations.
First, Robocop. The original Robocop was released in 1987, near the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term as President of the US. The movie, while being a science fiction action flick, contained heavy amounts of satire of Reagan-era policies. TV series had boiled down to T&A with catch phrases, ie, “I’d buy that for a dollar!” The ozone layer had been destroyed. Detroit had gone bankrupt and was owned by a corporation, with police services privatized. In 2014, it’s not as funny. Television is recovering from being a wasteland, mainly through expanded cable stations and competition with other streams of entertainment on the Internet, but catch phrases still come up in sitcoms. The destruction of the ozone layer has led to drastic climate change over the past decade, with weather records broken yearly and tropical storms growing worse. Detroit, while in shaky financial shape in the 1980s, has declared bankruptcy, though police services haven’t yet been privatized. Military services, though, have, with Blackwater/Xe/Academi LLC being one of many private “security” firms to receive contracts from the US government during both the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq war. Suddenly, the satire, pointed but exaggerated, in the original Robocop seems prophetic and painful now. Removing that satire, though, removes a lot of the heart of the movie.
The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, had other problems. The big one was the change in how audiences approach Westerns. The classic trope of good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats has given way to nuance. The idea of a First Nation person being a sidekick doesn’t sit well anymore. A series with a long history, the original Lone Ranger appeared on the radio, in books, on television, and in movies, but had all but disappeared after 1961, with the exception of the 1981 The Legend of the Lone Ranger, which had the controversy of Clayton Moore, TV’s Lone Ranger, being sued to not use the trademark mask, and a pilot to a shelved 2003 WB network series. Modern audiences who hadn’t grown up with Westerns as an entertainment staple, simply weren’t drawn in, even with Johnny Depp as Tonto.
The time a work was originally created is, indeed, a factor in how successful an adaptation can be. A remake or an adaptation that fails to account for the change in societal acceptances since the creation of the original may fall flat. Future reviews will take into account how the difference in time affects the newer work.
Next week, Gnomeo and Juliet.
* Depending on location, but areas where mixed-race marriages are forbidden are well in the minority.
** A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
May had a lot of news about upcoming adaptations and remakes.
Farscape movie in the works.
Rockne O’Bannon, creator of Farscape, has confirmed the rumours that a Farscape movie was in production, at least as far as the script. The confirmation was announced at WonderCon.
Prequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in pre-production.
The movie brings back Michelle Yeoh and fight coordinator Yuen Woo-ping to present what Yu Shu Lien did before the events of the original movie. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out in 2000; the delay was caused by a rights conflict between the studio and the estate of Wang Du Lu, whose novels were the base of the movie.
Six issue Avengers mini-series coming from Boom!
John Steed and Emma Peel will be back in a comics mini-series called Steed and Mrs. Peel. The cover art in the article really does suit the show.
Casting started for the Jem movie.
After seeing how crowdfunding worked with Veronica Mars, the director of the live-action Jem and the Holograms turned to YouTube and asked for fans to sumbit video auditions for online casting.
Twin Peaks returns in fan-made web sequel.
Fans of David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks have begun the 25th anniversary celebrations by having a third season done on Twitter. The central repository for the fan series is Enter the Lodge, where the tweets are collected.
Hector and the search for a distributor.
Hector and the Search for Happiness, based on the book of the same name by Francois Lelord, has been picked up by Relativity. The movie, starring Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike, tells the story of a psychiatrist travelling the world in search of happiness.
JK Rowling novel to become TV series.
The Casual Vacancy, JK Rowling’s first novel after finishing the Harry Potter series, has been picked up as a BBC and HBO co-production. The book will be turned into a mini-series, following the town of Pagford, England, after the local councilor dies.
More Jem casting news.
All the actresses have experience to some degree but aren’t major names. Hayley Kiyoko, playing Aja, has an EP, “A Belle to Remember“, on her resume. Aubrey Peeples, playing Jem, has performed as a singer, including on the TV series Nashville, but doesn’t have a release. The live action adaptation still has some hurdles, especially with the original creator Christy Marx not involved, but the casting of the core allows the movie to be about Jem and the Holograms and not furthering the singing careers of the leads.
SyFy getting in on the adaptation train.
Four new series on SyFy, all of them are adaptations. Letter 44, Pax Romana, and Ronin are all based on comics. The fourth, The Magicians, is based on the novels by Lev Grossman.
