Popularity doesn’t necessarily mean popular in North American only. There is a wider world out there, with many different forms of entertainment. Overseas popularity means Hollywood can expect bigger returns in the international market, with a bonus if the title is familiar in North America. Even if the work isn’t known in North America, a popular work can be translated and localized. It’s nothing new; the hit film, Three Men and a Baby, which stayed in the top ten from release November 27 1987 until March 20, 1988, was based on the 1987 French hit, Trois hommes et un couffin.
As seen in the past with Lost In Translation, adapting comics to film is taking one visual medium, one that consists of a series of static images, to another visual medium based on the illusion of moving pictures. Shouldn’t be a problem, but there have been some comic adaptations that didn’t work. However, the causes of the failures hasn’t been a mistranslation, but something deeper. When an comic adaptation works, the film embraces the esthetic of the comic.
That brings us to Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin, a Belgian comic that first appeared in 1929 and follows the adventures of boy reporter Tintin, his dog Milou (Snowy in English), and his friend Captain Haddock, running into characters such as the absent-minded professor Tryphon Tournesol (Cuthbert Calculus), identical detectives who are not twins Dupont and Dupond (Thomson and Thompson), and opera singer Bianca Castafore. Tintin’s adventures have taken him to many exotic locales, including the moon in Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon, first serialized from 1950 to 1953, almost two decades before the first lunar landing. Hergé did his research when he could, though a few problems slipped through. Some of his prejudices slipped through, especially in his early work, but later titles corrected the bias.
The Tintin comics are a mix of action-adventure and mystery, with the title character falling into the adventure and then following leads for his job. The artwork is clean and very recognizable, thanks to Hergé’s ligne claire style. The comics have been translated into 110 languages, though the first American translation suffered from excessive editorial cuts for content. These cuts have been restored thanks to later publishers. Needless to say, Tintin has had an impact on the world.
Enter Hollywood. While Tintin had been adapted to film, the studios were European, primarily Beligan and French. In 2011, The Adventures of Tintin, directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, co-produced by Peter Jackson and Kathleen Kennedy, was released. The film was done with CGI animation using motion capture and starred Jamie Bell as Tintin, Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg as Thomson and Thompson, and Daniel Craig as Ivan Invanovith Sakharine. The only character not animated with motion capture was Snowy. The movie adapts three volumes, The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham’s Treasure.
The Adventures of Tintin covers how Tintin met Captain Haddock and the Captain’s return to Marlinspike Hall, his father’s home. The story begins with a simple purchase and a pickpocket, then leads to a sea voyage, Morocco, and a fight to finish a battle started by the fathers of Haddock and Sakharine, leading to where Captain Haddock’s father hid a treasure. Through it, Tintin finds adventure and danger, convinces Captain Haddock to help, and gets unexpected assistance from Thompson and Thomson who were on a completely unrelated pickpocket case.
The animation doesn’t take long to get used to. The opening credits ease the audience into the idea by showing Tintin and Snowy, mostly in Silhouette, in previous adventures. The film itself provides a crowd scene as Tintin gets his portrait done. The cartoon features are introduced slowly, giving the audience time to adjust. The first look the audience has of Tintin is his portrait, done in Hergé’s style, before revealing Jamie Bell in the role. The CG animation stops from being fully realistic, keeping characters, even in the crowd scene, looking like they stepped off the pages of the comics. At the same time, Tintin looks natural, thanks to details like strands of hair and motion capture making sure the movements are natural. Indeed, every character looks like their counterpart from the comics.
But just looking right is half the battle. Casting is important. Jamie Bell brought the earnestness needed to portray Tintin. Serkis’ take on Captain Haddock turned him Scottish, which didn’t detract from Haddock’s colourful language. Frost and Pegg continued Thompson and Thomson’s shtick of finishing each other’s sentences while bumbling through an adventure. Daniel Craig’s turn as Sakharine was a velvet glove over an iron fist, a genteel front that drops when things start going wrong. The result is a cast of vibrant characters who match their comic counterparts almost note perfectly.
