Like the previous two gaming adaptations looked at, Star Wars and Star Trek, today’s is also based on a franchise. Unlike the previous outings, though, Victory Games’ James Bond 007 Role Playing Game, released in 1983, is set in modern times.

007 is an older franchise than either Star Wars or Star Trek, beginning with the release of Casino Royale in 1954, followed by thirteen more books, including two collections of short stories.. After Fleming’s death, other authors continued writing about Bond, including Kingsley Amis, penning Colonel Sun as Robert Markham, and John Gardner. Naturally, Bond’s adventures became popular enough to become adaptation fodder. Casino Royale was the first adapted; the first adaptation of the book was an CBS TV movie featuring “Jimmy Bond” in 1954, followed later by the 1967 parody with Woody Allen, and then in 2006 starring Daniel Craig. The latter was a reboot of the film franchise started by Cubby Broccoli in 1962 with Dr. No. All told, the franchise has seen six actors portraying James Bond, each bringing a different interpretation of the character. 007 has had many imitators, from Matt Helm to Danger!! Death Ray, and has also been the basis of many parodies, including the 1967 Casino Royale, the Austin Powers movies, and the Reboot episode, “Firewall“. Bond is an influence.

A role-playing game based on a franchise featuring a sole main character may seem odd, but Bond is just one agent of several with a License to Kill. The franchise also has recurring characters, including CIA agent Felix Leiter and fellow MI6 agent, Mary Goodnight. The novel Moonraker mentions agents 008 and 0011, and the film franchise shows agents through to 009. Goodnight represents the lower ranked agents in MI6, allowing for players who want to work towards becoming a 00 agent.

Character creation in James Bond 007 is point-based, as opposed to random dice rolls as seen in Dungeons & Dragons*, allowing for players to create an agent to their taste. The points, the number of which depend on the experience of the character, can be used to buy attributes, skills, and appearance details. The attributes – Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Perception, and Intelligence – are more or less standard across the majority of tabletop RPGs, and are the base for skills. The twenty-four skills are those seen in the 007 books and movies, from Boating to Gambling to Seduction. Need to outrun a number of SUVs filled with mooks working for the head of a Columbian drug cartel? Driving. Need to shoot at those same mooks? Fire Combat. Need to convince the cartel head that you wanted to get his attention to become one of his lieutenants? Charisma. If a skill doesn’t quite cover what a player wants to do, there’s also the optional Fields of Experience, which provide some flavour on what an agent knows, from being able to ski to understanding a toxicological report on a rare poison. The Primary Chance of a skill is based on one or two attributes plus the number of levels bought for the character.

With the appearance details, the game introduces an interesting concept that works in the context of an espionage RPG – the more average a character is, in height, weight, and looks, the more it costs to buy the appearance. An average looking character is harder to identify, which is handled in the game with Fame points. Fame is further increased depending on the initial experience level; Rookies, like Goodnight, aren’t known while a 00-level agent, like 007, has had missions that have become known. Agent-level, the middle tier covering people like Felix Leiter, may or may not be recognized, but word of their exploits have gotten out. Bond, who is known through out the espionage world, has a high number of Fame points that even dying, as seen in the film adaptation of You Only Live Twice, still doesn’t help avoid recognition. Also affecting Fame is gender; female agents get a reduction because women aren’t as represented as agents as men are; Holly Goodhead, the CIA agent from the Moonraker movie, isn’t recognized by Bond because of this factor.

The core mechanic of the 007 RPG is based on the roll of a percentile die, or d100. However, it’s not a simple pass/fail system. Instead, the game uses Ease Factors ranging from 10, the easiest, to 1/2, the hardest. The Ease Factor is multiplied by a skill’s Primary Chance to determine the Success Chance. When the percentile dice are rolled, the result is checked against the success table, not only to see if the character succeeded, but how well, through the determination of the Quality Rating. The QR ranges from 1, best, to 4, worst but still a success. If the roll was to see if a character hit using Fire Combat, for guns, or Hand-to-Hand Combat, for melee, the Quality determines how much damage is done.

Dice, though, can be fickle. Bond seldom fails when he knows he must succeed. The 007 RPG has one more mechanic that helps, the Hero Point. Today, most games have a hero point or drama point mechanism to help players when needed. Prior to the 007 game’s release, the only hero point mechanism seen was in TSR’s Top Secret, with optional Fame and Fortune points. With 007, the hero point mechanic was part of the core. Players had to declare the use of a Hero Point, though not how many, before rolling. Hero Points improved the Quality Rating by one per point spent. A QR of 1, though, was the best possible, with no further improvements possible**. However, that Hero Point isn’t lost; getting a QR1 gets the player a Hero Point, turning the expenditure into a wash. That does mean that more experienced agents, like 007, will be getting more Hero Points on average than a Rookie, but a 00 will also be facing more challenging opponents. A Rookie shouldn’t be going up against Scaramanga on his or her first mission.

All of the above may seem complex, and the game does front-load the complexity at character creation, but once an agent has been made, the mechanics are easy to use. The provided character sheet includes all the skills and and how to calculate their base chance and even has a multiplication table for Ease Factors. All rolls are based on Ease Factors, giving players an idea of their chance of success. The game includes examples of play that show how the mechanics work using scenes from the movies and books. While the core rulebook doesn’t have room to detail all of 007’s gadgets, the supplement, Q-Manual covers everything that has appeared in the books and movies.

With weapons, vehicles, and gadgets, the core philosophy of the designers was that the character still had to be the focus. Almost every item detailed in either the core rules or the Q Manual provides a Performance Modifier, a bonus or penalty to the the task’s Ease Factor. The only exception is the automatic safecracker from the movie version of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, a suitcase-sized device that did the work while Bond read a magazine. The Performance Modifiers give the GM room to throw added challenges to players. A chase sequence that’d be too easy with the Q Branch provided Lotus becomes a tense scene when said Lotus explodes and the player needs to borrow a non-player character’s aged Peugeot, as seen in For Your Eyes Only.

All the above discussion about character creation and game mechanics, though, doesn’t answer the main thrust of Lost in Translation – is the game a good adaptation of the source works? The answer – yes. The game’s mechanics were pulled from the books and films. Reading the novels or watching the movies with an eye to seeing the mechanics in action reveals that the rules cover everything that happens. It is possible to see when Bond gets a QR1 result and when he spends a Hero Point. The robustness of the mechanic means that players and GMs can apply them to the 007 films released after the game went out of print. The game’s designers ensured that the rules reflected 007’s exploits.

The only lack that the game has is the hole caused by litigation over Thunderball. EON Productions, the licensors of James Bond, didn’t have the rights for SPECTRE, thus could not grant Victory Games permission to use the organization. Victory Games created a new villainous group to fill in the gap, TAROT, using the organization to fill in SPECTRE-sized hole, particularly in adventure modules based on the older movies. Characters with ties to SPECTRE were transferred to TAROT.

While the James Bond 007 RPG is out of print, and the Avalon Hill Game Company has folded the Victory Games imprint, the game itself is again available. A retro-clone, Classified published by Expeditious Retreat Press, was released in 2013. The game doesn’t have the /007/ license, but the core mechanics will allow for Bond and his contemporaries and successors.
* Point-buy in D&D has been around as an option since second edition AD&D, but was explicitly made so in the third edition.
** Except when using the Gambling skill, depending on the game of chance being played, allowing a player to beat an opponent’s 8 with a 9 in Chemin de Fer or Baccarat or an opponent’s straight flush with a royal flush in Poker.

With announcement after announcement of adaptations being optioned, there`s a fatigue building.  Even sequels are starting to suffer.  As seen in the History of Adaptations, this decade is shaping up to look like the Fifties, where adaptations reigned supreme.  In the Fifties, there were three popular original movies and two were Cinerama demos.  In this decade, of the four original movies identified on the Filmsite.org list, three are sequels and just one, Inside Out, is original.  The analysis of this decade will have to be redone once it’s over, to take into account films like Deadpool and the Marvel Cinematic Universe offerings.  Suffice to say, adaptations are dominating this decade.

