This is going to take care of several of your Christmas and Birthday needs among the geek crowd . . .
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
Create maps collaboratively – build worlds together.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
Lady Geek Girl has a look at the “miswriting” of disabled characters in media which is informative (and predictable if you know the media.), but I find the real impact is how she ties this together to look at two awesome fictional characters with disabilities – Toph of The Last Airbender and Tyiron of Game of Thrones and how they provided opportunities for good writing.
Some food for thought for writers.
So have you written/drawn/created disabled characters, and if so how much research did you do? I confess that upon review, I haven’t, except one memorable case of a character with speech impediment and a minor brain injury (and that actually was part of a larger experience where he got religion and evolved as a person).
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
Hollywood movie adaptations of video games have a poor reputation. The expectation is that the movie won’t capture the essence of the game. The reputation stems from three movies, the first three Hollywood video game adaptations. Street Fighter: The Movie, the third made, is reaching cult classic status, thanks to the strength of Raul Julia’s last movie performance. The second, Double Dragon, was panned by audiences and critics and received a 0% at Rotten Tomatoes. The first video game movie adaptation, though, set the tone.
As a video game, Super Mario Bros. introduced North America to one of the biggest video game franchise produced. Mario first appeared in 1981’s Donkey Kong video arcade game where the goal was to rescue Pauline from the clutches of the titular ape. Luigi joined his brother in 1983’s arcade game Mario Bros. where the pair fought against monsters coming up from New York’s sewers. Their big break through came on the Nintendo Entertainment System in Super Mario Bros. in 1985. The goal in Super Mario was to search through the Mushroom Kingdom and numerous castles to rescue Princess Toadstool from the evil Bowser. Along the way, Mario and Luigi would have to dodge obstacles and enemies, defeating the latter by jumping on them.
The franchise bloomed, adding game sequels, cartoons, spin-offs, and the Hollywood film. Mario has been on every Nintendo console, from the NES through to the Wii and on every handheld system since the Game Boy. The cast of characters has grown as well, with Princesses Daisy and Peach appearing, plus helpers such as Toad and Yoshi, and the Koopa family as villains. Mario, already the world’s most famous plumber, picked up tennis and go-carting, and even got a second career as a doctor. Mario, as a franchise, has done well for Nintendo.
Twenty-one years and nine days ago, the film adaptation of the video game was released. Super Mario Bros. starred a solid cast, with Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi, Samantha Mathis as Daisy, Dennis Hopper as Koopa, Fisher Stevens as Iggy Koopa, and Mojo Nixon as Toad. The plot of the movie had Mario and Luigi Mario, the proprietors and sole employees of Mario Bros. plumbing, cross paths with a young paleontology student named Daisy. Daisy, an orphan raised from an egg by the nuns who found her, gets stalked by Spike and Iggy, who are responsible for a number of women disappearing from Brooklyn. As the pair of kidnappers move in to grab her, she gets a ride from Mario and Luigi, the latter inviting her out to dinner. Iggy and Spike, not really smart enough to know the meaning of the word “quit”, keep following, but wind up grabbing Daniella, Mario’s date, instead after being taken home by the plumber.
Daisy had been working at a dig site in Brooklyn where unusual dinosaur bones had been found. Anthony Scapelli, who owns the Scapelli Construction Company and Scapelli Plumbing, owns the land where the dig is occurring and wants to end the delays. Since Daisy has a court order allowing her to complete her dig, Scapelli uses other means, including sending his own plumbers into the dig site to sabotage it by opening pipes. Fortunately, when Daisy discovers the sabotage, Luigi is with her. Luigi gets Mario and together they shut off the water pouring in. However, they are so focused on their work that Iggy and Spike are able to sneak up, knock the plumbers out, and kidnap Daisy. Mario and Luigi aren’t out of action for long; they’re able to give chase until they run into a chasm and lose track of Daisy. The kidnapped girl, though, appears in a rock, leaning far enough out that Luigi can take the piece of meteorite Daisy wears as a necklace.
Luigi, with a leap of faith, leaps across the chasm and through the rock. Mario hesitates but does follow his brother through what turns out to be a dimensional bridge. Mario lands in a strange world with unusual people driving electric cars. The Mario Bros. get bumped around, mugged, and arrested before they can get their bearings. One of the people they’re arrested with is Toad, a anti-Koopa protest singer. Toad babbles about the fungus covering the city, claiming it’s really the former king and it’s fighting to regain the throne. This earns Toad the sentence of de-evolution, turning him into a Goomba. The Marios do escape and are able to fight back against Koopa, recover the meteorite piece, rescue Daisy and Daniella, and prevent Koopa from merging his dimension with the Earth’s.
