A few tidbits for the month.  The big news involves the Doctor Strange movie.

Jem and the Holograms comic due in March.
The new design for the characters has been released.  The art is updated while still keeping to the original looks of the dolls and TV series.  The hair is outrageous, as to be expected, but either hair spray or holographic display can explain it.

Benedict Cumberbatch to start as Doctor Strange.
Marvel has confirmed that Benedict Cumberbatch will play the title role in Doctor Strange, the first of the Phase 3 movies.  All Marvel needs to do now is get Loki in the movie.

JK Rowling releasing new Harry Potter.
The releases started on December 12.  Among the works are stories about the Malfoy family, Prof. McGonigle before Hogwarts, and how Floo Powder is made.

TOHO announces first Godzilla movie since hiatus.
TOHO will be ending the fallowing of Godzilla movies in 2016.  The success of the 2014 American Godzilla has encouraged TOHO in bringing back the iconic kaiju.

Archie Comics restarting at #1.
Mark Waid and Fiona Stevens will helm the title after the reboot.  Archie Comics, the publisher, has been on a rejuvenation spree of late, adding darker elements while still being family friendly.

SyFy picks up Krypton.
Air date is still unknown, but SyFy will air the Superman prequel series, Krypton, which will follow Jor-El, father of Kal-El, aka Clark Kent, aka Superman.  As with the other DC properties airing on television, there is no connection to the cinematic releases.

Titans pilot to shoot in 2015.
Geoff Johns confirmed that Titans, the live-action version of the follow-up to /Teen Titans/, will have a pilot filmed in 2015.  Nightwing, aka Dick Greyson, has been confirmed as one of the characters and rumours have added Starfire and Raven.  The show will draw influence from Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s New Teen Titans.

As seen since the beginning of Lost in Translation, getting an adaptation or a remake right takes a deft hand.  There are many ways to just miss being good, either through deliberately not taking the original work seriously enough or through misreading.  At the same time, what works for one remake might not work for another.  The grim, gritty Battlestar Galactica remake was widely accepted.  Going for a realistic Beverly Hillbillies would miss the point.

One element not in the control of production staff is fan expectations.  They can be managed, but word of mouth can make or break a movie with near-instantaneous reviews.  Pandering to the fans, though, may alienate the general audience.  Individual comics issues have sales in the tens of thousands, not enough to fill seats and make a profit.  Where repeated theatrical viewings were, if not the norm, possible, thanks to films being allowed to remain in theatres as long as they were drawing audiences, today, it’s rare for a movie to remain in theatres for two months.  DVD release dates are being set shortly after a movie opens.

This leaves the question: “What can be done to manage expectations?”  How can a studio ensure that fans don’t leave with a bad taste while still getting a general audience in?  Movie makers need to be aware of the general impression a work has outside fandom.  The 1989 Batman movie was facing such a problem.  Fans of the comic were well aware of the Denny O’Neill run that turned Batman into a noir costumed detective, with a grittier approach.  The general audience, however, was more aware of the Adam West Batman TV series, a camp comedy.  Add in the casting of Michael Keaton, primarily known for comedies, as Bruce Wayne, and disaster was looming.  With Tim Burton combining the aspects of both comic and TV series, Jack Nicholson as the Joker, and marketing that focused on the darker elements, Batman was successful at the box office.

The first means to manage expectations is the trailer.  The trailer is the first view of a movie an audience gets.  Well done trailers get sought out and spread over the Internet, increasing the dollar value of the advertising for no extra effort.  Through the use of music and selected shots from the movie, the trailer can give audiences a good idea of what to expect.  The first trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy showed the main characters being booked into prison, followed by the song, “Hooked on a Feeling”, implying that the heroes weren’t chisel-chinned upholders of the law and that the movie would be fun.  The box office returns show that audiences agreed.

The next means is to figure out what fans of the original work enjoyed about it.  Pandering to the fans is never a good idea.  Neither is flipping fans the bird.  The remake of Land of the Lost left fans with a bitter taste.  The original was a low-budget science-fiction series that managed to weave a coherent story, thanks to having science-fiction writers such as Larry Niven and Ben Bova contribute scripts.  The remake was a Will Farrell comedy vehicle.  The trailers, while they did show Farrell, didn’t quite show the level of humour of the movie.

Ultimately, though, it’s hard to read a potential audience.  Both the original Battlestar Galactica and the remake were about the search for Earth by survivors of the Thirteen Colonies.  The original had a far more optimistic approach, even with it showing problems with food, the dangers of relying on a small number of food-producing vessels, and the logistics of maintaining a fleet of civilians.  At the end of an episode, viewers had the feeling that the ragtag fleet would someday find Earth.  The new Galactica had rumours of main characters getting gender-flipped, which had fans in a minor uproar.  However, the miniseries showed what the remake was aiming for; a grittier, more realistic look at the problems the ragtag fleet would face.  Survival of humanity was never a given, even after the appearance of the Pegasus.  While the new characters weren’t like the originals, they fit better in the remake.  It just goes to show that a read on the fanbase is not the only aspect to look at.  Sometimes, current events plays a role.