Not helping with the fatigue is the source of the adaptations.  Unlike decades past, adaptations this decade are coming from what could be considered “low-brow” entertainment – comics, Young Adult novels, and movies of the Eighties and Nineties.  As seen in the History wrap up, the sources of adaptations in the Fifties came from literary works, with the only Children’s Lit work adapted becoming a Disney movie, Lady and the Tramp.  Today, what is considered works solely for children and adolescents – comics, Young Adult Lit, and Harry Potter – are making up the bulk of the popular movies; but all the sources are popular across age barriers.

Some of the fatigue may stem from perceived snobbery; studios aren’t making “grown-up” films, not like the past.  That’s not the only source of fatigue, though.  Like the Fifties, this decade is seeing remakes of movies from twenty to forty years ago.  Ghostbusters, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and even Jem and the Holograms all reach back to a nostalgia for the Seventies*, Eighties, and Nineties.  The Eighties were the first decade in movie history where popular original works outnumbered popular adaptations.  Indeed, the Eighties saw experimentation in all forms of entertainment – movies, music, television, novels – because no one could predict what would be a hit.  Follow-the-Leader maneuverings by studios weren’t guaranteed to be successful, while a low budget movie based on a nightmare, The Terminator, grabbed audiences’ attention.  Unlike the Fifties, where the remakes added elements like colour and sound that weren’t possible in the Twenties, the difference between film technology today and in the Eighties is primarily effect based, specifically, CGI.  To give a remake its own identity, changes are made elsewhere, such as the flipping of genders in the Ghostbusters remake.

Changes, though, strike at the heart of both the feel of a movie and at nostalgia.  With social media allowing voices to echo across the Internet faster today than any previous decade, a film doesn’t have to even be released before critics denounce it.  Yet, shot-for-shot remakes lead audiences to wonder why they just didn’t watch the original, something that is easy to do thanks to home video, DVD, and online streaming.  Gus van Sant’s remake of Psycho may have had some subtle techniques, but the general audience saw a shot-for-shot remake.

The big problem is the risk aversion seen in Hollywood today, at least on the silver screen.  Today’s budgets mean that movies need to pull in as many people as possible, and the easiest way to do that is to adapt what’s popular in other media.  Worse, movies like the Harry Potter series, which made an effort to be accurate to the original books, have upped the expectations of audiences.  Adaptations that pay lip service to a popular work aren’t going to survive long in theatres, much like Jem.  But the adaptations that do pay attention to the source get butts into theatre seats.  The record for highest grossing movie keeps getting reset year after year by adaptations this decade; this can’t happen without people going to see the movies.  People may be clamouring for original works, but they keep going to adaptations.

If the big screen is becoming dominated with adaptations, where can an original work be found?  Television.  While there are several adaptations on the air today, including Supergirl, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., A Game of Thrones, and The Shannara Chronicles, the nature of today’s thousand-channel universe means that adaptations can’t fill every time slot.  Reality TV, once a dominating genre, doesn’t allow for reruns; once someone wins the season, there’s no point to watching the previous episodes, which means no sales of boxed sets for holiday seasons.  Meanwhile, popular series, from those airing on broadcast channels to cable-only offerings, have a secondary market.  The competition between stations, even taking into account time-shifting, means that TV shows have to stand out from the crowd.  For now, television is where originality will shine.

With movies, though, until there’s a series of massive flops, adaptations are going to be the order of the day.  Studios, though, aren`t going to allow a big budget blockbuster to bomb if they can help it, and have checks and balances and Save the Cat to prevent huge losses.  A flop these days only comes about when a studio misjudges the audience response to a project, as what happened with both R.I.P.D. and The Lone Ranger.  In the former, it was a comic book movie based on a comic that wasn’t known to the general audience.  With the latter, the nature of Westerns had changed greatly as audiences’ understanding of history has changed since the last Lone Ranger movie to the point that Johnny Depp wasn’t the instant draw the studio expected.

The only way to get studios to consider original works is for one to become an unexpected hit.  Nothing gets Hollywood’s attention more than the surprise hit.  Sure, there will be a number of follow-the-leader movies as studios try to figure out why the film was a hit, but that should spur a few original works, avoiding all-adaptation all the time.

* It could be argued that The Rocky Horror Picture Show became the cult hit it is during the Eighties thanks to repertory theatres.

Adaptations of games are an iffy prospect.  There have been major failures along the way, from Super Mario Bros through Dungeons & Dragons to Battleship.  Yet, studios keep trying, because the recognition factor of the names involved should pull in an audience, as seen with the announcement of the Tetris movie.  With D&D, Battleship, and Tetris, there isn’t a proper setting as would be used in fiction.  Maybe movies aren’t the best vehicle for game adaptations.  World building takes effort, and movies don’t provide enough time to get the details down.  Also a good idea is to pick a game that has a setting.  D&D has several, but using them would mean making the movie using the setting’s name*, not the game’s.  Yet, the animated D&D series was able to create a setting and a conflict that came from the game’s mechanics.  An animated series also has the advantage of needing to be short and to the point without having to worry about the effects budget.  Time to look at a game that has a developed setting and see how it was adapted.  For this, let’s look at BattleTech, a game of mecha combat in the far future.

BattleTech started as BattleDroids, produced by FASA in 1984.  The change in the name came after some legal pressure from Lucasfilm over the term, “droid”.  Becoming BattleTech didn’t change the core idea of the wargame – two sides fielding walking mecha called BattleMechs to claim dominence of the battlefield.  FASA licensed mecha designs from several anime, including Macross**, giving them their own attributes for the game.  As the game grew, different factions were developed, and a history came about explaining why these interstellar empires were at war.  The five nations of the Inner Sphere*** eventually received a supplement each, detailing their culture, economy, and interstellar relations – the Lyran Commonwealth headed by House Steiner, with German influences; the Draconis Combine headed by House Kurira, with Japanese influences; the Federated Suns headed by House Davion, with French and English influences; the Capellan Confederation headed by House Liao, with Chinese influences; and the Free Worlds League headed by House Marik, with Greek and Balkan influence.

As the setting expanded, the years progressed from 3025, detailing the Succession Wars to see who would form the new Star League.  The Houses could barely keep their technology base, with many technicians performing rituals that were learned by rote instead of proper study.  In 3049, a new threat appeared from beyond known space.  The Clans, the return of the descendants of Star League forces that fled the Inner Sphere after the the revolt from one of the Periphery states resulted in the death of the First Lord of the Star League in 2766.  The goal of the invaders was to restore the Star League and retake Earth.  The Clan invasion forced the major Houses to research technology and upgrade to survive.  Ultimately, the Clan invasion was stopped in 3052 after a coalition of forces fought a proxy battle for control of Earth.  The major Houses then formed a new Star League in 3060 to pre-empt a second Clan invasion, but internal fighting inside the Federated Commonwealth, made of Houses Davion and Steiner, erupted as a civil war.  In the aftermath, Houses Steiner, Davion, and Liao pulled out of the Star League, ending it.  BattleTech grew from the basic box set to encompass published missions, a related role-playing game (MechWarrior), tie-in novels, video games, and even an animated adaptation.

BattleTech: The Animated Series aired in 1994.  Produced by Saban, the fourteen episode series melded traditional animation with CGI and detailed the exploits of the 1st Somerset Strikers, an ad hoc team created by Major Adam Steiner, and instructor at the famed Nagelring Military Academy of the Federated Commonwealth Armed Forces (FCAF).  Adam’s goal was to find out who attacked his homeworld of Somerset; at first, he believed the Draconis Combine was involved, but learns that a new invader was responsible.  With the tacet permission of Archon Melissa Steiner-Davion, he commandeers a Draconis JumpShip to take investigate further.  With him are Lieutenant Rachel Specter, Adam’s best friend and tactical officer; Lieutenant Ciro Ramierez, Adam’s assistant instructor at the Nagelring; Cadet Katiara Kylie, aerospace pilot and fellow Somerset native; Captain “Hawk” Hawkins of the FCAF; “Captain” Valten Ryder, mercenary picked up on Dustball; Franklin Sakamoto, Draconis smuggler and illegitimate son of the Combine’s ruler; Doctor Deirdre Nakamura, shipmate of Franklin’s; and “Patch” McGuire, mechanic.

