Ran into a problem with the next review. It should be up next week. Apologies for not having anything ready this week.
The animated adaptation is an odd duck. The requirements of a cartoon can be at odds with the original work. Sometimes, the results can be head-scratching, such as the Rambo animated series*. However, not every decision comes from left field. In 1991, Universal Studios wanted to break into family entertainment, and decided to create an educational series based on Back to the Future, the third movie of the series having been released the previous year.
Back to the Future starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as Doc Emmett Brown. Set in Hill Valley, the movie starts with showing the trouble that Marty’s father has with his employer, Biff Tannen, played by Thomas F. Wilson. His mother isn’t faring much better, being depressed. Marty meets up with his friend, Doc Brown, who is either a crackpot or a brilliant mad scientist. Doc has a new invention, a flux capacitor built into a DeLorean, turning the car into a time machine. To achieve the 1.21 gigawatts** needed to power the flux capacitor, Doc had stolen plutonium from Libyan terrorists, who arrive to retrieve the material. Doc and Marty get in the DeLorean to escape the Libyans and achieve 88 miles per hour, triggering the flux capacitor.
Doc and Marty arrive in Hill Valley of 1955. Without spare plutonium, they need to find the Doc’s younger self to get his help to produce the energy needed to activate the flux capacitor. Time travel can be tricky, though. Marty meets his mother’s younger self, and accidentally changes history and risks his own existance as his mother becomes infatuated with him. The energy is easy to find; the town’s clock stopped working when it was struck by lightning. Restoring Marty, though, requires making sure his parents meet and fall in love. Biff unwittingly provides the circumstances, and after Marty’s father decks him, Marty’s own existance is saved. Doc takes Marty back to 1985 before taking the DeLorean to the distance future of 2015. The movie ends with Doc returning, needing the help of Marty and his girlfriend, Jennifer, to fix a problem with their children.
Back to the Future Part II picks up where the first movie left off. Marty’s son is being pressured into crime by Biff’s grandson, Griff. Marty poses as his own son, preventing his arrest and resulting in Griff being taken into custody instead. Afterwards, Marty picks up a sports almanac that includes the results of matches after 1985. Jennifer, though, discovers that her future marriage isn’t as wonderful as she’d want. The future Marty is being goaded, much like his son was, into a shady deal. The future Biff notices the time machine and steals both it and the almanac and travels back in time to give the book to his younger self before returning with Doc and Marty none the wiser.
When Doc and Marty return to 1985, Hill Valley is not like it was when they left. Marty’s father died in 1973 and Marty’s mother was forced to re-marry, this time to Biff, who is the wealthiest and most corrupt person in the town. Marty and Doc escape, using the DeLorean to go back to 1955. Realizing what happened, Marty retrieves the almanac from Biff while avoiding being seen in the middle of the events of the first movie. Before Marty can join Doc in the DeLorean, the car is hit by lightning and disappears. Moments later, a courier arrives with a letter from Doc in 1885.
Back to the Future Part III, filmed with Part II, continues right where the previous movie left off. Doc’s letter details where the DeLorean can be found and, with the help of 1955’s Doc, the car is repaired. However, Marty notices Doc’s tombstone dated six days after the letter; Doc was killed by Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen, Biff’s ancestor. Marty travels back to 1885, arriving in the middle of a cavalry charge. The fuel line is damaged, so Marty hides the car in a cave and walks into Hill Valley. Marty runs into Buford, but is rescued by Doc. With the knowledge of his fate, Doc agrees to leave 1885, but he needs a way to get the DeLorean up to 88mph, since gas isn’t available yet.
The solution is to have a locomotive push the car to the needed speed. While exploring a rail spur that could be used, Doc and Marty see a runaway wagon. Doc rescues the passenger, Clara, played by Mary Steenburgen. They fall in love. During a town festival, Buford tries to kill Doc, but Marty intervenes. The name on the tombstone disappears, but the date doesn’t. Someone is fated to die, but who it is unknown. Doc tries to explain to Clara that he’s from the future, but she doesn’t believe him. He goes to the saloon to binge, has one shot of whiskey and passes out. Buford arrives, but Marty, having learned his lesson from the previous two movies, refuses the duel. Buford has his gang kidnap Doc, forcing Marty to fight him. During the fight, the tombstone is broken and Buford is defeated.