The biggest problem with Super Mario Bros. is that it only has a passing resemblence to the video game. Koopa’s world is unlike the worlds in the video game; instead, it’s a dingy, brown place that makes Brooklyn look bright and cheery. When an 8-bit world has more colour than half a movie, something’s gone wrong. The cast does what they can with the script. Dennis Hopper chews the scenery everytime he’s on screen while Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo are fun to watch even if they were drunk on set. Can’t blame them, really. Hopper was meant to be there five weeks, but wound up shooting over seventeen instead. Hoskins and Leguizamo both have excised the movie from their resumes; Hoskins biggest regret was doing Super Mario Bros.
The problems just start with the script, though. The Mario elements are shoe-horned in. Koopa looks like Dennis Hopper with mutant cornrows in his hair instead of the dragon-like Bowser. The Marios don’t get their signature coveralls until the climax. Until then, Mario doesn’t wear red and Luigi doesn’t wear green; the colours the characters use in the game. The Goombas, evil mushrooms with fangs in the video game, became large humanoid dinosaurs with tiny heads, which would better fit a Koopa Troopa, though not really. A viewer would get the feeling that key people in the crew had never played or see played the video game at any point in the twelve years between the release of the game and the release of the movie.
The movie might have been better if it hadn’t been tied to the video game. The basic plot – stop a villainous overlord and his henchmen from merging his dimension with ours – is more than enough for a Hollywood movie. Given that Iggy and Spike don’t have a brain cell between them, the movie could be played as a comedy and aimed at children. Koopa’s dimension was created by the meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs; some of the beasts survived by being pulled to the parallel dimension. The electric cars reflect that there would be no oil from extinct dinosaurs. Even that concept, though, isn’t fully explored. Koopa’s scheme was to save his world; Mario and Luigi, by defeating him, doomed a dimension. Congrats! The Earth is saved, but Daisy’s world must keep suffering.
This isn’t to say that the movie didn’t try to include elements from the video game. The movie starts on a promising note by using the video game’s own soundtrack to open. Yoshi makes an appearance as a pet, and the fungus covering the city does sprout mushrooms to help Mario and Luigi, including providing them with a Bob-omb. Super Mario Bros. was meant to be a prequel, an origins movie. The movie is closer to the earlier arcade game Mario Bros. than it is to Super Mario Bros. For all it’s faults, the movie did win two Saturn awards, one for Best Costume and one for Best Make-Up. But, it’s not a Super Mario movie. The details serve to remind the audience on what could have been. There’s a feeling of a reuse of script or scripts with Mario shoved in.
The main problem is the one seen with Battleship, there are a lot of good ideas being squished into an adaptation that just doesn’t need them and getting wasted. Super Mario Bros. is a mess that can’t use its strong cast to save itself.
Next week, a fan’s take on Mario.
And speaking of the fan take, there is a webcomic based on the work done for the non-existing sequel. The artist has had discussions with the script writers about the aborted sequel and has continued the story.
This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on June 5th, 2014.
Music
Before we get to talking about anything else, let’s get something out of the way. If you’re anything like me then you like to listen to music while you work. And you often take a liking to a particular song for a particular story. And it kind of messes with your zen thing when you have to switch back to YouTube every three minutes to start your song back (and somebody’ gonna die tonight if there’s that one particular section of the song that you need to listen to for your groove to keep going). (more…)
Want to get into cosplay photography? Here’s a handy starting guide for you photographic types.
I love these kinds of articles. Share your knowledge, put it on the net – and consider making a free ebook as well!
Also if you’re a cosplayer, it can’t hurt to learn more about photography to build a good portfolio.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
We hear about Competitive gaming, but seriously, it’s a big thing. Kind of weird, I know.
Makes me wonder if games can be more and more designed to BE competitive. Games made literally to watch others play.
Thought-provoking, no? Any ideas, gamers out there?
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
OK gang, here’s a chance to see what it’s like to be an anime director. Which, as it’s a creative management position I always figured would be a LOT more boring and stressful anyway.
Ever thought of working in anime or animation?
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
The plays of William Shakespeare have long been the go-to source for adaptations. Some plays, like Julius Caesar, can be treated as historical drama. Others can transcend their original setting and be placed in almost any setting, with Romeo and Juliet as the exemplar. Romeo and Juliet has been adapted as written, transplanted in time as in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, as an action movie with Romeo Must Die, as science fiction with Romie-0 and Julie-8, as a ballet, as a musical with West Side Story, and even animated, as in the aforementioned Romie-0 and Julie-8. This one play could sustain several months’ worth of columns here at /Lost in Translation/ on its own. If you go back to The Nature of Remakes, I brought up the idea that remakes and adaptations should bring something new to the work. Gnomeo & Juliet is not the first animated version of the play, nor is it the first musical.