The 1st Somerset Strikers soon learn that the new foe they face is Clan Jade Falcon, one of the invading Clans returning to take back Earth.  The Jade Falcons forces in the area of operations are led by Star Colonel Nicholai Malthus and Star Colonel Kristen Redmond.  Both have a technology introduced for the cartoon, an Enhanced Imaging implant that allows them to get a broader picture of the battlefield through virtual reality.  At first, the ragtag Strikers spend almost as much time infighting as they do battling Malthus’s forces, but as Adam gains intelligence, the Jade Falcon commanders become rivals as Nicholai tries to defeat Steiner.  It’s not easy for the Strikers; they lose Ciro to the Jade Falcons, where he is turned into a bondsman and becomes a ‘Mech pilot with an EI implant.  In the final episode, the Strikers battle Nicholai and his forces over the fate of Somerset.

The EI implant allowed the studio to switch to CGI, showing ‘Mech battles via virtual reality.  The characters are given ties to the setting, through relations, like Adam and Franklin, and through position, like Nicholai and Kristen.  Ciro first appeared in Michael A. Stackpole’s BattleTech novel, Lethal Heritage.  Franklin’s storyline began in Robert Charette’s novel, Heir to the Dragon.  Distinctive BattleMechs were used, from Adam’s Axeman and Kristen’s Vulture to Valten’s Bushwacker, making its first appearance in the setting.  Jordan K. Weisman, one of the series’ creators, also was a developer on the game.  The production team took pains to bring in as many elements of the setting that they could fit, from having characters of both the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine working together to the choice of the Jade Falcons as the antagonists.  Keeping the focus on the 1st Somerset Strikers helped the writers create their own stories while still using the decade of work already produced for the game as background.

There were some issues.  As a cartoon, the animated series was aimed at the lower age of BattleTech players.  The series couldn’t get into a lot of detail; a 22 minute episode doesn’t provide enough time to get into the depth of the setting while still providing an ongoing story arc and ‘Mech versus ‘Mech action.  To get some of the ‘Mechs, the Technical Readouts were ignored.  Hawk’s Mauler was originally a Draconis Combine-only design, yet the Fed-Com pilot has one.  For the casual viewer, one interested in the series with little or no knowledge of the existing canon, this isn’t a problem.

Unlike the D&D movie, the problem with adapting BattleTech is the sheer amount of world building that has been done since 1984.  Even in 1994, just ten years after the game’s first release, the Inner Sphere saw two Successor Wars, one that resulted in two of the nations becoming one through marriage and conquest, and the return of the descendants of the Star League.  The political maneuverings between the wars were hinted at in the animated series, but could use more time to expand.  A Game of Thrones does show it is possible, but a 22 minute episode requires a focus on the core characters without getting into too much detail of events beyond..

FASA did release a sourcebook based on the series, 1st Somerset Strikers, which served three purposes.  The first was to act as an intro for new players brought in through the cartoon, explaining the different factions shown in the series.  The second was to let existing players replay events in the series to see if things could go differently.  The third was to bring the characters into the BattleTech canon.  Star Commander Pytor, one of Malthus’ ‘Mech pilots, appeared in the Robert Thurston novel, I Am Jade Falcon while Adam became the Archon of the post-civil war Lyran Alliance, to name but two characters.  However, the animated series is now considered an in-universe series detailing a fictionalized account of events that happened.

BattleTech: The Animated Series was an ambitious undertaking by FASA.  The designer notes in 1st Somerset Strikers shows the efforts being taken to ensure that new viewers wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the setting while still getting key elements in, a challenging task, especially when different products and novels could show any given House as both savior and destroyer of mankind.  The chosen format required liberties taken through necessity.  Overall, the series makes an effort to adapt the game, even if it’s not perfect.

* For example, Dragonlance, though that adaptation had issues related to time needed.
** These ‘Mechs would later become “the Unseen” after a legal proceedings by Harmony Gold led FASA to remove their images.  The conflict came about because of how each company had licensed the images; Harmony Gold had the Macross license, leading to Robotech, while FASA had approached the design studio instead of the animation studio.
*** There are minor nations outside the Inner Sphere, collectively known as the Periphery.  They, too, have BattleMechs, but their capacity for warfare is limited compared to the major Houses.  Some of the Periphery states still do have a role to play in interstellar politics.

News has come out about a Tetris movie adaptation.  A joint Sino-American production, the budget is reported as $80 million, far less than the typical blockbuster.  Yet, the question remains.

Tetris?  Really?

For those unfamiliar with Tetris, the goal is to rotate falling blocks of varying shapes into position to clear lines, with the best scores coming from clearing four lines at once.  The game combines hand-eye coordination with spatial recognition.  There is no cast of characters, no plot, just falling blocks.  Yet, according to the report, the Tetris movie will be an “epic sci-fi thriller”.  Does this mean the characters in the movie have to discover the source of falling blocks that cause city blocks to completely disappear?

It has been said that video game movies suck.  This sentiment can be traced to movies such as Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter: The Movie.  Both of those movies were based of games that had actual characters and, at the minimum, a background to explain the reason for the action.  The video game  Super Mario Bros. III has a plot, albeit the simple scour a world to rescue the princess.  Tetris doesn’t have that, just falling tetrominos that need to be fit into empty spaces that won’t cause the wall of bricks to get too high.

What the proposed Tetris movie does have in its favour is Larry Kasanoff, the producer of the Mortal Kombat movie, a film that showed that it is possible to have a video game movie that was enjoyable.  The Tetris movie will also have a cast mixing Western and Chinese actors.  Right now, though, it looks like associating the movie with the video game is more to get people to notice the work instead of being a faithful adaptation.

In contrast, here is what Kevin Smith said about helming a Buckaroo Banzai TV series:
“I’ve been tapped to adapt BUCKAROO BANZAI into a series, which is something of a dream come true: I’ve loved the 1984 movie since I was a kid. My well-read copy of the film’s novelization by screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch is my Bible. But I’m not gonna be directing this alone: it is my intent to assemble a dream team of cult movie directors for the 10 episodes of this #BuckarooBanzai series – folks like #DonnieDarko director Richard Kelly, #ShaunOfTheDead director @edgar_wright and of course, the #Banzai director himself – WD Richter. Same with the writing: I want to bring in the creator Rauch himself to write the flashback episode detailing the night the red Lectroids came to Earth (with the help of #OrsonWelles and his War of the Worlds broadcast.) The other scripts will be penned by other #BlueBlazeIrregulars who worship this flick like I do. Cast-wise, I’m hoping to get the great Peter Weller to play Team Banzai’s greatest enemy, Hanoi Xan! And any cast member from the original who wants to play is gonna be welcomed like returning conquering heroes. Long story short? Don’t worry: I’m not gonna #KevinSmith this Banzai series at all. It’s gonna be 100% true Buckaroo. Which means the watermelon will NEVER be explained. #MGM #yoyodyne #buckaroobanzaiagainsttheworldcrimeleague”

Smith is making the effort to keep the elements he enjoyed about the original film.  The Tetris movie, with the announcement, isn’t making that same effort.  It feels much like Hasbro’s accouncements for movies based on their properties, Battleship, Candyland, and Monopoly.  The movie is being made to cash in on the name, and Battleship showed why that’s not always a good idea.

However, it is still early, with just the announcement of a Tetris movie.  Threshold Global Studios, the partnership behind the movie, wants to create films that bring the East and West together, which isn’t a bad idea.  Here’s hoping that the Tetris movie does well enough to keep the partnership going.

A few years ago, Lost in Translation looked at the movie, Real Steel, which was loosely based on the 1956 Richard Matheson short story, “Steel”.  Real Steel used some of the ideas from the original, but took on its own direction as the story became one of a father and son bonding.  The movie wasn’t the first adaptation of “Steel”.  Matheson was a frequent contributor to The Twilight Zone, writing both original screenplays and adapting from his own work.  “Steel” was one of the stories he adapted; the episode, the same name as the short story, was the second aired in the show’s fifth season in 1963.