With Hollywood studios risk-adverse to the point of needing instant hits with movie releases, especially blockbusters, maximizing the potential audience.  Adaptations come with a built-in audience, but that very same audience may not appreciate drastic changes.  Pandering is inevitable; keeping the existing fanbase happy means a quick, positive word of mouth on opening.  Pandering, though, doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie or a good adaptation.  Studios need to strive for more than just pleasing the fanbase, a fickle entity that may not appreciate even an accurate adaptation.

Next week, back to the reviews.

Experience comes through learning from mistakes.  These mistakes can be made by someone else.  Lost in Translation has looked at a number of adaptations, remakes, and reboots over the past three years, covering works of a variety of quality.  One of the difficult parts of the reviews is differentiating quality of the movie from the quality of the adaptation.

Generally, a bad movie is bad everywhere.  Not only does it miss the point of the original, the bad movie also misses the point of pacing, characterization, plot, and entertainment.  A good movie, though, may not necessarily be a good adaptation.  A good adaptation may not work as a good movie; there could be elements that don’t carry over during the translation between media.

In general, there are nine possible outcomes, combining the degrees of quality.  Along with beging good or bad, there’s the middle stage, the decent by not outstanding.  The middle stage is the interesting part when looking at adaptations here at Lost in Translation; the work shows signs of understanding the original work while still missing key elements.  I can highlight both and show why the adaptation works and why it needs more thought.

Good work, good adaptation is getting more common.  With movies, studios are realizing that an accurate adaptation will please the original work’s fanbase.  Word of mouth counts for a lot more today than in pre-Internet days; anyone can be a reviewer and can get their views out during the movie.  Risk-averse Hollywood needs the fanbase onside.  However, it’s still difficult to get a pitch perfect adaptation.  The best I’ve run into so far were Scott Pilgrim versus the World and Blade Runner.  Neither movie adapted the original fully, instead going with what I’ve called a “partial adaptation”.  Blade Runner left out a number of elements from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep just to be filmable.  Scott Pilgrim followed one plot line, the seven evil exes, and ignored some subplots; however, the movie used the graphic novel as the storyboard and filmed in Toronto to keep what was filmed accurate.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are few bad works that are also bad adaptations.  Few people set out to make a deliberately bad movie.  Even Ed Wood* was putting in his best effort to make the movie he envisioned.  With today’s blockbuster budgets breaking past $200 million, studios want to see the movie succeed.  Still, bad movies happen.  The worst I’ve reviewed here was Alien from L.A., a very loose adaptation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth that had problems that go far beyond the script.  Movies don’t get featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 without going that extra step.

Bad movies make it easy to point out what went wrong, but there’s nothing to point out where there was effort.  A lack of effort dooms adaptations, but even works that try can fail.  On the flip side, movies that have the deck stacked against it succeed against the odds.  The size of the budget is no guarentee; the big budget Battleship suffered from being too tied to the Save the Cat script formula while trying to reflect game play, while Flash Gordon was successful as an adaptation and became a cult classic despite executive meddling.  It’s these middle cases that make Lost in Translation interesting.

The good movie/bad adaptation combination comes out when a studio has a vision for the final product that deviates from the original work.  Real Steel was a family movie about a man reconnecting with his son through the rounds of a robot boxing league.  The Richard Matheson short story “Steel” that the movie was based on, though, was about a desperate man stepping into a ring posing as a robot in order to earn money to fix his own entrant.  Yet, Real Steel is worth seeing for what it is.  The 2014 Robocop could fall into this category; it eschewed the over-the-top violence and satire of the 1980s, reflecting the New Teens instead.

The reverse, the bad movie/good adaptation, is rare.  The effort needed to create a good adaptation would also go towards making a good movie.  The eye to detail that leads to good adaptations would also go to making sure that the movie’s pacing suits.  Cult classics have the potential to fall in this category; Street Fighter: The Movie might qualify.  But, most bad adaptations go the route of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, missing the point of the original work while still committing sins of the bad movie.

The middle case, the okay movie/okay adaptation, is ideal for reviewing.  This sort of adaptation allows for showing what does work and what doesn’t, providing a contrast.  These adaptations tend to be shallow, either because the format of the adaptation doesn’t allow for depth or the adapter doesn’t quite get the original.  The novel-to-movie adaptation can easily fall here; Dragonlance and Firefox are the exemplars.  In both cases, the adapters put an effort into being faithful, but the length of the adaptations prevented from getting deep just to cover the story.  Dragonlance also has the problem of a larger cast; in a movie, this prevents the audience from really getting to know anyone.  Television, either a regular series or a mini-series, could have been the better choice, something that A Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead have shown.