Dad’s Army to hit the silver screen.
The BBC sitcom Dad’s Army is being adapted as a film. Toby Jones will play Captain Mainwaring, portrayed by Arthur Lowe in the original. Bill Nighy will be Sergeant Wilson. The original TV series focused on a British Home Guard unit in World War II. The writer of the original show, Jimmy Perry, added a provision when he signed over the rights that he wouldn’t have to write anything in the adaptation.
Sailor Moon cast announced.
More on the Sailor Moon news from last month. The Sailor Senshi have been cast, with Kotono Mitsuishi is back as Usagi. The character designs for the new series are based on their appearances in the manga.
Toy and snack movies ahead!
First, Barbie. A live action Barbie comedy is in the works from Sony. It’s not too surprising a move; the animated /Barbie/ features have done well and the online series /Life in the Dreamhouse/ has gone four seasons. Mattel, like all toy companies except Hasbro, is also trying to recover from a drop in sales in the past year.
Next, Peeps. The pink and yellow marshmallow candies are following in the footsteps of The LEGO Movie. Adam Rifkin will helm the movie, basing it on the Peeps dioramas his niece and nephew made.
Another Disney ride gets tapped for a movie.
In celebration of the attraction’s 50th anniversary, It’s a Small World will be turned into a family movie. The earworm generating song will be part of the movie. Disney is batting .500 with rides turned into movies lately; while The Haunted Mansion stumbled a bit, Pirates of the Caribbean became a huge hit. It’s a matter of finding the right team. Or inserting a subliminal message into the song.
Minecraft, the movie.
The producers of The LEGO Movie will bring the digital version of playing with blocks to the big screen. Warner Bros, the studio involved, will also work on a live-action tie-in for the movie.
Scarface to be remade, too.
The remake will bring the story into the today’s world. The immigrant’s story will see Tony’s background change to Mexican from the original Italian as seen in the 1932 and 1983 versions. The filmmakers are looking to cast a Latino in the role.
Marvel’s Peggy Carter to get her own series.
Peggy Carter, who first appeared in Captain America, is getting her own spin-off series on ABC in the fall. The series will be set in 1946 following the events at the end of the movie. This comes in the wake of the renewal of Agents of SHIELD. Meanwhile, over at Warner, no news of a Wonder Woman movie.
Private Benjamin to be remade.
The Goldie Hawn movie about a spoiled rich girl who joins the Army is being remade, with Rebel Wilson in the title role. The update will see a redneck join with the rich girl.
Animated Flintstones movie to be produced by Will Farrell and Adam McKay.
The Stone Age family will return to the big screen animated instead of live-action. The movie will be the first animated film of the characters since the 1966 The Man Called Flintstone.
Go, go Power Rangers!
Lionsgate has licensed Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers from Saban for a reboot movie.
Didn’t see the Rosemary’s Baby remake? You’re not alone.
Maybe Mother’s Day wasn’t the best day for the airing. The remake was up against A Game of Thrones, the season finale of Once Upon a Time, and Cosmos.
Corner Gas movie being Kickstartered.
The Canadian sitcom about life in Dog River, Saskatchewan is being turned into a movie if the Kickstarter campaign is successful.
Blade Runner sequel may see Harrison Ford return as Deckard.
Ridley Scott may provide the answer to, “Is Deckard a replicant?” in the Blade Runner sequel. Ford himself showed interest during an AMA on Reddit.
Infamous Chick tract being adapted as movie.
Dark Dungeons, Jack Chick’s infamous anti-Dungeons & Dragons comic tract, is getting the movie treatment. Zombie Orpheus Entertainment will be treating the tract with the respect the company, staffed by gamers, think is due and will play it straight and accurate.
Ancient history has fascinated many people. Universities offer entire departments of history and classics based on research by historians and archaeologists. However, there are people who have more fanciful beliefs on what happened before recorded history. There are those who believe that life here began out there, that ancient astronauts landed here to become the first humans. Others believe that the ancient astronauts were once worshipped as gods after they provided such cultural leaps as written language and large works of art and engineering*. While evidence is lacking, the concept of ancient astronauts can be jumping off point for a work of fiction.