The episode starts in the distant future of August 1974* as two men wheel a large human form covered by a glossy blanket and hood.  A piece falls off the form’s boot, but is quickly reattached.  The two men, “Steel” Kelly (played by Lee Marvin) and Pole (Joe Mantell), find a restaurant to sit down and have a beer in.  The two are the owners of Battling Maxo (Tipp McClure), a worn out B2 boxing robot that is the figure being hauled around.  The B2-series is an older model; parts are hard to find as a result.  Unfortunately for Steel and Pole, the part to have Maxo in the night’s fight isn’t available in town.

However, before regular boxing was outlawed, Steel was a boxer himself.  The prize money for appearing would be enough to get Maxo repaired, so Steel suggests that he takes the robot’s place.  He figures that, since there aren’t any parts for a B2 in town, no one really knows what one should look like.  The night of the fight, instead of Maxo under the hood, it’s Steel.  He faces the Maynard Flash (Chuck Hicks), a modern B7 model robot.  The ruse works, though Steel’s absense is questioned.  Pole just says that Steel is in the seats, watching the bout.

The fight between man and machine begins.  Steel gets a few good hits in, but the expression on the B7’s face never changes.  The Maynard Flash doesn’t even slow down, not even after a cheap shot Steel gets in on the back of the B7’s head.  Steel, however, does after taking a beating.  He drops after not even two and a half minutes into the first round.  Pole wheels him out on Maxo’s carrier, out of the arena and to the locker room.  Steel collapses once Pole closes the door.  Barely conscious, Steel tells Pole to get the fight money owed to them.  The promoter only provides half, claiming that he wanted the fight to last more than one round.

The episode follows the original story closely, which shouldn’t be a surprise.  Matheson adapted his own work to the screenplay, so there wasn’t a layer of separation, unlike Real Steel.  As seen with “Casting the Runes” Part 1 and Part 2, the format of the adaptation can play a part in its success.  With the exception of the fourth season**, each episode of The Twilight Zone ran thirty minutes, including breaks for advertising and station identification.  Matheson, having written episodes for the series already, was well aware of the time available to him.

Scriptwriters, though, aren’t the only members of the crew of a television series.  There are directors, producers, camera operators, casting agents, network executives, and advertisers, among others, who affect the final result shown.  The Twilight Zone had directors who understood what Rod Serling laid out for the series.  Network executives and advertisers are a far more nervous lot, risk adverse, and more concerned about the bottom line than creativity.  A popular show can push the limits.  An anthology series, such as The Twilight Zone, can tailor an episode to deal with concerns from above to mollify them long enough to get another episode past the radar.  The original story was about a man desperate to keep his robot working to the point where he’d willingly step into a boxing ring against a machine.  The episode showed that same desperation, with only Serling’s closing monologue adding a new dimension, the human spirit.  The monologue, though, is a valid interpretation of the story.  Steel knew what would happen in the ring and still went in to fight.

The adaptation is faithful.  Having the original writer adapt his own work into a format he’s familiar with on a series that was known for the type of work being adapted helped immensely, preventing the adaptation from wandering away from its roots.

* Again, the air date was 1963, placing the episode ten years into the future.  Matheson was only off by 13 years; Critter Crunch debuted at the MileHiCon in Denver in 1987, with Robot Wars airing on the BBC in 1998.
** The fourth season saw The Twilight Zone expand to fill an hour slot, filling in for a series that had been there prior.

 

Lost in Translation doesn’t normally touch upon anime and manga.  Ganriki covers that field far better.  In recent years, though, anime and manga have penetrated mainstream pop culture, leading to Western adaptations of works that have crossed the Pacific Ocean.  Today, Lost in Translation looks at the 2008 film, Speed Racer.

Mach GoGoGo was created in 1966 by Tatsuo Yoshida and followed the exploits of Go Mifune, a young race car driver who helps his family keep his father’s designs from rivals.  Go was inspired by Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas; his car, the Mach 5, was inspired by 007’s Aston Martin in Goldfinger.  In 1967, Tatsunoko Productions adapted the manga as an anime series of the same name; a typical path for many manga titles.  The anime was then picked up by Trans-Lux for airing as Speed Racer in the US.

Whether the name is Mach GoGoGo or Speed Racer, the characters remained consistent.  Go/Speed is a young driver with a love of both racing and his family.  His father, Daisuke/Pops, who built the Mach 5, went indie after being forced out of a corporation, keeping the designs for the car’s revolutionary engine for himself.  Kurio/Spritle is Speed’s younger brother who, along with his pet chimp, Sanpei/Chim-Chim, gets into trouble by tagging along.  Speed’s older brother, Kenichi/Rex, is estranged from Pops after a falling out, but reappears as The Masked Racer/Racer X to help Speed against his opponents.  Speed’s girlfriend, Michi/Trixie, is also there to help, and bails him out as much as he does for her.

The series focused on action, especially racing, with gangsters and crooked corporate execs scheming to fix races, steal Pops’ designs, including the Mach 5, or just eliminate Speed himself.  The anime lasted for 52 episodes, ending in 1968.  The boom in specialty cable channels in the 90s saw the return of Speed Racer, with MTV, Cartoon Network, and the Speed Channel all airing the show.  Fred Wolf, of Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, helmed a new series in 1993, lasting thirteen episodes.  The original also became the basis of the Dexter’s Laboratory episode, “Mock 5”, and had the theme song sleepily sung by Tom Servo during a dull chase in the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode, “Danger!!  Death Ray“.

As with any series that has been influential and is permeating the pop culture subconcious, studios wanted to turn Speed Racer into a feature film.  Warner Bros. optioned the rights to Speed Racer in 1992.  It wasn’t until 2006, when the Wachowski siblings took the helm, did production start.  The movie, also called Speed Racer, begins with Speed (played by Emile Hirsch) preparing for a race, then heading into a flashback of his much younger self in grade school losing focus from the Scantron test in favour of his brother Rex’s upcoming race.  The young Speed (Nicholas Elia) then dashes out of class at the bell to meet Rex and convinces him to take him to the track.

The race itself, the Thunderbird, showcases Speed’s abilities.  While all the other drivers try to catch up to him, Speed is keeping up with his brother’s track time, slowing off just enough to ensure that the time Rex, now deceased, put up remains the record.  In the stands, Speed’s family – Pops (John Goodman), Mom (Susan Sarandon), Spritle (Paulie Litt) with Chim-Chim (“Kenzie” and Willie”) – watch with Speed’s girlfriend, Trixie (Christina Ricci) and Racer Motors’s mechanic and Speed’s friend, Sparky (Kick Gurry).  Speed and the Mach 5 come to the attention of E.P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam), owner of Royalton Industries.  Royalton wants Speed to race for him.  After some thought, Speed turns down the offer, wanting to remain with Pops.  Angered by the refusal, Royalton threatens to destroy Racer Motors through having his drivers target Speed on the race course and through legal filings of intellectual property infringement against Pops.

Royalton’s threats come through, leaving Speed out of the Grand Prix.  At the darkest moment, two people arrive at the Racer home, Inspector Detector (Benno Fürmann) and Racer X (Matthew Fox), the Harbinger of Boom.  Inspector Detector is part of the Criminal Investigation Bureua, investigating corporate crime, and needs Speed’s help to reveal the race fixing Royalton and other firms are behind.  To that end, the Inspector wants Speed to race in the Casa Cristo 5000, a two continent rallye race, the one that claimed the life of Rex.  The Casa Cristo 5000 is also the only way Speed has to enter the Grand Prix; the winner of the rallye gets an automatic invitation.  Pops is against it, but Trixie helps Speed by taking him “skiing”.  Speed and Racer X join Taejo Togokahn (Rain), teaming up to race.

Pops has other reasons to not want Speed in the Casa Cristo 5000 beyond the loss of Rex.  Rallye racing is a far nastier form of the sport, with teams fielding illegal modifications on their cars.  One team, featuring Snake Oiler as their top driver, bribes three other teams, the Flying Foxes, Semper Fi-ber, and Thor-Axine, to take out Team Togokahn.  Speed and Racer X manage to avoid the dirty play, thanks to defensive modifications to the Mach 5, but Snake Oiler wins the first leg of the race.