All the above discussion looks solely at the quality of the adaptation.  The original work hasn’t come into play, yet its quality also becomes an issue.  With Harry Potter, JK Rowling created a vibrant world that people want to visit all from playing with words.  The fanbase expected no less from an adaptation.  Meanwhile, the original Battlestar Galactica was seen as a throwback to an earlier for of science fiction, ignoring that the series routinely was in the top ratings until the network, ABC, couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted the series and moved it around or pre-empted it.  The popular view of Galactica gave the remake room to experiment and take a harder look at what it would be like for a ragtag fleet escaping the destruction of its homeworlds.  It is very possible for an adaptation or a remake to be seen as better than the original; the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series is seen as an improvement on the movie.

What all the above means for Lost in Translation is that the choice of works to review needs to be diverse.  If all I did was review just good adaptations or just bad ones, I’d be missing the full picture.  Quality of movie doesn’t matter; neither does box office success.  Limiting myself would mean missing on works that would allow for greater understanding on how adaptations work.

Next week, the July news round up.

Stargate still being rebooted.
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are returning to the Stargate helm with a reboot trilogy, as was reported back in September here.  Details have still not been announced beyond the trilogy being a reboot instead of a continuation.

Spinward Traveller TV pilot on Kickstarter.
d20 Entertainment is working to put together a pilot episode of Spinward Traveller.  The show, based on the Traveller RPG, follows the exploits of the free trader Beowulf in the Spinward Marches of the Third Imperium.  The Beowulf‘s fame in the game comes from the distress call on the back of the box of the classic edition of Traveller.

Starship Troopers reboot/remake could be in works.
Still unconfirmed, but Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures had some interesting tweets involving the work.

Magnificent Seven being remade.
Denzel Washington may star in the remake.  This leads to the chain of remaking an adaptation; the original Magnificent Seven took The Seven Samurai and placed it into the American frontier.

Speaking of Denzel Washington…
The Equilizer is set to hit theatres in September.  The movie is a remake of the CBS TV series starring Edward Woodward that ran from 1985 to 1989 about a semi-retired spy who freelanced as a troubleshooter for people who needed help.

Sonic the adaptation
The speedy hedgehog is getting a combined live-action/CGI animated movie.  Little has been released other than Doctor Eggman will be the villain.

Magic School Bus rebooted to Netflix
Miss Frizzle rides again as the series gets rebooted thanks to Netflix.  The original Magic School Bus aired on PBS as an educational series where Miss Frizzle took her students in the titular bus to visit various locations, such as Egypt, space, and the human body.

Lion King spin-off Lion Guard
The series will follow Kion, the second born of Simba and Nala, as he leads the Guard.  While other characters from the series may appear, new characters will compose the cast.

Grumpy Cat gets Christmas Special
Internet celebrity and meme source Tardar Sauce, also known as Grumpy Cat, will be getting a Christmas special that will air on Lifetime.  The cat earned the nickname because of colouration and facial features that made her look like she was perpetually grumpy.  When asked about the the special, she said, “Let it – NO.”

You new too, Scooby-Doo?
Warner Bros. to reboot Scooby-Doo, most likely as live-action movies.  No cast is attached yet; the reboot of the adaptation movie is still in pre-production.

“Demon With a Glass Hand” to be adapted for the big screen.
Harlan Ellison’s episode for The Outer Limits will the basis for the upcoming movie based on the classic TV series.  The episode involved time travel, aliens, and a man with a computerized hand.

Once again, the day will be saved…
… thanks to the Powerpuff Girls!  Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup will be returning to Cartoon Network in 2016.

True Blood: The Musical.
With the TV adaptation wrapping up on HBO, Charlaine Harris’ The Southern Vampire Mysteries may become a stage musical.  Nathan Barr, who worked on the TV series, has composed the musical.

Pacific Rim returning hard.
The sequel to the movie has been announced for April 2017.  In the meantime, an animated series and a book series based on the movie, the latter having begun with Year Zero, are in the works.  The original movie centered on fighting an invasion of kaiju, or giant monsters, with giant mecha and did far better outside the US than in it.

 

During my review of Dredd, I touched upon the idea of a work being influenced by the current events of its day.  Judge Dredd was influenced by movies like Dirty Harry, the beginning of Thatcherism, and the fascism of Spain’s Francisco Franco to become the dystopian future shown in the pages of 2000 AD.  While some works can be seen in their historical setting, fantasy and science fiction is meant to transcend the era of creation while still providing a look at society and humanity of the day.  Other works, already historical, like Westerns, can still reflect the mores of the time of creation.