What it does bring is garden gnomes.
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies and is typically the first that high school students run into in English classes. The play tells the story of the star-cross’d lovers whose love runs into the feud between their families. Shakespearean tragedies tend to have a body count, and Romeo and Juliet is no exception, albeit having a small number of deaths. Two notable deaths, though, are the title lovers, thus turning the play into a tragedy.
Gnomeo & Juliet, though, is a animated film meant for family viewing. Family fare of late, though, avoid death, especially of the lead characters*. Characters are allowed to be in danger, even in mortal peril, but a “happily ever after” ending is the rule, not the exception. However, older family members may be familiar with Romeo and Juliet as they watch. There are expectations. How does Gnomeo & Juliet fare?
The movie starts with one of the gnome chorus introducing the film, saying that the story has been, “one that has been told. A lot.” Right away, the movie itself is aware that /Romeo and Juliet/ is the most adapted of Shakespeare’s plays. But, the gnome continues, “We’re going to tell it again, but in a different way.” Fair notice that the movie isn’t going to be faithful. However, the gnome then starts with the prologue from the play, ending only when the stage’s trap door opens underneath. The line that got interrupted? “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”
The story takes place in the gardens of Ms Montague, who lives at 2B Verona Drive, and Mr. Capulet, of Not 2B Verona Drive. The Blues, ruled by Gnomeo’s mother Lady Bluebury, maintain Ms Montague’s garden. The Reds, bitter rivals to the Blues, are led by Lord Redbrick, Juliet’s father, and keep Mr. Capulet’s garden in top shape. Gnomeo, who is a combination of Mercutio and Romeo from the play, first appears in a lawnmower race against Tybalt. The race goes to Tybalt, who wins through a low blow. Meanwhile, Juliet is being kept safe by her father and is chafing to get off the pedestal, metaphorically and literally. With help from her confidante, a ceramic frog named Nanette, taking the role of the nurse from the play, Juliet sneaks out to recover a flower in an abandoned yard. Romeo, too, sneaks out, meaning to exact revenge on Tybalt but is distracted by a figure in the moonlight.
For a movie promising to tell the tale differently, it does follows the play. The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet appears and, while not in the same language, it does carry the same sentiment, the pull between duty to family and desire for the young gnome. The feud escalates, leading to the smashing of Tybalt during a fight with Gnomeo and Gnomeo’s exile. It’s only when Gnomeo runs into a statue of William Shakespeare is the audience told the movie isn’t beholden to the play. Even then, the destruction of Juliet’s pedestal by the Terrafirminator while Gnomeo trying to free her was big enough for good old Bill to shout, “I told you so!”
Gnomeo & Juliet is an odd movie. It bounced from Disney to Miramax to finally Starz Entertainment before getting the green light. With music by executive producer Elton John, expectations were mixed. At the same time, the casting was both inspired and ecletic. The title characters were played by James McAvoy, a Shakespearean actor, and Emily Blunt. Maggie Smith, another Shakespearean actor, voiced Lady Bluebury, and Michael Caine provided his talents as Lord Redbrick. Patrick Stewart, also Shakespearean, played the statue of William Shakespeare. Adding to the cast, we have Jason Statham as Tybalt, Ashley Jensen as Nanette, Matt Lucas as Benny**, the counterpart to Benvolio from the play, Jim Cummings as Featherstone, a plastic flamingo, Ozzy Osbourne as Fawn, taking the role of Peter in the play, Dolly Parton as Dolly Gnome, who started the first lawnmower race, and Hulk Hogan as the Terrafirminator Announcer. Add in the gnome chorus working for Lord Redbrick and the ceramic bunnies*** helping Lady Bluebury, and the casting is impressive.
As an adaptation, Gnomeo & Juliet is a little loose with the original, though it does hit the major points of the play up to when the movie says it’s deviating. The biggest change is in tone; the original tragedy is turned into a musical comedy. Yet, there are moments when the original play shines through to add drama. The beats of Romeo and Juliet are still in the movie, and the survival of the leads does become doubtful.
Gnomeo & Juliet did well enough at the theatres that a sequel has been announced. Gnomeo & Juliet: Sherlock Gnomes will introduce the world’s greatest detecting ceramic gnome consultant to solve a mystery haunting the families.
Next week, Super Mario Bros.
* There are exceptions, but they are rare.