Back at the Racer household, Spritle has caught wind of the deception and is watching the Casa Cristo 5000.  Pops forces him to shut it off and go out to get some sun and exercise.  When Pops has to leave on an errand, Spritle sneaks back inside.  He’s caught when Pops returns almost immediately having forgotten something.  To deflect punishment, Spritle points at Speed and the Mach 5 on TV.  Pops and the Racer family catch up to Speed during the downtime between race legs.  Speed explains what he’s doing and, while not happy, Pops calms down enough to go rebalance the Mach 5.

That night, ninja stalk Team Togokahn.  Taejo is given a dose of a drug meant to dull his reflexes.  A second ninja tries the same thing with Racer X, who is ready for such treachery.  A third tries to inject Speed with the drug and is stopped when Spritle wakes up after falling out of bed.  Speed tries to fight off the ninja, but the commotion wakes up the rest of the family.  The worst thing anyone could do is try to hurt a member of the Racer family; Pops is a champion Greco-Roman wrestler and proceeds to show the ninja the error of his ways.

The second leg of the Casa Cristo 5000 has Team Togokahn trying to catch up to Snake Oiler.  With Taejo still under the drug’s effects, a switch has been made.  Trixie, wearing Taejo’s jumpsuit, has taken his place.  The plan is to make a switch in a section not covered by cameras.  However, Oiler’s boss, Cruncher Block, is also heading there to make sure that Team Togokahn fails to finish the race.  Block gets the drop on the team, but Racer X manages to disarm the goon guarding him, starting a massive brawl.  When the dust settles, Taejo is back in his car but Snake Oiler has once again taken the lead.  With effort, Speed forces Oiler off the mountain road and Team Togokahn wins the race.

Taejo, though, renegs on his end of the bargain.  He uses the increase in his father’s company to get a better price for selling his firm to Royalton.  Speed is dejected and, once home, tries to burn out his anger on the Thunderbird track.  Racer X arrives to speak with him and after a racing duel, resparks Speed’s love for the sport, despite the problems it has.  Speed notices that Racer X’s driving style is familiar and asks if the masker racer is his brother.  Racer X takes off his mask; Speed doesn’t recognize the face and the Harbinger of Boom says that Rex did die in the accident at Casa Cristo.

While trying to figure out what to do next, Taejo’s sister Horuko (Yu Nan) arrives to speak with Speed.  She gives him Taejo’s invitation to the Grand Prix; the chit is a guarenteed place in the race for the bearer.  With the invitation in hand, Speed and his family get the Mach 6 prepared in record time.

Speed starts in the last position at the starting line.  Royalton places a bounty on Speed’s head; any driver who can remove him from the race will get one million dollars.  Drivers try, but Speed is the better racer.  He goes head to head with Royalton’s driver, Cannonball Taylor.  Taylor uses an illegal spear hook to latch on to the Mach 6.  Speed can’t detach his car from Taylor’s, but manages to angle both cars so that cameras can see the illegal device.  Once the cars land again, the speed hook breaks away from Taylor’s car as it disintegrates.  The Mach 6, though, stalls out.  Speed listens to the car and works out how to get the engine to restart.  He winds up back in last place, but he finds his zone and wins.  Inspector Detector arrests Royalton.  Speed finally gets to kiss Trixie under the flashing of thousands of cameras.  And Racer X is revealed to be, indeed, Speed’s brother, having undergone plastic surgery to change his looks.

The Wachowskis’ film tried to recreate an animated series, and the movie shows it.  In a Full Frontal Nerdity strip, Aaron Williams describes the trailer for Speed Racer as, “Like playing Gran Turismo 3 while wearing glasses made out of LSD-laced Gummi Bears.”  Even the studio titles before the movie starts are in a 60s-style kaleidoscope of colour.  The movie is far more animated than the original Mach GoGoGo.  Speed Racer has been called a live-action anime, and for good reason.

Beyond just the visual style, the Wachowskis put effort into recreating the look and feel of the anime.  The cast reflects the original appearance of the characters.  Emile Hirsch has Speed’s pompador.  John Goodman looks like Pops Racer, and Christina Ricci looks like trixie.  The Mach 5 is exactly the way it is shown in the anime.  Of special note, Paulie Litt as Spritle not only looks the part, but manages to take a potentially annoying role and make the character fun to watch while acting next to a chimpanzee.  The costumes also reflect what the characters wore in the original series, with the exception of Racer X.  The Harbinger of Boom’s costume is black instead of white, reflecting Racer X’s work from the shadows of the racing world.  Adding to the look of the film is the soundtrack, which uses the original theme as a motif throughout the movie.  Added touches include Speed posing in front of the Mach 5 just like in the original opening credits and the use of the original sounds effects of the Mach 5’s jacks.

The above is just surface, though.  The Wachowskis also pulled ideas from the anime.  The Casa Cristo 5000 race can be found in the first epsiode of the anime, not by name but by setting.  Snake Oiler also appeared in the series as the second head of the Car Acrobats, a team that clashed with Speed.  Pops’ wrestling also appeared in the anime.  The Racer X background is much like it is in the original, with the difference being that Rex is presumed dead instead of missing.  The plot would fit in with the series and takes its cues from the original.

The only problem the movie may have is that it goes a little over the top at times.  Beyond that, the Speed Racer movie works hard to reflect its origins in both style and substance.  Once the audience gets past the wall of bright colour, the movie has substance to match and brings in the themes of the original work – family, honour, and the love of sport despite its problems.

The 1980s saw the regulations about children’s programming relaxed, allowing toylines to have shows.  These shows, mostly cartoons, were meant as advertising for the toys.  Hasbro took advantage of the situation and had several animated series based on their toylines, with Transformers airing in 1984 followed by G.I. Joe and Jem and the Holograms in 1985*.  However, no one informed Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions, the companies behind the series, that the shows were meant to be just advertising.  Each series left an impact on its viewers.

With Jem, Hasbro entered a doll market dominated by Mattel.  To try to gain an edge, The Jem dolls took their cues from MTV and singers like Cyndi Lauper.  The first of the dolls, featuring Jem/Jerrica, her sister Kimber, her foster sisters Aja and Shana, the rival Misfits, and Jerrica’s love interest Rio.  Most of the dolls came with audio cassettes featuring four songs, two by Jem and the Holograms, two by the Misfits.  The Jem cartoon came out in 1985, leading the way for the dolls in 1986.  Mattel, though, released the “Barbie and the Rockers” line the same year, also taking advantage of the popularity of MTV.  Rocker Barbie also came with audio cassettes, though with far fewer songs.

For Jem, Marvel and Sunbow recruited Christy Marx, who was already working for them on the G.I. Joe cartoon.  Marx took the ideas that the doll designer had – two rival all-girl bands, the boyfriend, and Synergy, the holographic avatar of a supercomputer – and brought the concepts together to create Jem, the Holograms, Rio, and the Misfits.  The series begins with Jerrica Benton inheriting half of her father’s company, the Starlight Music label.  The other half, though, went to Eric Raymond, a scheming corrupt businessman out to control all of Starlight.  The music label also supports Starlight Foundation, a charity funding a foster home for girls.  Naturally, Eric wants to shut down the Foundation.  Jerrica’s father, though, knew what sort of person Eric was and built a supercomputer, Synergy, to help Jerrica.  With Synergy’s help, through the “Jemstar” earrings and the phrase, “Showtime, Synergy,” Jerrica becomes Jem.

Eric has his own girl band to counter Jem and the Holograms.  The Misfits consist of Pizazz, Roxy, and Stormer, who all work to beat out the Holograms, by hook or by crook.  While the Misfits are the Holograms main antagonists, it is Eric who is the villain.  That said, the views of Eric and Pizazz don’t necessarily reflect the view of the rest of the Misfits.  Stormer and Kimber, in one episode, become friends, bonding over a feeling of neglect by their respective bandmates.  The friendship continues beyond that episode.  Eric also has a henchman, Zipper, to do the heavy lifting and dirty work that the businessman wouldn’t sully his hands with.

Naturally, there is a love interest, Rio.  The stage manager for the Holograms, Jerrica and Rio have a complex relationship.  The course of true love never did run smooth, and the course of the love between Jerrica and Rio takes an added twist when Rio develops a crush on Jem.  Jerrica is hesitant to tell Rio the truth, that she is Jem, because Rio has an odd aversion to secrecy.  While love triangles involving superheroes and secret IDs is known, Jem gender-flipped the concept.  Adding to the love triangle is Pizazz, who has a crush on Rio.