Society isn’t static.  Mixed-race marriages, for example, was scandalous in 1910 but is mostly a given in 2014*.  Adaptations need to adjust for changes in sensibilities.  The casual racism in early works such as 1929’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. just won’t fly today and didn’t in the 1979 television adaptation.  At the same time, as seen throughout Lost in Translation, the best adaptations come when the crew of the new work respect both the original work and its fans.  While the loss of the racism in Buck Rogers didn’t hurt the series, the same couldn’t be said for an All in the Family remake.  Groundbreaking for its time, All in the Family looked at bigotry and bigots through the character of Archie Bunker.  A remake of the series might not be possible today.

Westerns are in a similar bind.  Once the staple of serials, movies, and television, Westerns went through years of desconstruction, especially with Spaghetti Westerns like Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy** before being mostly abandoned after Heaven’s Gate bombed.  Westerns would return, reconstructed, but no longer had the cachet that they had in the early years of Hollywood.  Even then, many early tropes had been disproven by the advancement of history and the changing view of the era from Wild West to the march of civilization across new states.

Science fiction, as mentioned above, is also vulnerable to the passage of time.  I’ve touched on changing  technology in an earlier column, but this goes beyond just tech.  Take Star Trek.  The original Star Trek aired during the Space Race and the Cold War, where exploring the final frontier just beyond Earth’s atmosphere was a competition between the US and the USSR.  When Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired in 1987, the Soviet Union had just started a policy of peristroika, reformation of the Communist Party, and glasnost, openess, essentially bringing the Cold War to a close.  Space exploration was being done through unmanned probes, satellites, and ground-based installations.  Skylab, launched in 1973, had fallen from orbit and disintegrated in the atmosphere in 1979.  The trend of cocooning, where people stayed home with families instead of going out, was starting, though wouldn’t get named until the 1990s.  Star Trek: TNG reflected the changes.  Gone was the maverick captain, commanding the only ship in the sector.  Captain Picard reflected a new style of management, one where he weighed the opinions of his officers and crew, and acted in a more deliberate manner.

What happens when the era of the original isn’t taken into account?  Or, what if the era of the original is seen as irrelevant?  Let’s take a look at two recent financial flops, 2014’s Robocop and 2013’s The Lone Ranger.  Please note that I have not yet reviewed the movies as adaptations.

First, Robocop.  The original Robocop was released in 1987, near the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term as President of the US.  The movie, while being a science fiction action flick, contained heavy amounts of satire of Reagan-era policies.  TV series had boiled down to T&A with catch phrases, ie, “I’d buy that for a dollar!”  The ozone layer had been destroyed.  Detroit had gone bankrupt and was owned by a corporation, with police services privatized.  In 2014, it’s not as funny.  Television is recovering from being a wasteland, mainly through expanded cable stations and competition with other streams of entertainment on the Internet, but catch phrases still come up in sitcoms.  The destruction of the ozone layer has led to drastic climate change over the past decade, with weather records broken yearly and tropical storms growing worse.  Detroit, while in shaky financial shape in the 1980s, has declared bankruptcy, though police services haven’t yet been privatized.  Military services, though, have, with Blackwater/Xe/Academi LLC being one of many private “security” firms to receive contracts from the US government during both the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq war.  Suddenly, the satire, pointed but exaggerated, in the original Robocop seems prophetic and painful now.  Removing that satire, though, removes a lot of the heart of the movie.

The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, had other problems.  The big one was the change in how audiences approach Westerns.  The classic trope of good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats has given way to nuance.  The idea of a First Nation person being a sidekick doesn’t sit well anymore.  A series with a long history, the original Lone Ranger appeared on the radio, in books, on television, and in movies, but had all but disappeared after 1961, with the exception of the 1981 The Legend of the Lone Ranger, which had the controversy of Clayton Moore, TV’s Lone Ranger, being sued to not use the trademark mask, and a pilot to a shelved 2003 WB network series.  Modern audiences who hadn’t grown up with Westerns as an entertainment staple, simply weren’t drawn in, even with Johnny Depp as Tonto.

The time a work was originally created is, indeed, a factor in how successful an adaptation can be.  A remake or an adaptation that fails to account for the change in societal acceptances since the creation of the original may fall flat.  Future reviews will take into account how the difference in time affects the newer work.

Next week, Gnomeo and Juliet.

* Depending on location, but areas where mixed-race marriages are forbidden are well in the minority.
** A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

May had a lot of news about upcoming adaptations and remakes.

Farscape movie in the works.
Rockne O’Bannon, creator of Farscape, has confirmed the rumours that a Farscape movie was in production, at least as far as the script.  The confirmation was announced at WonderCon.

Prequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in pre-production.
The movie brings back Michelle Yeoh and fight coordinator Yuen Woo-ping to present what Yu Shu Lien did before the events of the original movie.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out in 2000; the delay was caused by a rights conflict between the studio and the estate of Wang Du Lu, whose novels were the base of the movie.