The writing kept to the plot of the adapted comics, with one addition. Bianca Castafore was added as part of Sakharine’s plan to get the third model of the Unicorn; the character was considered too iconic to leave out of the film. Members of the audience trying to figure out Sakharine’s plot could figure it out before Tintin, mainly from the leads laid out beforehand. The pace is good; the audience gets to go through several roller coasters scenes that are followed by breather spots to gather themselves to the next twist and turn. The action scenes advance the plot instead of being set pieces.
Details can make or break an adaptation. Get something wrong and the audience is thrown out of the suspension of disbelief. Get the small details right, though, and audience buy-in is easier. The opening credits used the same typeface that the covers of the comic compilations had, with the accompanying animation staying true to the original comics. Keeping the tone and the era the same, matching the comics, turns the movie into a grand adaptation.
My apologies, but there is no review this week. Lost in Translation will return next week.
Science fiction was still a budding genre on television. Budgets couldn’t match the imagination of creators, creating problems. However, Star Trek had made an impact by 1970, and movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey only whet appetites. There was a demand to be filled. Harlan Ellison aimed to fill that demand with a mini-series. The result, The Starlost, a 1973 TV series that had problems from the outset.
Ellison’s original idea was about a colony ship, the Ark, off course due to damage sustained after an unexpected hit on the vessel. The Ark drifted off course for centuries before the gravitational pull of a class G star puts the ship on a course to destruction. The only hope are three people from one of the Ark‘s biodomes, environments on the ship meant to maintain pieces of old Earth biology and culture. The goal of the three is to find a way to set change the Ark‘s course to safety while dealing with the various cultures of the biodomes, many of which have also lost technology and the knowledge of being on a ship.
The concept is simple but ambitious. The mini-series would have a beginning and an end. The Ark would be saved or doomed. Ellison then shopped the story around. The only taker was a Canadian studio, Glen-Warren Productions. There, the problems began. The studio had never produced a science fiction program before and had a limited budget. Canadian television in the 70s wasn’t known for being groundbreaking and existed solely because of CRTC‘s Canadian content regulations. Canadian broadcasters needed to have a minimum amount of television produced by and featuring Canadians. Ellison’s notes for the biospheres included distances; the studio tried to shorten the distances because the focal distance of the cameras in use wouldn’t extend further. There are more details in the book, Phoenix from the Ashes, but the big stumbling block was that the studio didn’t understand science fiction.
The result, The Starlost. The series begins in the biodome called Cypress Corners, an agriculture community with a strong religious, patriarchal society. Devon, played by Keir Dullea, chafed against his society and explored, discovering the true nature of his home. Such explorations, though, lead to him being shunned. Making things worse, he and Rachel (Gay Rowan) were in love with each other, despite her being betrothed to Garth (Robin Ward), a blacksmith. Devon reveals the truth to the citizens of Cypress Corners, leading to him being chased out of the biodome with Rachel following him and Garth following her.
Early in their explorations, they find a sphere projector, the interface to the Ark‘s main computer. the computer host (William Osler) and discover that their home and the entire Ark is in danger because of a class-G star. If they cannot get the ship’s reactors online, the Ark will be pulled into the star. Thus begins their quest. The trio do find the bridge early, to find it damaged and unpopulated. The search finds possible help, but each time there are problems. Some biodomes have their own problems, with the trio being the catalyst to change in the environment. As the series goes on, the episodes start straying from the core concept. Odd ideas pop in and out, such as aliens, that tend to leave the viewer wanting more with no further explanation.
The core concept of The Starlost is solid. It was Harlan Ellison; he may have been abrasive, but he knew science fiction. The same goes for executive producer Douglas Trumbull, who contributed to the effects of 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and directed 1972’s Silent Running. The core cast included Keir Dullea, who starred in 2001, with Gay Rowan and Robin Ward being decent Canadian actors. The guest cast included the likes of Canadians John Colicos, Lloyd Bochner, and Donnelly Rhodes, plus Barry Morse and Walter Koenig, all of whom were capable of treating the material with the seriousness it deserved, even if some scenery was chewed in the process.
The core problem was budget. The series didn’t have one big enough. The Ark looked impressive on television screens at the time, but close in passes started to show the limitations. Reuse of props, though, made sense; the Ark was built with standards in mind, so all the chairs, all the consoles, all the irises looking the same through a set redress made sense. There were times when the budget wasn’t enough, making the 70s-era Doctor Who and Danger!! Death Ray! look like special effects wonders. The problems with the studio led Ellison to use his Cordwainer Bird pen name as a way to show that he was not happy.