Clara, heartbroken, leaves town. On the train, she hears about Doc in the saloon and how sad he was. She heads back to town to Doc’s home and sees the model of the time machine. Realizing that he was telling the truth, Clara chases after him. Meanwhile, Doc and Marty have acquired a locomotive and are getting it in position. Doc has created explosives to give the locomotive the boost it needs to reach 88mph. Clara catches up and boards the locomotive just as Doc climbs into the DeLorean. Doc goes back to help her, but the DeLorean reaches 88mph, sending Marty back to 1985. Doc and Clara, though, escape the locomotive’s demise thanks to the hoverboard Marty picked up in 2015.
Back in 1985, the DeLorean arrives in front of a diesel locomotive. Marty escapes the car, but the DeLorean is destroyed. He returns home to discover that the timeline has been restored to the way it was after the second movie. The next day, he and Jennifer return to the wreckage of the DeLorean. The warning signals start, though no train can be seen. Moments later, a steam locomotive appears, with Doc, Clara, and their sons, Jules and Verne. Marty’s future has changed, and the future remains unwritten. Doc leaves with his family in the train to an unknown time.
The Back to the Future cartoon continues the adventures of the Brown Family, with Marty tagging along. Doc and his family have returned to Hill Valley of, well, if not 1985, shortly afterwards. The DeLorean has been rebuilt, and the locomotive is also around. Both vehicles are used to get the Browns and Marty to the adventure. Christopher Lloyd returns as Doc Brown for the live action segments, and Mary Steenburgen and Thomas F. Wilson reprise their characters in the cartoon. Playing Marty is David Kaufman, who also took over another Michael J. Fox role, that of Stuart Little in the TV series of the movie of the book of the same name. While Lloyd was in the live action segments, Dan Castellaneta played the voice of the animated Doc, sounding so much like Lloyd that one episode had a jump cut from the animated Doc speaking to Lloyd as Doc commenting without being jarring.
The change of focus from Marty to the Brown Family takes advantage of Doc being a mad scientist. Educational content is easier to introduce when the starring character is a scientist. The episodes aren’t just educational, though. Over the two seasons of thirteen episodes each, the Brown Family uses the time machines to visit different eras. The eye to detail for the different years helps with the series. The episode “Swing Low Sweet Chariot Race” features dialogue in Latin that sounds authentic***. Fashion is appropriate for the years featured.
Characterization, critical for an adaptation of any stripe, is kept. The characters are recognizable by their actions. Even the character designs are decent. Marty looks like Marty, and, given the live action segments, Doc looks right. Even the various Tannens, from Biff to his ancestor, Lord Biffington of Tannenshire, are recognizable. The animators put in an effort to create designs that could be animated without losing who each person was.
Each episode stands alone, unlike the movies. This is more from the nature of an educational animated series that could be rerun out of order than from anything else. However, the series avoids using time travel as a deus ex machina. Time travel is just as often the cause of problems as anything else, and only once is a time machine, in this case, the locomotive, used to fix a problem. Even then, the solution needed the locomotive more than it needed the flux capacitor. Do the episodes feel like watching the movies? Not really, but that’s a function of the time available. Thirty minutes, including commercials and science segments, isn’t enough to delve into complex temporal mechanics. The format works against the adaptation, even taking into account that the Brown Family is scientifically minded to begin with. There isn’t enough time to delve into the use and abuse of temporal mechanics and deliver a physics lesson while still working in a bit of adventure. The writers did make the effort, though.
The live action segments feature Lloyd as Doc Brown, either introducing the episode or setting up the science experiment. Lloyd remains in character through the segments, even while narrating the experiment. The experiments themselves were created by and starred Bill Nye the Science Guy, and were based on an aspect introduced in the episode proper. While temporal physics weren’t touched, possibly because of difficulty recreating temporal experiments in a kitchen safely, the sciences involved were physics and chemistry. The experiments could stand alone as part of a lesson.