Six issue Avengers mini-series coming from Boom!
John Steed and Emma Peel will be back in a comics mini-series called Steed and Mrs. Peel.  The cover art in the article really does suit the show.

Casting started for the Jem movie.
After seeing how crowdfunding worked with Veronica Mars, the director of the live-action Jem and the Holograms turned to YouTube and asked for fans to sumbit video auditions for online casting.

Twin Peaks returns in fan-made web sequel.
Fans of David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks have begun the 25th anniversary celebrations by having a third season done on Twitter.  The central repository for the fan series is Enter the Lodge, where the tweets are collected.

Hector and the search for a distributor.
Hector and the Search for Happiness, based on the book of the same name by Francois Lelord, has been picked up by Relativity.  The movie, starring Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike, tells the story of a psychiatrist travelling the world in search of happiness.

JK Rowling novel to become TV series.
The Casual Vacancy, JK Rowling’s first novel after finishing the Harry Potter series, has been picked up as a BBC and HBO co-production.  The book will be turned into a mini-series, following the town of Pagford, England, after the local councilor dies.

More Jem casting news.
All the actresses have experience to some degree but aren’t major names.  Hayley Kiyoko, playing Aja, has an EP, “A Belle to Remember“, on her resume.   Aubrey Peeples, playing Jem, has performed as a singer, including on the TV series Nashville, but doesn’t have a release.  The live action adaptation still has some hurdles, especially with the original creator Christy Marx not involved, but the casting of the core allows the movie to be about Jem and the Holograms and not furthering the singing careers of the leads.

SyFy getting in on the adaptation train.
Four new series on SyFy, all of them are adaptations.  Letter 44, Pax Romana, and Ronin are all based on comics.  The fourth, The Magicians, is based on the novels by Lev Grossman.

Dad’s Army to hit the silver screen.
The BBC sitcom Dad’s Army is being adapted as a film.  Toby Jones will play Captain Mainwaring, portrayed by Arthur Lowe in the original.  Bill Nighy will be Sergeant Wilson.  The original TV series focused on a British Home Guard unit in World War II.  The writer of the original show, Jimmy Perry, added a provision when he signed over the rights that he wouldn’t have to write anything in the adaptation.

Sailor Moon cast announced.
More on the Sailor Moon news from last month.  The Sailor Senshi have been cast, with Kotono Mitsuishi is back as Usagi.  The character designs for the new series are based on their appearances in the manga.

Toy and snack movies ahead!
First, Barbie.  A live action Barbie comedy is in the works from Sony.  It’s not too surprising a move; the animated /Barbie/ features have done well and the online series /Life in the Dreamhouse/ has gone four seasons.  Mattel, like all toy companies except Hasbro, is also trying to recover from a drop in sales in the past year.
Next, Peeps.  The pink and yellow marshmallow candies are following in the footsteps of The LEGO Movie.  Adam Rifkin will helm the movie, basing it on the Peeps dioramas his niece and nephew made.

Another Disney ride gets tapped for a movie.
In celebration of the attraction’s 50th anniversary, It’s a Small World will be turned into a family movie.  The earworm generating song will be part of the movie.  Disney is batting .500 with rides turned into movies lately; while The Haunted Mansion stumbled a bit, Pirates of the Caribbean became a huge hit.  It’s a matter of finding the right team.  Or inserting a subliminal message into the song.

Minecraft, the movie.
The producers of The LEGO Movie will bring the digital version of playing with blocks to the big screen.  Warner Bros, the studio involved, will also work on a live-action tie-in for the movie.

Scarface to be remade, too.
The remake will bring the story into the today’s world.  The immigrant’s story will see Tony’s background change to Mexican from the original Italian as seen in the 1932 and 1983 versions.  The filmmakers are looking to cast a Latino in the role.

Marvel’s Peggy Carter to get her own series.
Peggy Carter, who first appeared in Captain America, is getting her own spin-off series on ABC in the fall.  The series will be set in 1946 following the events at the end of the movie.  This comes in the wake of the renewal of Agents of SHIELD.  Meanwhile, over at Warner, no news of a Wonder Woman movie.

Private Benjamin to be remade.
The Goldie Hawn movie about a spoiled rich girl who joins the Army is being remade, with Rebel Wilson in the title role.  The update will see a redneck join with the rich girl.

Animated Flintstones movie to be produced by Will Farrell and Adam McKay.
The Stone Age family will return to the big screen animated instead of live-action.  The movie will be the first animated film of the characters since the 1966 The Man Called Flintstone.

Go, go Power Rangers!
Lionsgate has licensed Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers from Saban for a reboot movie.