The distance between Toronto and Los Angeles also caused problems. Ellison wasn’t willing to commute to Toronto, so there wasn’t a steady hand around to keep the writing staff focused. Later episodes were closer to science fiction versions of Glen-Warren’s better known series, The Littlest Hobo, with Devon, Rachel, and Garth in the role of the Hobo. The leads were catalysts for change, but not the cause nor the vehicle of it.
If The Starlost were to be remade, the biggest fix is budget. Today, it is possible ti use CGI for less than practical effects were in the 70s in today’s dollars. The Ark, which looked sprawling, can diminish into the distance, with fly-bys being more detailed than what they were in the series. The model of the Ark is impressive, especially for the era, but it wasn’t designed for close ups. A larger budget would allow for filming in appropriate environments. Cypress Corners could be filmed outside instead on a stage. The biodomes could look larger, thanks to today’s technology. Still, a unified design is needed for the Ark‘s interiors, but industrial grey can be swapped out. However, the sphere projectors should be kept, even in an updated version. A voice of doom is needed to play the role of the host computer.
The next biggest fix is returning to the original idea of mini-series. The Ark is in danger. There is enough time to get the Ark back on course, but there is a time crunch. The leads can’t go exploring every biodome between them and the auxiliary bridge; the longer they take, the harder it gets to fix the Ark‘s course. Once the Ark is no longer in danger of burning up in the nuclear fires of a star, finding a new Earth becomes the next goal, so a sequel series can be made if wanted. But the Ark can’t be left in limbo; audiences no longer accept series without a proper end.
The above ties into the next fix – writing staff. A showrunner is needed to keep the series focused. With a mini-series, the idea of knowing where the show is going makes it easier to keep the writers all in the right direction. This will also help when dealing with guest cast; the characters need a reason to be introduced. With a focused approach, the non-lead characters will either help the leads with their quest or delay, but the leads won’t be floundering. The focus will also help when dealing with the different biodome cultures and technology. Some will slip backwards; others will maintain what they can. Working out some biodomes in advance and figuring out if they’re aware of the problem or not can help with the creation of episodes.
Could there be a remake of The Starlost. It depends on the rights. Assuming the Ellison estate holds them, it may be a matter of price and control. If it’s Glen-Warren, the production company has been bought by Bell Media, who also owns a number of broadcast and cable stations. In this case, it may just be the effort of bringing a proposition to Bell Media or one of their stations such as CTV Sci-Fi (née Space) and see if there’s a bite. The series does own some name space, even if it’s being known as one of the worst science fiction TV shows ever made.
The Starlost, though, has a strong core idea, thanks to Harlan Ellison. The problem was execution, not concept, so there is room to live up to the original idea behind the terrible.
Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe: Revelations released on Netflix this past week. The stills looked promising. Now is a good time to see if the series lives up to the promise.
The review of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power delved into the history of the origins of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, focusing on the spin-off, She-Ra: Princess of Power. Both series were based on Mattel’s line of action figures, where the real differences were in the colours and head mold. Filmation picked up the license for both animated series.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe first aired in 1983, two years after the first figure in Mattel’s Masters of the Universe line was released. The series ran for two 65-episode, allowing for twenty-six weeks of second-run syndication without repeat an episode. The characters included Prince Adam, who turned into He-Man; Adam’s pet Cringer, who transforms into Battle Cat; Man-At-Arms, the commander of Eternia’s army; Teela, Captain of the Royal Guard; Orko, bumbling mage and He-Man’s sidekick; and the Sorceress, the guardian of Castle Greyskull. Opposing the heroes are Skeletor, who wants to discover the secrets of Castle Greyskull in order to rule the universe; Evil-Lyn, an evil sorceress; Beast Man; and a number of minor villains, including the three-eyed Tri-Klops. Each character, good or evil, had a schtick of their own.