The Back to the Future cartoon was ambitious for its time. Universals first foray into family entertainment and educational cartoons worked, thanks to the core characters from the movies. The result was entertaining, though time travel wasn’t used as thoroughly as the movies. The animated series had some rough spots, but it did make the effort to keep the feel of Back to the Future.
* A cartoon aimed at the pre-teen crowd based on two R-rated movies.
** Or possibly jiggawatts.
*** Though someone more familiar with Latin should weigh in.
Technology is constantly changing, updating and upgrading as new techniques are discovered. As has been mentioned before, new technology has been the motivation behind remakes and adaptations. The advent of computer animation has made some expensive or time-consuming effects of the past easier to do today. Stop-motion animation has given way to CG animation. Practical effects, though, still exist. It can be easier to film a practical effect and enhance it with CG than to start from scratch with computer animation. That said, the use of CG animation can sometimes lose the charm of a work. The temptation to tinker can be great, but too much tinkering can lose the audience. It’s a fine line.
In 1964, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the minds behind Supermarionation, created Thunderbirds. The series featured the Tracy family and International Rescue, an organization dedicated to helping people in danger. Jeff Tracy, the family patriarch, funded the organization and its vehicles, piloted by his five sons. Aiding the Tracies were Kyrano, his daughter Tin-Tin, the engineer, Brains, and International Rescue’s London Agent, Lady Penelope and her butler, Parker. Together, International Rescue performed daring rescues and battled the nefarious Hood.
The Thunderbirds themselves were the stars. Each vehicle had a dedicated purpose. Thunderbird 1, piloted by Scott Tracy, was a hypersonic rocket plane, capable of reaching any place on Earth quickly. Thunderbird 2, piloted by Virgil, was the heavy lifter, ferrying rescue equipment and modular pods where needed. Thunderbird 3, piloted by Alan, was a re-usable rocket used for space rescue. Thunderbird 4, piloted by Gordon, was a submarine, typically carried by Thunderbird 2 to where it’s needed. Thunderbird 5, manned by John, was a space station used for monitoring communications for calls for help. Lady Penelope had FAB-1, a pink six-wheeled Rolls-Royce as kitted out as anything 007 would drive.
The series was filmed using Supermarionation, using marionettes as the cast, with the sets built to scale. For close-ups of hands, real hands were used, allowing characters to manipulate objects as needed. The special effects were scaled down for the miniatures in use, looking very much like effects used in films. Thunderbirds ran for thirty-two episodes, each running, with ads, for an hour, and has been referenced by other works, including Reboot. Thunderbirds has been remade a few times, including the anime Thunderbirds 2086 and the 2004 live action movie. A new CG series, Thunderbirds Are Go is the latest adaptation.
Thunderbirds Are Go first aired in ITV in April 2015. The series brings back International Rescue, updating the show’s concept to reflect the changes in technology since Thunderbirds first aired. The two-part pilot episode, “Ring of Fire”, introduces the characters to a new audience while showing what each Thunderbird can do. There have been some changes; Jeff Tracy has gone missing, leaving Grandma Tracy as the head of the household. Brains is now Indian, and his stutter is less pronounced. Tin-Tin is now Kayo and the head of security for International Rescue, but her family secret is still kept. The vehicles have been updated as well, though still recognizable. FAB-1 reflects today’s car stylings, but still has the gadgets to keep Lady Penelope safe. Thunderbird 5 shows the greatest change in design, reflecting developments in space stations and featuring a rotating ring to simulate gravity and a stationary control area that lets John float around while monitoring communications. The Thunderbirds, though, aren’t CG; instead, they are miniatures, as are the sets. The mix isn’t jarring; the use of both CG and miniatures harkens back to the use of marionettes and models in the original.