Didn’t see the Rosemary’s Baby remake?  You’re not alone.
Maybe Mother’s Day wasn’t the best day for the airing.  The remake was up against A Game of Thrones, the season finale of Once Upon a Time, and Cosmos.

Corner Gas movie being Kickstartered.
The Canadian sitcom about life in Dog River, Saskatchewan is being turned into a movie if the Kickstarter campaign is successful.

Blade Runner sequel may see Harrison Ford return as Deckard.
Ridley Scott may provide the answer to, “Is Deckard a replicant?” in the Blade Runner sequel.  Ford himself showed interest during an AMA on Reddit.

Infamous Chick tract being adapted as movie.
Dark Dungeons, Jack Chick’s infamous anti-Dungeons & Dragons comic tract, is getting the movie treatment.  Zombie Orpheus Entertainment will be treating the tract with the respect the company, staffed by gamers, think is due and will play it straight and accurate.

 

A change of plans this week.  I’ve been holding on to some items too long and I realized that I hadn’t had a round up last month.  On with the show!

A Game of Thrones, the Movie
With the TV series catching up to George R.R. Martin’s writing, something needs to be done.  One potential fix, feature-length movies.  The movies would be prequels, set 90 years prior to the start of the books.  This should give Martin the time to finish or at least pad out the series long enough to prevent the TV series from overtaking.

Jem and the Holograms to get film treatment.
Truly outrageous!  The movie has a webpage set up where fans can make suggestions on plot and casting and submit audition video.  However, Christy Marx, the creator of the original series, is not involved.  How this will affect the movie remains to be seen.

No more Inspector Morse adaptations?
Creator Colin Dexter has added a clause in his will that will prevent other actors from playing Inspector Morse.  He feels that the performances of both John Thaw and Shaun Evans cannot be surpassed.  The clause can be challenged, but it is likely that Dexter’s estate will agree with him.

Left Behind movie series to be rebooted.
Nicholas Cage will star in the remake of the adaptation of the first of the Left Behind books.  Release date has been announced for October 3.  The first adaptation was by Kirk Cameron in 2000, with the sequels released direct-to-video.

Fox to spin-off a Mystique movie while Sony does the same with the Sinister Six.
While Marvel Studios is busy with the Avengers, the licensees aren’t content to be left in the dust.  Fox has plans for a Mystique movie to go along with the Wolverine series.  Over at Sony, the Sinister Six, Spider-foes each and every one of them, has signed on director Drew Goddard.  The movies mean that Marvel will have more characters on screen than rival DC Comics, despite the latter’s owner, Warner, having not licensed any character to another studio.

New Sailor Moon series to debut July, broadcast includes Internet streaming.
The Pretty Soldier-Sailor is returning and can be seen through Niconico Douga, a video streaming site similar to YouTube.  An account will be needed to watch but the new Sailor Moon will be available internationally.  The build up has been kept low, with very little hype to create expectations.

Cracked.com lists the five adaptations that are overdone.
Beyond just naming, Cracked looks at why the movies don’t work well.  The key appears to be the creativity ends with the original idea and doesn’t continue through the actual production.

Mrs. Doubtfire sequel being written.
Chris Columbus, the director of the original, has been signed, as has Mrs. Doubtfire himself, Robin Williams.  The original movie hit theatres in 1993, and a sequel was attempted in 2001 but never got past pre-production.  Given the age of the original movie, it may be Williams’ name that proves to be the draw.

Princess Jellyfish to get live-action adaptation.
The manga Princess Jellyfish, aka Kuragame Hime, will be getting the live-action treatement.  The official site is now up.  Release date is December, 2014.

Once again, the review is about another movie still in theatres, so I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible.

March turned out to be movie-filled for me, as I managed to catch several in the theatres.  The first three, The LEGO Movie, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and Veronica Mars were all adaptations.  The last movie, Muppets Most Wanted, falls into an odd designation.

I’ve reviewed Muppet movies in the past, with The Muppet Movie and The Muppets.  Muppets Most Wanted is a sequel, the eighth of The Muppet Movie as Bunsen Honeydew points out in the movie, and all of them coming from The Muppet Show.  Muppet movies fall under one of three types.  The first type is where the Muppets play themselves.  The best example is The Muppet Movie, where it was sort of how the Muppets came together.  The second type is where the Muppets play characters based on themselves*.  The Great Muppet Caper is a good example of this second type.  The third type is where the Muppets play completely different characters, usually in an adaptation.  Muppet Treasure Island shows that the Muppets can be both themselves and another character in this third type.  Both The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted are of the first type of Muppet movie.  This is where it gets difficult to figure out whether the lastest film is a sequel, an adaptation, or a bizarre hybrid out of Bunsen Honeydew’s labs.