The series was episodic, with Skeletor enacting a new evil plot forcing the heroes to thwart the villains. Prince Adam would keep his dual life a secret, disappearing when trouble starts to transform into He-Man. Brains and brawn tended to be needed to stop Skeletor. By the end of the episode, the day is saved, Skeletor and his henchmen are on the run, and the status remains quo. That was the nature of television at the time. A permanent end wasn’t possible; that would end the series. Villains couldn’t triumph, especially in children’s programming, so they had to lose every episode. A major victory by a villain would mean a change in the tone of the series.
When the series came to an end, the fate of Eternia was still undecided. He-Man would keep battling Skeletor in second-run syndication. A reboot of the series was made in 2002, but still left things unresolved. Enter Kevin Smith, creator of films such as Clerks and Dogma. Smith is of the age to have watched the original cartoon first run. With Netflix, he produced the sequel series, Masters of the Universe: Revelations to wrap up the war for Eternia. The cast of the new series includes Chris Wood as Prince Adam and He-Man, Sarah Michelle Geller as Teela, Lena Headey as Evil-Lyn, Griffin Newman as Orko, Kevin Michael Richardson as Beast-Man, and Mark Hamill as Skeletor.
The first season starts with a new Man-at-Arms being announced; Teela is stepping up as her adopted father, Man-At-Arms, retires. The celebration is cut short, though. Skeletor has tried another gambit to get inside Castle Greyskull, one that works. The heroes head off to battle. The fight, though, ends in an unusual way – both He-Man and Skeletor disappear and the magic protecting Castle Greyskull is all but destroyed. In the aftermath, Prince Adam’s secret is revealed, the Sword of Power is split in twains, and trusts are broken. Teela leaves the Royal Guard and becomes a mercenary, travelling with Andra (Tiffany Smith). A few unusual jobs for an elderly woman, though, brings the past back into her life. The job leads to working with Evil-Lyn, pulling some of the heroes back, and discovering what happened to both He-Man and Skeletor.
The focus of the series is on Teela. She is the one driving the plot as she tries to recover the magic of Eternia before the world and the universe are doomed. Teela is the one to keep the unlikely band of adventurers on the right track. However, the truce rests uneasy. After all, the word “evil” is baked into Evil-Lyn’s name. He-Man appears in flashbacks, being his charming, goofy self. However, the story does revolve around He-Man.
The cast of the new series is top notch. Mark Hamill is more than happy to chew the scenery as Skeletor, and when he’s not there, Lena Headey matches him. The characters reflect who they were in the original cartoon, but are given depth that wasn’t possible in the 80s. Much like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the new Masters is able to take the comic relief and give them more depth, making them sympathetic. The writing is tight; there is nothing wasted in the five episodes of the first season. Smith is aiming for fans like himself, people who grew up with the series when it first aired. While Eternia is bleaker, Smith doesn’t wallow in grimdark. There is still hope thanks to the heroes.
The production value of the new series shines. While the characters are based on their original appearances, the animation is far smoother and not recycled. Prince Adam’s transformation to He-Man is far more involved, with influences from magical girls series like Sailor Moon. This isn’t a bad thing, though. It’s been forty years; time for He-Man to have a proper transformation. The new Masters shows what having a larger per-episode budget can do.
Masters of the Universe: Revelations achieves what it set out to do, to provide an ending to the original series. The characters are recognizable from what they were and are given arcs for growth. The series takes chances, and they pay off. The new Masters isn’t a reboot, it’s a sequel, and after forty years, manages to update the franchise while still managing to keep to its roots.
Cyberpunk 2077 has made an impact since its release in December 2020. The video game is based on a tabletop roleplaying game designed by Mike Pondsmith, who was involved in the video game. While the video game has had a few problems since release, it is popular. And when something is popular, it gets adapted.
A quick bit of history on Cyberpunk. The first edition of the RPG, Cyberpunk 2013, was released in 1988. 2013 had four supplements, including Hardwired, written by Walter Jon Williams, basing it on the novel he wrote. It was followed up two years later with the second edition, Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. 2020 expanded the setting, the character roles, and the mechanics; the game was rereleased in 2014. The third edition, Cyberpunk V3.0, released 2005, wasn’t as well accepted; changes to the setting left the fanbase cold and the artwork was controversial. Finally, in conjuction with the video game, Cyberpunk RED was fully released in November 2020, a month before 3077‘s release. The RPG is seeing a renaissance, complete with new miniatures including one of Pondsmith and his dog.