“Ring of Fire” starts with a runaway hot air balloon caught in a storm, its passengers, a father and his son, calling for help. Out of the storm clouds, Thunderbird 2 appears, matching course with balloon. Virgin comes up topside and helps the son into Thunderbird 2. Before he can get the father, though, a gust of wind up ends the balloon. Virgil calls John up in Thunderbird 5 to get the father’s vector, and has Thunderbird 2 dive to get beneath. He’s able to grab the father and bring him inside before reaching the ground. Meanwhile, Thunderbird 3, with Alan and Kayo, are working on correcting the orbit of a satellite, allowing John to relax while watching his favourite TV series*.
After a breather, International Rescue gets a call from an undersea lab that has suffered damage after a seaquake. Virgil and Gordon respond with Thunderbirds 2 and 4. While approaching the lab, Gordon discovers the source of the quakes, a device that creates the seismic disruption. Worse, several more quakes occur, caused by similar devices. Lady Penelope and Parker investigate and find a warehouse with a note and a button. On pushing the button, a mysterious figure hijacks the airwaves and makes his demands; the Hood will end the quakes upon being given the Thunderbirds. International Rescue ignores the demands. With the sealab’s scientists rescued, IR work on finding the Hood. Alan and Kayo head to the satellite to try to track the Hood’s location. On the ground, Scott and Virgil rush to Taiwan to prevent a solar reflector, misaligned because of the quakes, from frying Taipei when the sun rises. Alan and Kayo discover the frequency the Hood is using, allowing Brains to trace the villain’s signal. Kayo performs a high-altitude, low-opening, or HALO, jump from Thunderbird 3 to land at the Hood’s hideout. The Hood summons his men to deal with Kayo, but she also has backup, having alerted the Global Defense Force to the Hood’s location.
The production team is making an effort to be faithful to the original’s feel while still updating the series for modern sensibilities. There are nods to the original Thunderbirds, including the episode “Fireflash”, a remake of the first original episode, “Trapped in the Sky”. Both episodes feature a supersonic jet that is in trouble and needs the assistance of International Rescue to land safely. The sealab from “Ring of Fire” resembles a damaged Eagle from Anderon’s live action series, Space: 1999. The series even has David Graham returning in the role of Parker. Thunderbirds Are Go runs thirty minutes, including ads, or half as long as the original, but the writing is kept tight, not letting up on the tension until the rescue is complete.
Thunderbirds Are Go makes use of new technology, but doesn’t let it take over the core of the series. There are changes, mostly to reflect the realities of today, but the heart of Thunderbirds has been kept.
* The show John watches is Stingray, another Supermarionation series, with a clip of the opening credits being shown. In a clever touch, the slip is shown in reverse to the audience, meaning that John is watching it the correct way.
A few weeks back, Lost in Translation looked at adaptations of tabletop RPGs. While there haven’t been many RPGs adapted to other media, the reverse is far more likely. Many popular franchises have been adapted for gaming, from Star Trek to Supernatural. The result is a licensed property created by game designers who are also fans. With The Force Awakens turning into a powerhouse beyond expectations, now is as good a time as any to look at the Star Wars roleplaying games past and present.
Role-playing in an established universe is more than just letting the players take the roles of existing characters. With a setting as vast as the Galaxy Far, Far Away, there’s room for any number of characters, from scruffy rogues to naive farmboys to dashing conmen to dangerous bounty hunters. Adding to the complexity, Jedi and Sith lurk, depending on the era. The goal of the games is to provide an experience that would fit in the Star Wars setting but still giving players the flexibility to play what they want. There have been three published RPGs for /Star Wars/, detailed below.
Star Wars: The Role-Playing Game, West End Games
The first Star Wars RPG, released in 1987, used WEG’s Ghostbusters: The Role-Playing Game‘s core mechanic, modified for the new setting. Determining success or failure was based on rolling a number of six-sided* dice based on the rating of a character’s skill, with a differently coloured die designated the wild die. The wild die could allow for amazing successes or crushing failures, depending on its value. Players could use character points to add dice to the roll. To account for the Force in Star Wars, players also had Force points. Spending a Force point allowed players to double the number of dice they could roll for a skill, allowing feats such as firing a proton torpedo into a two metre exhaust port without the aid of a targeting computer.