Jem and the Holograms became the top rated syndicated cartoon in the US.  Over 150 songs were written and performed on the show, a third making it on to the cassettes sold with the dolls.  In comparison, Barbie and the Rockers had four songs, total.  Jem aired for three seasons and ended only because the doll line was discontinued.  The Jem dolls, while popular, couldn’t compete with the Barbie behemoth, and the line was discontinued in 1987.  Twenty-seven dolls were released over the short run.  As a doll, Jem couldn’t overcome the name recognition Barbie had.  Thanks to the cartoon, though, the name Jem permeated pop culture, leading to a DVD release and a re-airing of the series in 2011.  In 2012, Integrity Toys licensed Jem for a collector’s edition line of dolls, with over twenty-five dolls now released.  IDW picked up the comic license in 2015 for a modern take on the characters.

With the resurgence of Jem as a property, Hasbro, through its fill studio, Allspark Productions, and Universal brought the doll to the big screen as a live-action movie.  The movie remained in theatres for two weeks before being pulled from distribution, grossing just $2 million on a $5 million budget.  Reviews were expecting a different movie than what was released.  What happened?

The Jem and the Holograms film opens with Jerrica Benton (played by Aubrey Peeples) narrating into a vlog about the nature of secret identities and public personae and giving a few details about her background.  After her father (Barnaby Carpenter) died, Jerrica and her sister Kimber (Stefanie Scott) were sent to live with their Aunt Bailey (Molly Ringwald), who had already taken in two other fosters, Aja (Hayley Kiyoko) and Shana (Aurora Perrineau).  Jerrica was close to her father, helping him in the garage as he tinkered with various things and learning out to play guitar from him.  Kimber is the more outgoing of the two, and is constantly vlogging to YouTube.  Jerrica, though, is more reclusive.  When she discovers that her aunt only has thirty days to to pay the mortgage on her house, Jerrica tries to record a song about her feelings, but finds that she has to use a persona and pseudonym, Jem, to do so.  Even after recording the video, she tries to delete it but has problems.  Jerrica hands the camera to Kimber, who, instead of deleting the video, listens to it then uploads it publically.

The video goes viral, becoming even more popular than the waterskiing squirrel.  Considering the number of musicians who have careers thanks to viral videos, it’s not unbelievable.  The video’s popularity gets the attention of Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis), the owner and CEO of Starlight Productions.  Erica sends an email to the mysterious Jem, offering a contract deal.  Jerrica pushes to have her sisters included on the deal, and Erica relents.  Erica arrives at home to pick up her new stars and whisk them to Los Angeles.  Jerrica, in her packing, brings along the last items her father gave her, a pair of pink star earrings and a half-finished robot, 51N3RG-Y, or Synergy.  As the girls arrive in LA, Synergy, which has never worked, begins to power up.

The girls go through a process to get them ready for stardom, including hair, make-up, and wardrobe.  Erica takes the star earrings from Jerrica, calling them a holdover from the 80s.  Jerrica finds a way to hide herself as Jem for performances.  Erica starts her marketing campaign as the girls settle in at Starlight’s manor.  Jerrica meets Rio, the band’s manager and chief cat wrangler, and some sparks fly as Rio lays down the rules.  That night, Synergy is up to full power, glowing under a discard sheet.  The girls, unsure what is happening, uncover the robot, which then displays a map with coordinates as a hologram.  Despite their midnight curfew, the girls leave the house, “borrowing” Rio’s truck to go to the coordinates.  Jerrica recognizes where they are; she and her father had gone to the pier many times before he passed away.  She finds one of the pieces missing from Synergy, who then displays another map coordinate, one for a nightclub that showcases hot acts.

Before the girls can leave, a flashlight shines on them.  A male voice starts telling them about the laws they have broken, including breaking and entering and being out after their midnight curfew.  Rio steps forward so they can see him and explains just how he followed them and that they tripped a silent alarm.  He helps the girls escape.  Jerrica explains why they were on the pier and wonders how they’ll ever get to the nightclub.  She also discovers that Rio is Erica’s son.

In the morning, Erica Raymond announces that the mysterious Jem will make an appearance at that nightclub for her the first live performance.  Jerrica and her sisters prepare for the night.  The concert goes well until a blackout hits the club mid-song.  Thinking fast, Jerrica, as Jem, gets the club goers to light the stage using their smartphone flashlights.  She spots a familiar guitar and, as Aja and Shana get the club goers to clap and stomp a beat, she continues the song acoustically.  After the concert, Jerrica inspects the guitar and confirms it is her father’s.  Inside, there is another part for Synergy.

The day after, Bailey gets in touch with Jerrica to tell her that the house will be going up for auction in several days.  Jerrica goes to Erica to ask for an advance.  Erica agrees, with one condition – Jem performs alone, not with a band.  In a tough spot, Jerrica agrees.  Her sisters overhear the last part and are understandably upset.  Jerrica tries to explain but the girls won’t listen.  Jem’s next appearance is as a solo artist, but Jerrica isn’t happy about what happened.  Upset, she wanders through LA and winds up at her old home.  Through a window, she sees a young family enjoying each other’s company, further accentuating Jerrica’s feeling of being alone.  To her surprise, Kimber arrives, followed by Aja and Shana.  They’re still upset about what Jerrica did, but understand why.  Rio also arrives, since he had to drive the girls there, and helps Jerrica make the connection to what the last pieces of Synergy are, the earrings.  The earrings that are locked up by Erica.

Jerrica and Rio head to Starlight after first getting his mother’s car from Brad the valet, who only provides the keys if Rio can get his mother to listen to his demo CD.  Rio, using the darkness of the night and one of Erica’s hats, gets by security in the car with Jerrica in the trunk.  Kimber, Aja, and Shana distract the guards by pretending to be Jem fangirls and getting the guards to take their photos so that Jerrica and Rio can get into the building.  In Erica’s office, Rio tries guessing the code for her safe.  When Jerrica suggests entering what is most important to her, Rio types in Erica’s full name.  The safe opens.  Jerrica retrieves her earrings and Rio retrieves a legal notice addressed to him.

Erica discovers that Jerrica is up to something when she tries to get her car from Brad.  With some encouragement from Zipper, Brad confesses to what happened.  Erica and Zipper rush back to Starlight and review the security footage.  She orders security to seal the exits and detain Jerrica and Rio.  Rio delays Erica by playing Brad’s demo CD**, piping it to a conference room.  On the ground floor, Jerrica puts on her wig to become Jem.  Security, unaware of her dual identity, happily let her leave.

Safe, Jerrica places the earrings together.  They start glowing with a purple light before she adds them to Synergy.  The robot reacts, leaning back to project a hologram of her father.  He explains why he created Synergy and why he had her go on a scavenger hunt.

The big concert arrives.  Jerrica is determined that she goes out on stage with her sisters.  All of them are ready, and Bailey arrives to watch the show now that the house is safe.  Erica arrives backstage.  She demands that only Jem go out, not the others.  Rio, though, exercises the clause in his father’s will that states that he takes over Starlight when he is ready, and he is ready.  Zipper escorts Erica out of the building and the girls take the stage.  During the concert, an editor from Rolling Stone (Christy Marx) asks Rio about the band’s name so she can feature them on the front cover.  He calls them “Jem and the Holograms”.

As the credits roll, a sequel hook comes up.  Erica, thoroughly disgraced and humiliated, has tracked down one of her former acts.  The group, understandably, isn’t interested, having been used and tossed away by Erica once before.  Erica, though, mentions that Rio is in love with Jem, perking the interest of the band’s leader.  Pizazz (Kesha) comes out and declares, “Our music is better.  We’re gonna get her,” then leads Erica into the Misfits’ trailer.

The Jem cartoon was a product of the Eighties, with all the sensibilities of the time.  The Jem movie is a product of the Teens, and also reflects the era.  The movie integrates social media into the narrative.  The film’s website allowed fans to upload audition videos, some of which got into the movie.  The film also delves into the impact a star can have on the lives of fans.  Jem’s music calls out to people to be themselves, even if Jem is just Jerrica’s public persona.