** Benny did indeed have a scene where “Benny and the Jets” played. The scene was related to the plot.
*** When the feud breaks out into open warfare, the bunnies paint themselves blue like the extras in Braveheart.
During my review of Dredd, I touched upon the idea of a work being influenced by the current events of its day. Judge Dredd was influenced by movies like Dirty Harry, the beginning of Thatcherism, and the fascism of Spain’s Francisco Franco to become the dystopian future shown in the pages of 2000 AD. While some works can be seen in their historical setting, fantasy and science fiction is meant to transcend the era of creation while still providing a look at society and humanity of the day. Other works, already historical, like Westerns, can still reflect the mores of the time of creation.
Society isn’t static. Mixed-race marriages, for example, was scandalous in 1910 but is mostly a given in 2014*. Adaptations need to adjust for changes in sensibilities. The casual racism in early works such as 1929’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. just won’t fly today and didn’t in the 1979 television adaptation. At the same time, as seen throughout Lost in Translation, the best adaptations come when the crew of the new work respect both the original work and its fans. While the loss of the racism in Buck Rogers didn’t hurt the series, the same couldn’t be said for an All in the Family remake. Groundbreaking for its time, All in the Family looked at bigotry and bigots through the character of Archie Bunker. A remake of the series might not be possible today.
Westerns are in a similar bind. Once the staple of serials, movies, and television, Westerns went through years of desconstruction, especially with Spaghetti Westerns like Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy** before being mostly abandoned after Heaven’s Gate bombed. Westerns would return, reconstructed, but no longer had the cachet that they had in the early years of Hollywood. Even then, many early tropes had been disproven by the advancement of history and the changing view of the era from Wild West to the march of civilization across new states.
Science fiction, as mentioned above, is also vulnerable to the passage of time. I’ve touched on changing technology in an earlier column, but this goes beyond just tech. Take Star Trek. The original Star Trek aired during the Space Race and the Cold War, where exploring the final frontier just beyond Earth’s atmosphere was a competition between the US and the USSR. When Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired in 1987, the Soviet Union had just started a policy of peristroika, reformation of the Communist Party, and glasnost, openess, essentially bringing the Cold War to a close. Space exploration was being done through unmanned probes, satellites, and ground-based installations. Skylab, launched in 1973, had fallen from orbit and disintegrated in the atmosphere in 1979. The trend of cocooning, where people stayed home with families instead of going out, was starting, though wouldn’t get named until the 1990s. Star Trek: TNG reflected the changes. Gone was the maverick captain, commanding the only ship in the sector. Captain Picard reflected a new style of management, one where he weighed the opinions of his officers and crew, and acted in a more deliberate manner.
What happens when the era of the original isn’t taken into account? Or, what if the era of the original is seen as irrelevant? Let’s take a look at two recent financial flops, 2014’s Robocop and 2013’s The Lone Ranger. Please note that I have not yet reviewed the movies as adaptations.
First, Robocop. The original Robocop was released in 1987, near the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term as President of the US. The movie, while being a science fiction action flick, contained heavy amounts of satire of Reagan-era policies. TV series had boiled down to T&A with catch phrases, ie, “I’d buy that for a dollar!” The ozone layer had been destroyed. Detroit had gone bankrupt and was owned by a corporation, with police services privatized. In 2014, it’s not as funny. Television is recovering from being a wasteland, mainly through expanded cable stations and competition with other streams of entertainment on the Internet, but catch phrases still come up in sitcoms. The destruction of the ozone layer has led to drastic climate change over the past decade, with weather records broken yearly and tropical storms growing worse. Detroit, while in shaky financial shape in the 1980s, has declared bankruptcy, though police services haven’t yet been privatized. Military services, though, have, with Blackwater/Xe/Academi LLC being one of many private “security” firms to receive contracts from the US government during both the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq war. Suddenly, the satire, pointed but exaggerated, in the original Robocop seems prophetic and painful now. Removing that satire, though, removes a lot of the heart of the movie.
The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, had other problems. The big one was the change in how audiences approach Westerns. The classic trope of good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats has given way to nuance. The idea of a First Nation person being a sidekick doesn’t sit well anymore. A series with a long history, the original Lone Ranger appeared on the radio, in books, on television, and in movies, but had all but disappeared after 1961, with the exception of the 1981 The Legend of the Lone Ranger, which had the controversy of Clayton Moore, TV’s Lone Ranger, being sued to not use the trademark mask, and a pilot to a shelved 2003 WB network series. Modern audiences who hadn’t grown up with Westerns as an entertainment staple, simply weren’t drawn in, even with Johnny Depp as Tonto.
The time a work was originally created is, indeed, a factor in how successful an adaptation can be. A remake or an adaptation that fails to account for the change in societal acceptances since the creation of the original may fall flat. Future reviews will take into account how the difference in time affects the newer work.
Next week, Gnomeo and Juliet.
* Depending on location, but areas where mixed-race marriages are forbidden are well in the minority.
** A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