Because it was released three years after Return of the Jedi, there was little information about Jedi, beyond that they were rare after the Emperor destroyed the Order. At the time, Star Wars wasn’t the big franchise that it is now. The Expanded Universe consisted of the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies; Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire would be published in 1991, a year before the RPG’s second edition. Jedi were limited to what was shown on screen and what the WEG writers could extrapolate and get approved by Lucasfilm. However, the more earthier characters, like Han, were supported, with all starships, from starfighters to Star Destroyers, being written up. The Revised and Expanded edition, released in 1996, became the definitive version of the RPG.
The game played fast; the mechanics loose enough to let players swoop through space in a transport modified for smuggling while out running a flight of TIE fighters and maintain the feel of the Galaxy Far, Far Away. WEG’s RPG still has an impact even today; Dave Filoni, showrunner for both CGI-animated series, The Clone Wars and Rebels has stated in commentary that he and his crew have refered to WEG’s Imperial Sourcebook and Star Wars Sourcebook for details on vehicles and droids used in the series.
WEG lost the license in 1999 after having to declare bankruptcy when its parent company, West End Shoes, drained the game publisher to stay afloat. Speculation on the Internet on who would get the license next grew as the prequel movies were announced.
Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast, who also owned Dungeons & Dragons, picked up the license in 2000, a year after The Phantom Menace was released. Wizards used a modified version of the d20 System, as used in D&D 3rd edition. The result was a class-based system that covered not just the original trilogy, like WEG’s game had, but also the prequels and the Expanded Universe. A second edition was released in 2002, a year before D&D 3.5, cleaning up some problematic rules. The Saga edition came out in 2007, streamlining the d20 system more to keep the gameplay flowing.
As mentioned, the d20 System is class-based, meaning that every character falls into one of a number of character classes that define their abilities. Instead of using the D&D classes like Fighter and Wizard, the d20 Star Wars games used classes like Scoundrel, Fringer, and Jedi. The result was playable, but the sweet spot was between levels 7 and 12, where characters had the skills needed to pull off difficult but in-setting plausible stunts without becoming impossible to challenge without throwing a Star Destroyer at them. Thanks to the prequels and the Expanded Universe, Jedi had more options than in WEG’s RPG. Sourcebooks detailed the different eras of the Galaxy Far, Far Away, giving gamemasters (GMs) and players flexibility in play styles.
Wizards let the license lapse in 2010, after not just a large number of detailed sourcebooks but also a miniatures game that could tie into the RPG or be played as a stand-alone.
Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny, Fantasy Flight Games
Fantasy Flight Games picked up the Star Wars license with an eye to create both a miniatures and a role-playing game. The first of the RPGs, Edge of the Empire, came out in 2013, followed by Age of Rebellion in 2014 and Force and Destiny in 2015. Each of the games, while using the same mechanics, have a different focus. Edge deals with characters on the edge of polite society; smugglers, bounty hunters, colonists. Rebellion allows for characters in the Rebel Alliance, fighting against the Galactic Empire’s evil. Force focuses on Jedi and other Force-sensitives. The three games are set during the original trilogy, but can be adapted, with work, to other eras.
The FFG games need to use specialty dice marked for use in play. It is possible to use regular dice** and convert the numbers to the special markings, but it is easier with the specialty dice. The dice provide for more than just success and failure; they also add advantages and threats. A failure could come with an advantage and success could come with complications. Scenes from the movies, like Han stepping on a twig when right behind a stormtrooper in Return of the Jedi, can come from the mechanic, ensuring that the feel of the movies is kept.
Each game moves the timeline through the movies. Edge is set shortly after the destruction of the Death Star in A New Hope. Rebellion is set just after the events in The Empire Strikes Back. Force is set after Return of the Jedi. However, players and GMs aren’t limited to those eras. /Force/ can easily be used for a group of Jedi padawans during the prequel era. All three could be used for a campaign set during The Force Awakens. Work would need to be done, such as re-skinning existing vehicles for the new ones seen in the new movie, but the amount of work needed is minimal.