Muppets Most Wanted picks up right where The Muppets ended, with the sets being struck, the props being returned, the extras going home, and even the cameras being put away.  All the cameras, but one, which is still rolling.  The Muppets don’t just break the fourth wall; they shatter it, twist it, and turn it into origami.  After a song about making the sequel, they are convinced by Dominic Badguy**, played by Ricky Gervais, to take The Muppet Show on a world tour.  The origami crane that was once the fourth wall is now a Moebius strip.  Meanwhile, the new number one criminal, Konstantine, who looks very similar to Kermit, has escaped.  And the camera is still rolling.

There is no doubt that the movie is well worth seeing.  Danny Trejo in a song and dance number alone is worth admission.  Psycho Drive-In has a full review of the movie.  The question, though, is Muppets Most Wanted a remake, reboot, or adaptation, or is it just a sequel?  To even try to answer that question, I had to examine the details.  First, Muppets Most Wanted happily calls itself a sequel to The Muppets, which was a reboot of Muppet movies that owed its existance to The Muppet Movie.  At the same time, the latest film couldn’t exist without The Muppet Show.  While the rest of the movies wouldn’t exist, at least in their existing forms, there’s always a possiblility that Muppet movies would happen.  Muppets Most Wanted needs The Muppet Show for the plot.  Indeed, the movie shows the backstage shenanigans that happen when Kermit is removed from managing the show.

Yes, Muppets Most Wanted is an adaptation.  The form is of a documentary of The Muppet Show on tour with a criminal genius using the ensuing chaos for his greatest crime, except for being a documentary.  All the hallmarks of both The Muppet Show and previous Muppet movies – zaniness, camoes, self-deprecating humour, Miss Piggy trying to woo Kermit, severe damage to the fourth wall – are on display.  The Muppets themselves are as people remember.  Thus, Muppets Most Wanted is not only a sequel of The Muppet Movie, but an adaptation of The Muppet Show, one that has raised the bar on expectations of Muppet films to come.

Next week, Miami Vice.

* I know the Muppets are puppets, but bear with me.  Each Muppet has a distinct personality that has been shown for up to fifty years.
** Pronounced Bad-zhee.  It’s French.

Television series exist at the whim of a programming exec.  Series not pulling in the right audience for advertisers get pulled, sometimes within weeks of the pilot airing.  There have been times when the number of weeks is less than one.  One case in Austrailia had the show pulled during airing.

The longer a series lasts, the more fans it picks up, through word of mouth or even accidentally catching an episode.  If you’ve been following MuseHack or any site through Crossroads Alpha for any length of time, you’ll know that fans can get creative when supporting a series.  This was as true with the original Star Trek as it was with Veronica Mars.  What Star Trek fans didn’t have available to them was Kickstarter.

Veronica Mars aired first on UPN then on the CW after UPN merged with the WB network, lasting three seasons from 2004 to 2007.  Sixty-four episodes, one fewer than traditionally needed for syndication, chronicled the life of the titular character in a film noir homage.  Each season had its own mystery arc, with Veronica working on smaller cases each episode as well.  Veronica was also an outsider in her school, the fallout of her father, as sherriff, trying to arrest a prominent Neptune, California, billionaire for the murder of one of Veronica’s friends.  When her father became a private investigator, Veronica helped out, and took advantage of the skills she picked up to find her friend’s murderer.

Over the course of the three seasons, Veronica gained close friends and solved cases.  The series ended with her having to make a difficult decision – leave the wretched hive of scum, villainy, and corruption known as Neptune or stay as a licensed detective herself.

Veronica’s choice was never shown.  The series was cancelled after the third season, though work had been done for a potential fourth that would have seen Veronica as a rookie FBI agent.  Fans wanted more.  The Mars bar campaign saw ten thousand of the candy bars sent to CBS headquarters.  However, the fate of the show was sealed.  Being on a fifth network that had to merge to survive took its toll.

All was not lost.  The creator, Rob Thomas, had written a Veronica Mars movie script.  CBS, one of the co-owners of the CW along with Warner Bros, passed on the idea.  However, a new player had arrived.  Kickstarter gave people a chance to directly fund projects; money would only change hands if the donations reached the dollar value required set by the creators.  All Kickstarter campaigns last thrity days, to give projects enough time to get the word out and drum up support.  When the Veronica Mars movie went to Kickstarter, the $2 million goal was reached within 11 hours.  Fans wanted the movie.  The studios, seeing the interest, added to the funding and greenlit the movie.

The movie was released as a limited engagement, on a smaller number of screens than the typical release.  At the same time, the movie was available for digital download.  Opening night saw theatres sold out of tickets.  With nine years between the end of the series and the movie opening, could the movie adapt to the time gap?

Adapting a TV series to a movie involves some growing pains.  With Veronica Mars, there is an added complexity.  Many adapted TV shows become just longer episodes, not really taking advantage of the new format.  Fans can be vocal about what they want, but may not be aware of what they truly desire; it’s a delicate act balancing the familiar and the unexpected.  Veronica‘s added complication is the lack of time for the season-long arc.  Can the script handle needing to be both longer and shorter while still being Veronica Mars?