Stargate is one such work of fiction. Released in 1994, the movie established that the Egyptian god Ra was really an alien who needed the body of humans to maintain his immortality. Getting to Earth involved travelling long distances, using a device the ancient Egyptians referred to as a “stargate”. Long since buried, the artifact was recovered in the late 20s and became an object of study, which is where the main characters come in. First, Daniel Jackson, played by James Spader. Doctor Jackson is a proponent of the ancient astronaut hypothesis, and has studied ancient Egyptian history and languages. His research leads to him being recruited by a joint United States Air Force and civilian project to decipher hieroglyphs found on a relic. On the Air Force’s side, Colonel Jonathan “Jack” O’Neil, played by Kurt Russel, has been brought out of his retirement as a failsafe in case the relic is operational.
Doctor Jackson figures out the symbols, realizing that they’re not words, but coordinates that inform the Stargate the location of the other end. A team is put together to explore what lies on the other side, including Colonel O’Neil and Doctor Jackson, the latter to work out how to return to Earth, the former with orders to plant a bomb to destroy the gate. On the new world, the team discovers a city of humans, all speaking a variation of ancient Egyptian. During the search for the coordinates to Earth, Ra appears in his pyramidal spaceship to search for a new body. The presence of O’Neil’s team encourages a revolution against Ra by the populace, one that ends when O’Neil’s bomb detonates as Ra tried to escape in his spacecraft. Doctor Jackson remains behind, having married Sha’uri. The movie ends with O’Neil and Jackson saying their farewells and promising to see each other some time in the future.
Stargate could have ended there, its main plot wrapped up. There was room for further movies; the idea of turning a popular movie into a TV series wasn’t known at the time. Other than M*A*S*H, the only other recent example was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had started airing in March of 1997, with Mortal Kombat coming in 1998. June of 1997 saw the pilot of Stargate: SG-1 debut. “Children of the Gods” aired on Showtime, as would the first half of the series’ run. The bulk of the cast of the movie was replaced, with Richard Dean Anderson playing Colonel Jack O’Neill, “with two l’s” and Michael Shanks playing Daniel Jackson. “Children of the Gods” starts with the Stargate, inactive but guarded over the three year difference between the movie’s release and the airing of the pilot, coming to life. Beings similar to Ra and his soldiers march through, killing three of the guards and kidnapping the one woman on the squad. As a result, Colonel O’Neill is brough back from retirement again, this time by General Hammond instead of General West. Hammond gets the truth from O’Neill in a quick recap of the movie, including the part where the Colonel sent the bomb to Ra’s spaceship instead of destroying the Stargate itself. With that news, a message is sent to Jackson, paving a way for a squad to go through the gate.
While Dr. Jackson and Col. O’Neill catch up, the alien who attacked the Air Force team on Earth come through the Stargate on Abydos, the same one the O’Neill’s squad had used. The alien takes away several of the natives with him, including Daniel’s wife and O’Neill’s adopted son, Skarra**. Jackson returns to Earth with O’Neill, determined to find his wife. A briefing by General Hammond introduces the core concept of the TV series, the SG teams. Each team would be sent through the Stargate to the various viable coordinates discovered, coordinates that Dr. Jackson and Captain Samantha Carter, played by Amanda Tapping, have worked out. Jackson and Carter hit it off immediately, as the good doctor’s previous research helps her with her theoretical astrophyics. Together, they work out that many of the coordinates have drifted just from the movement of the galaxy.
With the coordinates of the apparent origin of the new alien, Apophis, teams SG-1 and SG-2 move out. The new world is unlike Abydos. Where Abydos was a desert, the new planet is verdant, covered with plants. SG-1, led by Col. O’Neill, is able to find the people taken by Apophis, not just from Abydos but from many worlds with their own cultures. Apophis, ultimately, escapes with Daniel’s wife and Skarra having been transformed. However, Teal’c, played by Christopher Judge and one of Apophis’s guards known as a Jaffa, is impressed by how SG-1 handles itself and believes that they can succeed in defeating the alien and switches sides.
With the pilot over, the hard part comes. The cast and crew have to deliver a strong story featuring the characters weekly. Over ten seasons, the longest an American science fiction series has run***, they did just that. The movie took a look at first contact and the difficulty of communicating, even when the two sides can trace back lingusitic history. What Stargate SG-1 did was expand the setting, building up Goa’uld and the Jaffa, introducing the Asgard, a species whose appearance was based on the Greys and were responsible for Norse myth, and allowing the technology base on Earth to grow as the series progressed. During this, two spin-off series came about; Stargate: Atlantis, set in a distant galaxy with a team of explorers and specialists who knew that they may never return back home because of the energy required to maintain a wormhole that far, and Stargate: Universe, set on board the Ancient starship Destiny with a crew who are trying to find their way back to Earth.