Going back to Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0, the game made Night City the default setting, where the city was a supplement for 2013. Night City was very much inspired by William Gibson’s Chiba City, with dashes of Hardwired and other cyberpunk works plus other sources such as Blade Runner. Night City became a living, breathing city, with gangs and gang wars, corporate headquarters and corporate wars, besieged citizens, besieged cops, and many ways to escape, some of which are legal. Life is cheap, cybernetics expensive, and going about daily business without a subscription to a paramedic service.
In the Cyberpunk setting, there are a few subscription emergency services. The services’ contracts lay out how a recovery team will retrieve the wounded subscriber, though there are added costs to that on top of the monthly subscription fee. Reviving a clone costs even more on top, plus the fees for making a memory backup. They’re the US health care system expanded as US gun violence also expanded. Trauma Team International is the largest of these subscription emergency services, but not the only one. REO Meatwagon, also mentioned in the core rules, is one competitor determined to carve a slice of the pie, even if it means shooting down a Trauma Team aerodyne.
The day-to-day job of a Trauma Team crew sounds like it would make for drama, whether in game or in an adaptation. One part paramedic, one part combat recon, all dystopia. Thus, in September 2020, Dark Horse Comics released the first issue of Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team, then released issues 1-4 as a trade paperback in March 2021. The series was written by Cullen Bunn, with art by Miguel Valderrama, colours by Jason Vordie, and lettering by Frank Cvetkovic.
The series follows Nadia, a young medtech who joined Trauma Team International out of a sense of duty. Even after two years of service, she still had some idealism. However, when a heavily cybered solo manages to kill everyone on her rescue squad except her and the client, she’s taken off duty for psych eval. Her first response after returning to duty is to retrieve a client in an apartment block in gang-controlled territory. The platinum membership client turns out to be the solo who killed her previous team wounded and pinned down by gangers, leading to Nadia having to make difficult choices.
Night City in the four issues is a neon-filled grime even in the nicer parts of the city. The apartment block looks like it should be condemned, except that would mean someone in the city government cared. The solo’s abilities may seem superhuman, but that’s what cybernetics can do in the game. Enhanced reflexes, enhanced strength, and a lack of empathy for humanity; medical science in 2077 has made amazing advances.
In terms of appearance, the comic takes queues from Blade Runner, with neon lights and rain, masses of people wandering through the streets, the forgotten dregs in a desperate fight, and corporate negligence. Nadia’s Trauma Team is kitted out for a war zone, which describes many parts of Night City too well. In game terms, Nadia is a medtech, the client is a solo, the rescue squads are composed of medtechs and solos, and Nadia’s psychologist is a corporate. The story definitely fits in the setting.
Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team fits right into Night City and the Cyberpunk franchise. Idealism is the first thing to die in a dystopia, something Nadia finds out the hard way. While playing a Trauma Team employee is out of the scope of the video game, the comic expands the setting for fans, showing what happens when a rescue squad encounters resistance.
A shift change at work has thrown my schedule off kilter. Lost in Translation will return next week.
There’s been talk about the 1999 film, Galaxy Quest, getting a sequel. The movie was popular with fans of science fiction, particularly of Star Trek. The cast was strong, with Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shaloub, Missi Pyle, Darryl Mitchell, Sam Rockwell, and Enrico Colatoni. The plot involved a group of aliens called Thermians who, after watching the fictional series Galaxy Quest came to Earth to get help from the crew, all without realizing that the TV series was fictional.
The Thermians convince Jason Naismith (Allen), who played Commander Taggert on the show, that the special effects they showed him were real. Taggert manages to cajole the rest of his castmates plus Guy Fleegman (Rockwell) who played an extra to hear out the Thermians. The first hurdle is that while the fictional characters know what to do, the actors who played them are clueless. Everything was a set with special effects added in post-production. As the movie contunues, the actors figure out who their characters are and what they meant to fans both earthbound and alien. The moment that Alexander Dane (Rickman), a classically trained actor who is not happy with how his career turned out, figures out how Dr. Lazarus has motives is particularly poignant.