To appease the fan need for the familiar, the movie brought back many familiar faces.  Along with Kristen Bell, Veronica herself, the movie reunited her with Jason Dohring, Tina Majorino, Percy Daggs III, Francis Capra, Krysten Ritter, Chris Lowell, Daran Norris, Ken Marino, Ryan Hansen, and Erinco Colantoni.  Veronica gets dragged back to the wrteched hive after one of her Neptune friends is accused of murder before the weekend that the Neptune High School reunion takes place.  The reunion acts as the perfect metaphor for the movie; almost ten years have past since fans last saw the characters.  Who would they be now?  Almost every character* had changed in surprising ways, the unexpected that the fans also want.

The core of the TV series was the drama that Veronica herself went through, the changed lives, even hers, in the wake of her investigations.  Without that core, the Veronica Mars movie could just be the Betty Jupiter film.  Rob Thomas, though, knew that core and used it as the base to build the rest of the movie on.  Few characters get through the movie unscathed, and even Veronica herself gets caught in her own wake.

With the script getting to the heart of what made Veronica Mars a popular hit, even a cult classic, the adaptation to the big screen allowed fans to return to Neptune and enjoy a proper Veronica Mars story, gaining from the change in format without losing anything in translation.

Next week, Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

* There’s always that one person who doesn’t appear that he has left high school.  For Veronica Mars, that person is Dick Cassavetes, played by Ryan Hansen.

Tie-ins are a hard fit for Lost in Translation.  While tie-ins have appeared in the past, notably My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the Richard Castle Nikki Heat novels, they are usually set aside for various reasons.  However, The LEGO Movie created a dilemma.  The film fell neatly into the gap between tie-in and adaptation.  After seeing the movie, I really wanted to get some LEGO bricks to play with, but still felt like I had watched an awesome film that took into account the nature of the toy.  Thus, the need to work out the nature of a tie-in work.

One of the views of tie-in works comes from advertising.  A work is created to sell a product.  Prior to the 1980s, works of this nature were seen as strictly advertising and were heavily restricted in what could and could not be shown.  The regulations were loosened in during the Reagan administration in the US, paving the way for TV shows such as Transformers, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, Jem and the Holograms, and MLP:FIM.  While they could be aired, the product they were based on could not be advertised during their time slots.  In the 80s, with Transformers and G.I. Joe, there was also Lazer Tag Academy and Pac-Man; quality was uneven.  The memorable series treated the work as more than just advertising, elevating them above the pack.

The other main view of tie-works is the expanded universe.  Star Trek and Star Wars are the exemplars here.  Both have had novels, comics, and spin-off animated series.  With Star Wars, the universe expanded by the extra material is considered canon, to one degree or another.*  Paramount, however, does not consider the Star Trek expanded universe as canon, with a few exceptions.  That difference aside, the main thrust with the tie-in works was to fill a demand by fans for more, particularly during the years where no more official work was expected.  The Nikki Heat books fall into this category, being a tie-in to the TV series Castle, though in an unexpected manner.

The core element in both of the above is that the original creators, be they toy company or studio, are providing the impetus for the new works to be created in support of the original.  Captain Power was meant to be part of an interactive toy, yet the stories delved into the nature of humanity and ended on a powerful note involving the death of one of the main characters.**  With adaptations, the original work is moved to a different medium, typically book to movie like the Harry Potter series.  Remakes and reboots can be done by the original studio, as what happened with Star Trek: The Next Generation, but are meant to stand on their own, not support the original.

This isn’t to say that tie-ins are inferior works.  Captain Power, as mentioned above, became a cult hit as viewers realized the depth of the work.  MLP:FIM became an Internet sensation because Lauren Faust wanted to make sure that the family show would be appreciated by the entire family.  The Richard Castle novels, while based on the characters in Castle, are filtered through the titular character’s writing, allowing a fictional novelist to publish real books.  In each of these cases, and in many more, the tie-in work goes beyond just supporting the original and becomes a work of its own merit.  People don’t need the interactive starfighter to enjoy Captain Power, nor a pony for MLP:FIM, nor even watch Castle to enjoy a Nikki Heat book.

Will Lost in Translation look at tie-in works in the future?  The answer is a definite “maybe”.  The tie-in will have to transcend its nature and demonstrate that it can stand on its own.

Next week, Veronica Mars.

* West End Games’ Star Wars Sourcebook, published in 1987 and updated for the role-playing game’s second edition in 1994, has been used by the creative team of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  West End Games went bankrupt in 1998.
** Captain Power is being remade as Phoenix Rising, an hour-long science fiction drama, thanks to the original becoming a cult hit outside the target demographic.