Stargate-SG1 built on top of what was shown in Stargate, taking what was discovered and expanding. The key elements, ancient astronauts and the Stargate’s coordinates, were in the movie and were fully exploited in a way that was consistant with the events in Stargate. The TV series used its format to expand the setting, adding to the movie without ever taking away from it.
Next week, the May round up on adaptational news.
* For example, the Egyptian pyramids and the Nazca lines in Peru.
** Skaara was played by Alexis Cruz in both the movie and the pilot, making him the only actor who was in both.
*** There are terms and conditions here. Star Trek had more seasons but over multiple incarnations. Doctor Who has lasted longer, but is British. General Hospital was a long running soap opera that pre-dated television, but wasn’t science fiction. Still, Stargate SG-1 deserves recognition of being able to last as long as it did over two cable stations.
Apologies for the hiatus. I’m taking this week off to recharge and to get ready for the next batch of reviews. Lost in Translation should return next week with Stargate SG-1.
Science fiction in comic books wasn’t doing well in Britain of 1977, with titles whithering. However, with Star Wars on the horizon, a new publication, 2000 AD aimed to change that. Several characters debuted in the weekly, including Judge Dredd. Dredd, as created by John Wagner, was meant to be a tough cop along the lines of “Dirty” Harry Callahan on a big bike. However, artist Carlos Ezquerra took the description of “judge, jury, and executioner” and created a faceless law enforcer, with overtones of the fascism he grew up with in Spain*. The iconic helmet was inspired by a medieval executioner’s hood.
As the story got re-written to match the artwork, the dystopia of Mega-City One grew. Despite 2000 AD being a British comic, Mega-City One was placed on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The vision of the setting was an outsider’s look at American society through the lens of celebrity and violence. As the political shift to the right grew in the late 70s, with Margaret Thatcher becoming the UK Prime Minister in 1979 and Ronald Reagan becoming the American president in 1981, Dredd’s world picked up fascist overtones.
With 2000 AD running weekly, and the Judge Dredd Megazine running monthly, many stories were created. The title was treated as an open sandbox, letting writers tell whatever story they could in the setting, with Dredd himself the element that tied everything together. The open nature of the title allowed for elements like psychic abilities, the supernatural, and even time travel to be introduced.
In 1995, the first film adaptation came out. The movie had Sylvester Stallone starring as Dredd. There were a few issues with the film, leading to a lukewarm reception. One big problem, though, was that the studio didn’t want to keep Stallone’s face hidden under the helmet. In the comic, Dredd never removed his helmet; he was a faceless law enforcer. Removing his helmet meant adding a sense of humanity to the character that was never there.
With the 35th anniversary of Dredd’s creation in 2012, a new movie was released. Dredd would see Karl Urban in the titular role. Urban’s previous work includes Lord of the Rings, the JJ Abrams Star Trek, and Doom. In each of those movies, he portrayed his role well, to the point of channelling DeForest Kelly in Trek as Dr. McCoy. In Dredd, Urban became the role again, keeping Dredd’s ever-present scowl on his face.
The movie pulled in many elements from Judge Dredd’s long run, some only showing up as minor details, like in the graffiti scrawled on the walls of Peach Trees. Mega-City One was shown as a huge sprawl, dotted by towering City Blocks like Peach Trees. The inside of Peach Trees was desolate, almost soulless. Ma-ma herself was created for the movie, but she appeared first in the Judge Dredd Megazine in an origins story.
The movie went well out of its way to be a proper Judge Dredd story without adapting one straight from 2000 AD. The problems with the 1995 Judge Dredd were nowhere to be seen. Being a fan of the character, Urban argued that Dredd would never take off his helmet, even in a scene written where he would. As mentioned above, at no point did Dredd take off his helmet. The only time he was seen helmetless was when he was getting dressed; even then, his features were shrouded in shadow.