The film made gentle fun of Star Trek, the series’ actors, and the fans. The Thermians built the Protector based on “archival footage”, down to items, like the chompers, that didn’t make any sense to include. On Earth, fans of the series help out as they can, with their encyclopedic knowledge of the old series, knowing the Protector better than the actors do.
The cast had great chemistry. The writing was strong with room for improvisation as needed. The movie had a heart to it that many blockbusters forget about including. The movie wasn’t so much a parody of Star Trek as a love letter to the series, the cast, and the fans. And that’s where an adaptation is going to have problems.
Since the movie was first released, there’s been attempts to either make a sequel or make a TV series. Currently, Simon Pegg is looking at adapting the movie as a TV series. The catch is, how would it work? Would it be the new series that was created in-universe with the same cast? Would the adaptation focus on the actors instead of their characters? Would the series be serial instead of episodic? What will be done about the hole left by the passing of Alan Rickman?
On the plus side, Simon Pegg has the capability to understand the draw of Galaxy Quest to audiences. With Shaun of the Dead, he had a love letter to horror and zombie movies while still being comedic. Likewise, Hot Fuzz was also a love letter, this time to 80s and 90s action movies like Point Break. Pegg also played Scotty in the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot movie, and has made the convention circuit to meet fans of his works. If anyone will be able to create a gentle parody, Pegg is the one. At the same time, there is trepidation.
Galaxy Quest was bottled lightning when it was released. Recreating it will take a deft touch under someone who can pull in the different parts of the movie and maintain the chemistry the cast had. It will be tough.
Ten years. When I started Lost in Translation, I didn’t expect the reviews to last long. I thought I’d run out of material. However, Hollywood insists on adapting everything. Everything. Some adaptations are done well; others, not so much.
The early years, I went after the easier works, the ones that had been around a while. Once I figured out this reviewing thing, I started to get into more complex works and into more complex reviews. There’s very little that is out and out terrible that there isn’t a glimmer of something good inside it. I’m also taking more time when a work needs it. Sometimes, there’s just no getting around dealing with a multi-season storyline and it takes time to watch and to read both original works and adaptations.
The pandemic of 2020-2021 added a new twist. My way of choosing works to review involved going to a music or video store and checking out the offerings. Lockdown prevented that. Online shopping is good when you need something specific but isn’t as good when it comes to browsing. Same goes with streaming services. It made finding works to review a bit more difficult, but I found ways.
Ten years. It doesn’t seem like such a long time, but I can see how I’ve improved since the first review. Time does fly, even 2020 in hindsight. Thank you, everyone, for following, for supporting, and for letting me figure out just how adaptations look. There are some changes coming for Lost in Translation later this year. Details will come out once they’re nailed down.
Lost in Translation continues its retrospective with a fresh look at comic book adaptations.
There has been some uproar in the past few years about the number of adaptations being made by Hollywood. Looking at the past decade, there were no original works among the popular movies, with fourteen adaptations. Of those adaptations, eight came from comic books. Chances are good that if those eight were from a more literary source, which also excludes such genres such as science fiction & fantasy, romance, and all of young adult, there wouldn’t be an outcry.
But comic books are low brow, and thus are looked down on. Comics are for the masses. The studios, though, need the masses to be profitable. Some obscure yet acclaimed literary work just won’t hit screens outside specialty theatres. This isn’t to say that a comic book movie can’t be deep or moving. The issue is accessibility to the general public.
However, superhero movies, separating them from other comic book movies, are spectaculars. They’re big, loud, and filled with explosions. And they’re not going away, not anytime soon. Marvel is having a renaissance with its cinematic universe. DC is having success with the Arrowverse on TV. Until both Marvel and DC have a run of flops, they’re going to keep creating movies and TV series.
The advantage of comic books is that they are already a visual medium. The books can be used as a storyboard; this is what essentially happened with Scott Pilgrim vs the World. There’s no need to hunt through a tome to find descriptions of characters; they’re all there on the page. Superhero comics are built on action and drama with some titles having soap opera levels of inter[character conflict. Everything that a work would want to have.
The disadvantage, though, is that comics have a lot going on that just can’t fit into a 2 to 2.5 hour movie. The more characters there are to spotlight, the less that can be showcased. Finite time requires details to be dropped. With a TV series, there is more time to expand beyond the basics, but the budget per episode can’t match what a studio can throw at a blockbuster. There’s give and take.