The main problem the movie has is not being the cartoon.  The expectations were badly handled.  Older fans saw that it wasn’t going to be the cartoon and stayed away, and since the older fans are the ones to bring the target audience to the movie, the film just didn’t perform at the box office.  There is too much in the movie that ties into what has been established for Jem for the film to be generic.  Producer John M. Chu made the decision to go a different route than the cartoon, acknowledging its existance and not wanting comparisons.  Problem there is that comparisons would still be made.  Looking at just the dolls, ignoring for the moment the classic cartoon series, the movies does work as an adaptation.  Audiences were expecting the cartoon, though.  As Lost in Translation has seen before, an adapation became the definitive work.  The animated Jem joins the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and the 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman.  In Jem‘s case, this was caused by the marketing of the dolls using the cartoon.

The Jem movie isn’t a bad one.  It is far better than its budget would suggest.  The girls have an onscreen chemistry that helps sell the characters as sisters.  Juliette Lewis as Erica Raymond brings in a veneer of respectability over the character’s greed and sleeze.  The lack of Misfits isn’t a problem; in the cartoon, Eric was the mastermind, using the band for his ends.  The best way to view the film is as an alternate universe Jem.

* My Little Pony had specials in 1984 and 1985, but wasn’t a series until 1986.
** Brad’s music is essentially death metal on cello and is decent enough, though not something Erica would bother with.

For the last survivor of a doomed world, Superman has a large family.  Many Golden and Silver Age superheroes had a “family” – characters who share in the main hero’s adventures as, if not an equal, as a sidekick.  Batman had the various Robins, the various Batgirls, Ace the Bat-hound, Batwoman, and, at times, Catwoman.  Captain Marvel, of Shazam! fame, had Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jr., and Uncle Marvel.  Superman had Superboy*, Krypto, Beppo, and Supergirl. not to mention the various Kryptonian criminals in the Phantom Zone.  Supergirl, Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El, was first introduced in 1959, though DC had floated the idea in 1958 with Jimmy Olsen wishing a “Super-Girl” into existence.  Kara has the same powers as her cousin, thanks to being under Earth’s yellow sun.  She arrived on Earth in a different manner, though.

In her first appearance, Kara wasn’t sent off from the dying world of Krypton on a rocket.  Instead, she lived in Argo City, which had survived the planet’s explosion only to have the ground it sat on turn into Kryptonite.  Kara was sent off to follow her cousin, but arrived in Midvale instead.  She took on the the secret identity of Linda Lee, an orphan at the Midvale Orphanage.

Being the comics, nothing stays simple.  Kara, as Linda, gets adopted, graduates high school and college, and moves to the West Coast to work as a TV camera operator.  A second Kara, from the alternate dimension of Earth-Two and becomes Power Girl.  However, after Crisis on Infinite Earths, a 1985 crossover event to try to clean up the DC Universe’s massive convolutions, not is Kara killed off, the universe is rebooted, removing both Supergirl and Power Girl from continuity.  A third Supergirl, Matrix, is a shape changer, appeared in 1988, and a fourth, Linda Danvers, is an Earth-born angel**.  Also, being the comics, no character stays dead for long.  Kara began reappearing through the late 80s and is reintroduced in 2004 by Jeph Loeb, first in Superman/Batman and then in a new Supergirl title.

Rewinding back to 1984, Alexander and Ilya Salkind still had the movie rights to not just Superman but related characters, including Supergirl.  Superman was in the top ten grossing movies of the 70s and is the movie that people associate with the character.  Superman III, with Christopher Reeve and Richard Pryor, came out in 1983 to poor reviews.  Supergirl was a chance for the Salkinds to rebound.  There were several cuts, including a domestic cut for the US and a longer international cut for the rest   This review uses the 2006 DVD release, which was the international version of the movie.

Supergirl begins in Argo City, the home of the last survivors of Krypton, tucked away in an alternate dimension.  Kara, played by Helen Slater in her first role, watches Zaltar, played by Peter O’Toole, use the Omegahedron, a powerful power source that uses imagination for creation.  Such a powerful device needs to be used carefully, lest it falls into the wrong hands.  Zaltar hands the Omegahedron to Kara to let her explore her own imagination.  Kara’s creation, though, gets away from her and pierces the wall surrounding Argo City.  The power source is blown out through the hole; its loss means Argo City’s time is limited.  Zaltar, because he “borrowed” the device without permission, will be sent to the Phantom Zone.  Kara chases after the Omegahedron to make up for its escape.

On Earth, Selena, a vain, impatient sorceress out for world domination (Faye Dunaway) and Nigel, her mentor and long suffering lover (Peter Cook***) are having a picnic while discussing invisibility spells.  The Omegahedron falls into the potato salad and is picked up by Selena.  The sorceress senses the power within and claims the power source as her own.  She returns to her home, an abandoned amusement park she shares with Bianca (Brenda Vaccaro) and experiments with the Omegahedron.

Kara arrives not far behind.  Now under Earth’s yellow sun, she discovers her new powers, including flight.  She heads to the nearby town, Midvale, where she finds the girls of Midvale High.  Kara changes into a similar uniform and becomes the new student, Linda Lee.  She name drops Clark Kent when she arrives, and, when the headmaster, Mr. Danvers, is distracted, types up a letter from her cousin to make sure that she’s accepted.  Danvers shows her to her new room and her new roommate, Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy), the younger sister of the Daily Planet’s star reporter, Lois Lane.  Lucy, while not thrilled about having a roommate, perks up when she discovers who Linda’s cousin is.  Linda also sees the school’s buff groundskeeper, Ethan (Hart Bochner), and is impressed.

Ethan also impresses Selena, who comes up with a plot to force the groundskeeper to love her as part of her plot to rule the world.  Selena drugs him with a love potion, which will make Ethan fall in love with the first person he sees when he regains consciousness.  Unfortunately for the sorceress, Nigel interrupts.  While he’s not allowed in, Nigel is enough of a distraction to let Ethan stumble to an escape.  The groundskeeper, walking drunkenly down Midvale’s main street, avoids being hit.  Selena uses the Omegahedron to locate him and enspells a backhoe to retrieve him.  Lucy and Linda, along with Lucy’s boyfriend from Metropolis, Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure, the only actor from Superman to appear in Supergirl), see Ethan in trouble.  As vehicles avoid both Ethan and the backhoe, chaos ensues, leading to spilled gasoline, downed electrical lines, and a tire fire.  Kara disappears to the bathroom and appears as Supergirl on top of the diner.  Supergirl saves the day, cutting the electrical lines with her heat-ray vision, blowing out the fire with her superbreath, and rescuing Ethan from the animated construction vehicle.  Ethan recovers, and, to Selena’s chagrin, sees Linda first.

Selena escalates against Linda and Supergirl, never realizing they are the same person.  The sorceress lures Supergirl into a trap by kidnapping Ethan.  Selena twists the knife; she kisses the groundskeeper before sending Kara into the Phantom Zone.  Kara, lost in the darkness of the Zone, loses her powers and, as she wanders, falls into an oily bog.  Zaltar, in self-imposed exile, rescues her and helps her return to Earth through a small rift.

On Earth, Selena has succeeded in taking over Midvale through her dark sorcery and has plans for the rest of the continent.  Lucy and Jimmy try to lead a resistance, but are arrested by Selena’s ensorcelled police.  However, Selena and Bianca are watching what is happening in the Phantom Zone and are amazed when Supergirl returns.  In the final battle, Selena summons a shadow demon to tear Supergirl apart.  Kara turns things around on the sorceress, who is pulled into a whirlwind and trapped inside a mirror.  With Midvale returned to normal, Kara retrieves the Omegahedron and leaves to return home.

Supergirl was not well received and failed to recoup its $35 million budget.  Dunaway and O’Toole each received a Razzie for the film.  Slater, though, was nominated for a Saturn for Best Actress.  The problems may stem from having an almost twenty minute difference in running time between domestic and international.  The longer version gives the movie time to set itself up, showing the rift between Selena and Nigel and showing Kara getting used to being on Earth.  The chemistry between Dunaway and Vaccaro as Selena and Bianca is worth seeing.  The main problem is that the movie went for camp at a time when camp wasn’t appreciated.  If the movie had been made in 1979 instead of 1984, Dunaway’s over-the-top performance wouldn’t have seen out of place, following in the footsteps of Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor.