To include all the aspects of the comic would take far more time than a ninety-six minute movie has to spare. Still, hints of the larger setting and history appeared. Judge Anderson and her psychic abilities came straight from the comic, hinting at mutants and the Dark Judges. The best way to explore the full setting may be a weekly series, giving time to set up arcs and to delve into the setting. However, Dredd, while scratching the surface of the setting, captured the comic’s feel without having to change who Judge Dredd is.
Next week, Stargate-SG1.
* Spain was ruled by Francisco Franco from 1938 to 1975 as a dictatorship, which coloured Carlos Ezquerra’s view of authority figures.
Fairy tales are a popular sources for adaptations. Disney grew on the strength of Snow White and Cinderella. Of late, the trend has become remaking the tales in a darker, grittier version. TV series like Grimm and Once Upon a Time and movies like Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland* have taken classic tales and explored the darker side. Even Supernatural has explored American mythology on its way to popularity.
Hansel & Gretel, Witch Hunters was meant to cash in on the trend. Released in 2013, though originally scheduled for early spring 2012, Hansel & Gretel continued the classic fairy tale of two children abandoned in a forest who find a cottage made of candy and must escape the witch who lives inside. Like most fairy tales, the original story of Hansel and Gretel warns children to be careful, to not succumb to desires, like eating too much candy, and to respect other people’s homes.
The movie tells the tale before the credits, using it as a mini-origins story. The credits were used to show Hansel and Gretel’s career of hunting witches using animation based on the artwork of the purported period. When the live action returns, Hansel, played by Jeremy Renner, and Gretel, played by Gemma Arterton, are grown up and have been brought in by the mayor of Augsburg to rid the town of witches and find the children taken by them. However, the head witch, Muriel, played by Famke Jannsen channeling her inner Morticia Addams, is using the upcoming blood moon to make sure that all dark witches will no longer burn on pyres. Along the way, the witch hunting siblings run into a fanboy who has a collection of their exploits and a poster of Gretel on his bedroom wall.
Hansel & Gretel, Witch Hunters is well aware of what sort of movie it is. It doesn’t take itself seriously, yet shows equal amounts of horror, action, comedy, and drama. The weapons the siblings use add to the over-the-top nature of the film; Gretel carries a double-barrelled, fully automatic crossbow. The movie becomes Strawberry Fields, from Casino Royale, and Hawkeye, from Marvel’s The Avengers fight the supernatural. Yet, it works.
The movie is a re-imagining of the fairy tale, continuing the story of Hansel and Gretel past their defeat of the witch of the candy cottage by using her own over agaisnt her. Hansel & Gretel, Witch Hunters expands the story and the setting, adding twists that both surprise and follow from the characters while still keeping a sense of fun in the mix. The writing showed an understanding of the fairy tale and an eye on how a pair of orphans could survive while adding little quirks, like the fanboy, that spoke to the desired audience.
Next week, Dredd.
* Yes, Alice isn’t a fairy tale, but does share some characterstics of such a story.
A change of plans this week. I’ve been holding on to some items too long and I realized that I hadn’t had a round up last month. On with the show!
A Game of Thrones, the Movie
With the TV series catching up to George R.R. Martin’s writing, something needs to be done. One potential fix, feature-length movies. The movies would be prequels, set 90 years prior to the start of the books. This should give Martin the time to finish or at least pad out the series long enough to prevent the TV series from overtaking.
Jem and the Holograms to get film treatment.
Truly outrageous! The movie has a webpage set up where fans can make suggestions on plot and casting and submit audition video. However, Christy Marx, the creator of the original series, is not involved. How this will affect the movie remains to be seen.
No more Inspector Morse adaptations?
Creator Colin Dexter has added a clause in his will that will prevent other actors from playing Inspector Morse. He feels that the performances of both John Thaw and Shaun Evans cannot be surpassed. The clause can be challenged, but it is likely that Dexter’s estate will agree with him.
Left Behind movie series to be rebooted.
Nicholas Cage will star in the remake of the adaptation of the first of the Left Behind books. Release date has been announced for October 3. The first adaptation was by Kirk Cameron in 2000, with the sequels released direct-to-video.
Fox to spin-off a Mystique movie while Sony does the same with the Sinister Six.
While Marvel Studios is busy with the Avengers, the licensees aren’t content to be left in the dust. Fox has plans for a Mystique movie to go along with the Wolverine series. Over at Sony, the Sinister Six, Spider-foes each and every one of them, has signed on director Drew Goddard. The movies mean that Marvel will have more characters on screen than rival DC Comics, despite the latter’s owner, Warner, having not licensed any character to another studio.