One problem that’s starting to creep in that plagues long standing ongoing comics is continuity lockout. New readers can find that details a story leans on is in a hard-to-find long out-of-print issue. Crossovers bring their own problems. A storyline that requires readers to search for the other titles involved is a marketing move to generate more sales by introducing new readers to other titles. The drawback is that if a crossover goes on too long, the regular stories in a title get shunted to the side, especially in a company-wide crossover. Too many interruptions in the regular storyline will drive readers away.
With the Marvel movies, if someone missed a film leading to an Avengers movie, they may not know who a character is and why that character was there. Thanks to some deals made, Marvel Studios doesn’t have access to every Marvel character, most notably mutants related to the X-Men. Yes, there are exceptions, thanks to how fluid teams are in the Marvelverse, which causes headaches in lawyers and writers. Right now, most of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are origin stories, so not knowing how, say, Ant-Man became a hero isn’t important. Missing Captain America: Civil War could affect how a view sees the subsequent Avengers film.
It’s a balancing act. A shared universe means that characters can and will interact. Fans will try to get out to all the films, but it is possible to miss one, either due to timing, budget, or pandemic, and audiences shouldn’t feel like they’re missing a chunk because they weren’t interested in or able to see a specific film.
As with anything, if something is popular, Hollywood will exploit it. Right now, superheroes are big and are in no hurry to leave. They’re filling the role that the Western and the police investigation used to have, with none of the baggage of either. Non-superhero comics can and will slip in with some members of the audience none the wiser. There is plenty of depth to plumb from the medium. We should expect more adaptations and works inspired by comics to keep appearing for some time yet.
Video game adaptations, especially from Hollywood, are given the side eye. Hollywood adaptations have a poor reputation, earned thanks to the likes of Double Dragon and Super Mario Bros. But, Hollywood persisted, because where there is a large enough number of people, studios will exploit. And in 1994, $studio exploited the names of actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, singer/actress Kylie Minogue, and actor Raul Julia along with the video game Street Fighter.
Street Fighter – The Movie did not do well with initial audiences. The tone of the film was not what anyone expected – Van Damme’s acting style was better suited for movies with more action and less acting, the film was almost four-colour at a time when the approach was to go darker and grittier, and the studio got too involved. However, on retrospection, Street Fighter – The Movie isn’t in the same league as the worst video game movies made.
The video game has backstory on who all the characters are, why they are fighting, and why they’re after M. Bison. The game play, though, is a fighting game. That’s the draw of the game, not the backstory. The backstory is there to give a reason for the player to beat up opponents but via the game manual. However, that backstory can be adapted, if loosely.
The movie had a few strikes against it on release. The rep of video game movies and the acting capabilities of the leads, with the exception of Raul Julia. The movie tried to include every character from the video game, even if it was for a brief appearance. The result could be a complete mess.
There are some bright sides that save the movie, beyond just Raul Julia. The supporting cast, which includes Ming-Na Wen, pulled their weight, though, carrying the film. The movie’s writing has a strong pedigree with Lorenzo Semple, Jr, handling the duties. Semple also wrote the 1980 Flash Gordon and was on the writing staff for the 1966 Batman TV series. The humour from Flash Gordon appears in Street Fighter, little things that come naturally in the situation without feeling forced. Watching the movie through the lens of an action comedy, the tone clicks. The four-colour approach works. Raul Julia knew exactly what sort of movie he was in and played M. Bison the same way Leslie Nielsen played Dr. Womack in Airplane!; straighter than straight to the point of being funny. His speech to Chun-Li about him not remembering invading her village is a great example of what he was doing.
Street Fighter – The Movie is a cult classic. Time has given audiences time to figure out what it is without marketing trying to set the genre in minds beforehand. The bright colours turn the film into something timeless, separated from grim and gritty. There are little things to noticed with every viewing, including the Armed Forces radio announcer, Adrian Cronauer, who was the inspiration for Good Morning, Vietnam. Yes, the movie parodied Good Morning, Vietnam with the real AFRS DJ. That’s going the extra step.
It’s such steps that elevate Street Fighter – The Movie. It may not be a great film, but it is a fun movie, well worth the watch.