As an adaptation, Supergirl took the character and presented her on the big screen.  Her powers were influenced by Superman’s from his 1978 movie, though without the time travel.  In the comics, Supergirl helped people at a personal level, and this does come through in the movie.  The plot itself would fit earlier Superman comics, though not as much in the 80s.  Kara’s origins, while meddled with, still reflect her background in her comics debut.  The film does look like it came from a comic without being a cartoon.

Supergirl, while meant to be a stand-alone film, still leans heavily on Superman.  Other than the villains, each character has a connection to the Superman cast, with Jimmy Olsen being brought over.  However, as a character, Supergirl wouldn’t exist without Superman, so the links are expected.  There were plans for a Christopher Reeve cameo, but that fell through; the lack of Superman is explained in a radio broadcast early in the movie, one ignored by Selena she’s taking Nigel’s car to return home.

Overall, some changes were made, more to take advantage of the medium than anything else.  Despite the movie’s issues, it made an attempt to be faithful to the character, making this a successful adaptation despite the lack of theatrical success.

* Sort of.  Superboy was originally the young Superman in Smallville, but later the name got attached to a different character believed to be a clone.
** Soap operas don’t get this complex.
*** Cook portrays a Snape-like character long before Snape was created.

First created in 1939, Batman has become a popular character throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries.  His origin story tells of a young orphan, Bruce Wayne, who fights crime using an object of fear to strike at the hearts of criminals in Gotham City.  Over time, Batman’s rogues’ gallery has grown, featuring criminals who are a reflection of the character, culminating in the Joker, the yin to Batman’s yang.  However, the Caped Crusader doesn’t fight for justice alone; at his side are his young assistants, Robin and Batgirl.

Batman appeared in a number of media since his first appearance, from cartoons to movie serials to television to feature film and even to tabletop games.  Each iteration has its own take on the character and on the franchise.  The 1966 Batman TV series starring Adam West took a camp look at the character while most* movies made after the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film take a more serious tone.

While the transition from comic to both television and film can be relatively straightforward, though difficult, the further away from a story-based medium one gets, the more difficult it can get to keep the tone.  Looney Labs took a further step, adapting the franchise to its card game, Fluxx.  Batman Fluxx isn’t the first time a game publisher adapted a work to a game, as the various specialty versions of Monopoly can attest to.  The goal, though, is to keep the feel of both games intact.

Fluxx is a deceptively simple game.  Each player  gets a hand of three cards, and the basic rules, draw a card then play a card, placed out on the table.  There are several different types of card; Actions, giving a player instructions on what to do; Keepers, elements that may be needed to win the game; Goals, showing what Keepers are needed to win; and Rules, which change the game away from the basic set.  Some published sets,** including Batman Fluxx, also have Creepers, which prevent a player from winning unless a Goal says otherwise, and Surprises, which allow a player to act outside his or her turn.

What makes Batman Fluxx related to Batman is how the Keepers, Creepers, and Goals related to the franchise.  The Keepers focus on characters, equipment, and locations from the comics.  There is both a Bruce Wayne Keeper and a Batman Keeper; if Bruce Wayne is out when Batman is played, the former gets discarded.  After all, no one ever sees Batman and Bruce Wayne out together.  The Creepers are the villains and include the classics like the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, and Catwoman among the ne’er-do-wells that can appear.  In a change from a regular game of Fluxx, where Creepers prevent the players who received them from winning, no one can win while the villains are about unless the Goal requires a Creeper.  As the rule pamphlet says, “[Y]ou are on Batman’s side and must first clean up crime in Gotham City”.  Even some of the new the rule cards reflect the game’s focus; the Arkham Asylum Rule forces all discarded Creepers to be placed under it instead.  If the Arkham Asylum Rule is discarded, the villains are dealt back out to the players, reflecting the revolving door the institute has in the comics.

The game pulls from several sources.  The artwork on the Keeper and Creeper cards is inspired by Batman: The Animated Series, which took some of its tone and direction from both the Tim Burton films and the comics being published at the time.  Some of the Goals reflect the darker version of the Dark Knight, including “I Am the Night”, requiring Batman and the Bat-Signal.  Others, though, come from the Adam West TV series and the older, pre-Dennis O’Neil comics; for example, “Stately Wayne Manor”, requiring Bruce Wayne and Wayne Manor.  Even the variant lyrics for “Jingle Bells” come up, with “The Joker Got Away!”, requiring the Joker and the Batmobile.

The proof, though, comes through playing the game.  Fluxx is a fast paced card game, with the stated time on the box being five to thirty minutes.  It’s possible to go through the deck several times, especially with rules like “Draw 5” in play.  The new cards do reinforce the feel of a Batman comic, though.  While there are villains out, no one can win as crime continues in Gotham City.  The Keepers Batman, Batgirl, and Robin allow a player to remove a Creeper from play, but the Commission Gordon card does not.  The Bank Keeper card provides a bonus to the player with it in front of him or her, a bonus that makes the card worth taking.  The Batcomputer provides bonuses to its owner.  The Batcave prevents Surprise cards from being played on its owner.  Players can start getting the feel of being Batman as the game progresses, at first stymied by villains before getting ahead of them.

Batman Fluxx combines two franchises well, keeping the flavour of both without either being overwhelmed by the other.  The game holds up to replays thanks to the randomness of the cards while not getting dull.

* The exception being the Joel Schumacher helmed 1997 film, Batman & Robin.
** Cthulhu Fluxx includes Ungoals, which, if the conditions are met and the signs are right, end the game as the world is unmade and everyone loses.

Last week, Lost in Translation looked at Night of the Demon, an adaptation of the MR James short story, “Casting the Runes“.  The 95-minute movie wound up adding scenes and details to the story to fill the runtime.  While “Casting the Runes” may be too short for a theatrical release, that still leaves a television adaptation open.  Television schedules are set for 30-60 minute episodes, with TV movies running 90-120 minutes, ads included.  Can television’s shorter time slots work in favour of adapting the short story?

A quick recap of the short story:  Mr. Edward Dunning is cursed by Mr, Karswell after being given a piece of paper with runes enscribed on it.  Dunning works with the brother of one of Karswell’s previous victims to turn the tables on the cultist.  The movie adaptation, Night of the Demon moved the story from the Edwardian era to then-modern 1950s London, expanding on how the curse works and changing some of the characters.  Notably, Dunning became Dr. John Holden, an American parapsychologist who debunks the claims of cultists.

In 1979, the anthology TV series ITV Playhouse adapted the short story, keeping the name “Casting the Runes”.  There are some changes.  The adaptation brought the story into the then-current year.  Edward Dunning becomes Prudence Dunning, the host of a television series dedicated to debunking the claims of supernatural.  Pru, played by Jan Francis, comes to the notice of Karswell, the “Abbot” of Lufford and occultist, after mentioning him on her show.  Friends and co-workers make mention of Karswell, played by Iain Cuthbertson, trying to remember where they’ve heard the name before.  After some digging, Pru hears that he wrote History of Witchcraft and sent it to a publisher.  The staff gave the manuscript to John Harrington, whose death is shown at the beginning of the show.

The episode follows the story closely despite the changes above.  The message that appeared on the tram’s window in the short story appears on a television as Pru watches the last episode of an older TV show that featured John Harrington.  Pru meets Harrington’s brother, played by Edward Petherbridge, and realizes that she is cursed to die unless she can reverse it back on Karswell.  The tone of the episode plays up the suspense, using mood music to add to the eerie nature of the story.  Less is shown; the nature of the curse is left to the audience after seeing Harrington’s death.  Karswell’s demise is off-screen, unlike in Night of the Demon, but the news of what happened is far more chilling.

“Casting the Runes” is a short story.  The running time of a feature film forced the production staff to add to the story to get a movie long enough to be shown.  The adaptation by ITV Playhouse keeps to the orignal short story more, though adding elements such as Harrington’s death to show instead of tell the audience.  The shorter format of the TV episode works in favour of MR James’ work.