New Sailor Moon series to debut July, broadcast includes Internet streaming.
The Pretty Soldier-Sailor is returning and can be seen through Niconico Douga, a video streaming site similar to YouTube. An account will be needed to watch but the new Sailor Moon will be available internationally. The build up has been kept low, with very little hype to create expectations.
Cracked.com lists the five adaptations that are overdone.
Beyond just naming, Cracked looks at why the movies don’t work well. The key appears to be the creativity ends with the original idea and doesn’t continue through the actual production.
Mrs. Doubtfire sequel being written.
Chris Columbus, the director of the original, has been signed, as has Mrs. Doubtfire himself, Robin Williams. The original movie hit theatres in 1993, and a sequel was attempted in 2001 but never got past pre-production. Given the age of the original movie, it may be Williams’ name that proves to be the draw.
Princess Jellyfish to get live-action adaptation.
The manga Princess Jellyfish, aka Kuragame Hime, will be getting the live-action treatement. The official site is now up. Release date is December, 2014.
Once again, the review is about another movie still in theatres, so I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible.
March turned out to be movie-filled for me, as I managed to catch several in the theatres. The first three, The LEGO Movie, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and Veronica Mars were all adaptations. The last movie, Muppets Most Wanted, falls into an odd designation.
I’ve reviewed Muppet movies in the past, with The Muppet Movie and The Muppets. Muppets Most Wanted is a sequel, the eighth of The Muppet Movie as Bunsen Honeydew points out in the movie, and all of them coming from The Muppet Show. Muppet movies fall under one of three types. The first type is where the Muppets play themselves. The best example is The Muppet Movie, where it was sort of how the Muppets came together. The second type is where the Muppets play characters based on themselves*. The Great Muppet Caper is a good example of this second type. The third type is where the Muppets play completely different characters, usually in an adaptation. Muppet Treasure Island shows that the Muppets can be both themselves and another character in this third type. Both The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted are of the first type of Muppet movie. This is where it gets difficult to figure out whether the lastest film is a sequel, an adaptation, or a bizarre hybrid out of Bunsen Honeydew’s labs.
Muppets Most Wanted picks up right where The Muppets ended, with the sets being struck, the props being returned, the extras going home, and even the cameras being put away. All the cameras, but one, which is still rolling. The Muppets don’t just break the fourth wall; they shatter it, twist it, and turn it into origami. After a song about making the sequel, they are convinced by Dominic Badguy**, played by Ricky Gervais, to take The Muppet Show on a world tour. The origami crane that was once the fourth wall is now a Moebius strip. Meanwhile, the new number one criminal, Konstantine, who looks very similar to Kermit, has escaped. And the camera is still rolling.
There is no doubt that the movie is well worth seeing. Danny Trejo in a song and dance number alone is worth admission. Psycho Drive-In has a full review of the movie. The question, though, is Muppets Most Wanted a remake, reboot, or adaptation, or is it just a sequel? To even try to answer that question, I had to examine the details. First, Muppets Most Wanted happily calls itself a sequel to The Muppets, which was a reboot of Muppet movies that owed its existance to The Muppet Movie. At the same time, the latest film couldn’t exist without The Muppet Show. While the rest of the movies wouldn’t exist, at least in their existing forms, there’s always a possiblility that Muppet movies would happen. Muppets Most Wanted needs The Muppet Show for the plot. Indeed, the movie shows the backstage shenanigans that happen when Kermit is removed from managing the show.
Yes, Muppets Most Wanted is an adaptation. The form is of a documentary of The Muppet Show on tour with a criminal genius using the ensuing chaos for his greatest crime, except for being a documentary. All the hallmarks of both The Muppet Show and previous Muppet movies – zaniness, camoes, self-deprecating humour, Miss Piggy trying to woo Kermit, severe damage to the fourth wall – are on display. The Muppets themselves are as people remember. Thus, Muppets Most Wanted is not only a sequel of The Muppet Movie, but an adaptation of The Muppet Show, one that has raised the bar on expectations of Muppet films to come.
Next week, Miami Vice.
* I know the Muppets are puppets, but bear with me. Each Muppet has a distinct personality that has been shown for up to fifty years.
** Pronounced Bad-zhee. It’s French.