Each of the above games had a different approach to the Galaxy Far, Far Away. While each one had some areas that needed work, overall, the games remained faithful to the source. Players could feel like they were part of Star Wars, which is the most important part of adapting to a game.
* Role-playing games use more regular polyhedrons than just the standard cube dice.
** Regular meaning six-, eight-, and twelve-sided, as used in other games such as D&D.
After three and a half years, Lost in Translation has built up a number of terms that haven’t been well defined. The History of Adaptations forced the issue, running into works that were both sequels and adaptations and were sequels of adaptations. What follows is a working set of terms defined as used so far, complete with examples. The definitions may be a bit fluid; as more reviews are done, the better an idea I get of the breadth of adaptations there are.
Adaptations – A catch-all covering any form of media that is based on another work. Adaptations include remakes and reboots, and can be in the same medium or taken from one medium to another. The better known adaptation is the movie based on a novel or, especially lately, comic. Also possible is the movie to TV series adaptation, such as M*A*S*H, and the international adaptation, such as Three’s Company, based on the British series, Man About the House.
Remakes – A work that re-tells the story from the original. Typically done with movies, the remake takes advantage in advances in film technology, whether it’s the advent of sound, colour, or special effects. The 1956 The Ten Commandments is a prime example, remaking the 1923 silent film of the same name. The upcoming The Jungle Book from Disney appears to be a live-action remake of the animated feature based on the Rudyard Kipling stories.
Reboots – A form of remake that is typically found in series, whether a movie franchise or a TV series. The reboot creates a new baseline for plots to work from and can feature a new cast. Star Trek: The Next Generation is a prime example, as is the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series. A sequel can be considered a reboot depending on how much time has passed between the original work and the new.
Sequels/Prequels – Works that continue, in the case of sequels, or set up, in the case of prequels, an original work. Sequels and prequels are generally out of scope for Lost in Translation unless they are also adaptations. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a sequel. The movie The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is both a sequel to the film version of The Hunger Games and an adaptation of the novel, Catching Fire.
Sequel of an Adaptation – A work that follows up to an adaptation without itself being based on an original work. This is different from a sequel that is also an adaptation in that there is no original work the sequel is based on. The 2004 movie Spider-Man 2 follows from events in the 2002 Spider-Man, but isn’t based on a specific storyline from the Marvel comics.
Partial Adapatation – Any adaptation that takes just a portion of an original work, whether due to time limitations or sake of comprehensibility. Blade Runner is the best example; the movie takes just the android hunting from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep while dropping the religious subplots.
Loose Adaptation – A work that takes the premise of an original work and goes in a different direction. Such a work is often said to be loosely based on an original. Real Steel was such an adaptation of the short story, “Steel”, taking the idea of the robot boxing league but changing the story to one about a man and his son. Often, the title is changed, emphasizing the difference, as seen with Alien from L.A.
In Name Only – A loose adaptation that doesn’t change the name. Often happens when the adaptation fails to understand the appeal of the original. The 1998 Godzilla is often called GINO, for “Godzilla In Name Only”, reflecting the adaptations failure to understand what Godzilla is.
Shot for Shot Remake – A remake of a film that duplicates the original. While such a remake can work, especially when there has been improvements in film technology, the new film could just have audiences wondering why the new film was made, especially when the original is considered a masterpiece. Gus van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho did use new technology plus colour, but the changes were subtle, and Hitchcock’s use of black and white was an artistic choice. A shot-for-shot remake of The Last Starfighter today may be better received, taking into account the capabilities of CGI that the movie broke ground on when it was first released.
Tie-in – Derivative works that are licensed from a franchise. Best known are the Star Trek tie-in novels, featuring original casts of each Trek series plus new casts, and the Star Wars expanded universe. Tie-ins are out of scope for Lost in Translation, though there are exceptions. The Nikki Heat novels by Richard Castle are Castle metafiction; the novels that the fictional writer is researching in the TV series, and do count as adaptations.
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.
