A month ago, I discussed adaptations under new names, how a name change can distance the work from the original, and the idea of a work being an adaptation in all but name. I’ve reviewed one movie, Real Steel, that used a name change to create a distance between it and the work it is based on. Real Steel, however, was still built upon the late Richard Matheson short story “Steel”. Today, however, I will look at a movie that only claims inspiration from a work.
Throughout the run of Lost in Translation, I’ve maintained a philosophy looking at both the good and the bad. Good movies can show how to do things well. Bad movies can be a lesson on what not to do, and may still have elements that work. Street Fighter: The Movie was a great example of a bad movie that still had elements where they tried to stay faithful. Even Dungeons & Dragons made an effort to be recognizable. And, yes, everything I review, I watch, read, or otherwise experience. With Alien from LA, I started feeling like Gonzo the Great, suffering for the art. Or maybe I felt more like Statler and Waldorf. Suffice to say, Alien from LA falls under the category “Bad Movie”. If it weren’t for the fine people of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, I don’t think I could have gotten through the movie with sanity intact.
I watched it, so you don’t have to.
Alien from LA was inspired by Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, or, more accurately, the 1959 movie adaptation with Pat Boone. Verne is considered one of the founders of science fiction, creating works that explored fantastic parts of the Earth and that inspired scientists and engineers. His works have been translated to many languages, second only to Agatha Christie for sheer numbers. /Journey/ has been made into several movies under its own title and has inspired other works. The book chronicles the search for a route to the centre of the Earth* and the sights seen along the way, including dinosaurs and a prehistoric human. Verne took the time to think about the underground ground world; electrically charged gas for lighting, the dangers of gas build up, the need for food and water. The 1959 movie added elements such as Atlantis to the underground world and a few extra characters, including a duck.
To say Alien from LA borrowed elements from the 1959 movie and the original work would be like saying the English borrowed from other languages; the “borrowing” involved a dark alley and a dagger. With the name change, liberties could be taken with the source material. The story remained more or less the same, someone goes down into a new world underground and discovers what’s there. In the original Journey, the reason for searching was to discover what an alchemist found in an Icelandic volcano. The 1959 movie presented a puzzle in the form of a plumb bob in volcanic rock left by an Icelandic scientist three hundred years earlier. Alien from LA had Los Angeles waitress Wanda Saknussemm, played by Kathy Ireland, trying to find out what had happened to her father on an archaeological dig in Africa. At her father’s dig/apartment**, Wanda reads through her father’s journals and discovers that he may have found Atlantis. Wanda decides to take a look at her father’s basement/dig site and finds a chamber where she falls through a hole into a seemingly bottomless pit.
When she regains consciousness, Wanda finds herself in an underground world and meets up with Gus, who she accidentally saves from being murdered. Gus takes Wanda to Atlantis to help find her father while trying to determine whose voice was the most annoying***. Wanda is, despite the frumpy clothes, obviously an “alien”, a surface world dweller, because of her “big bones”. Along the way. Wanda loses her glasses, cleans up using a steam vent****, and gets new clothes that lets her look like Kathy Ireland should. Wanda gets kidnapped, taken to be sold at the underground underground market, is rescued, finds her father, and, eventually, returns to the surface world mostly a new woman.
To say Alien from LA had problems is an understatement. Shot on a limited budget that had parts of it restricted to Africa, the movie reused several actors in multiple roles. The studio, the Cannon Group, was well-known for B-grade action movies such as the Death Wish sequels and Invasion U.S.A, plus Breakin’ and its sequel, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. By the time Alien from LA was being produced, Cannon’s funds were coming from Michael Milken’s junk bonds, with the junk bond market crashing in 1988. The movie was being used to bring the restricted funds out of Africa. Quality of work wasn’t first and foremost.
In terms of casting, the only real name in the movie was Kathy Ireland. Known at the time for being a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Alien from LA was her first lead role. Her size, being 5’10” tall, helped land her the role; the director needed someone to look stronger than the thin, underdeveloped Atlantians. Her co-star, William R. Moses, playing Gus, previously played Cole on Falcon Crest and would appear with Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza later in 1988. The remaining cast was relatively unknown to mainstream audiences.
Visually, the movie did make the underground world and Atlantis look alien. The terrain was more than just a cave while still enclosed and slightly claustrophobic. Buildings in Atlantis were built into the rock walls. The lighting was variable, dim in some areas, bright but tinted in others. Adding to the other-worldliness was an element of government overwatch through a hybrid of George Orwell’s 1984 and the Max Headroom TV series complete with omnipresent television screens with a talking head releasing sanctioned information. The clothes worn by the Atlantians were either functional, as seen with Gus’s coveralls, or completely unconnected to any fashion trend in the 80s or any other period in history. The underground world was definitely its own place, uninfluenced by anything from the surface.
Beyond sharing the general plotline and using one name, Saknussemm, with Arnold Saknussemm, Wanda’s father, being similar to Arne Saknussemm, the Icelandic alchemist who first discovered the way to the centre of the Earth in Journey, there isn’t much in common, Even adding the 1959 version and its addition of Atlantis, Alien from LA isn’t a good adaptation. However, with the title change, Alien from LA distances itself from the original works to stand on its own feeble merits. It’s just not a good movie.
Next week, another look at the Star Wars prequels.
* Obvious, from the title.
** Don’t ask.
*** Wanda won. She kept her squeaky voice throughout the movie. Gus’s Australian accent came and went, probably trying to escape Wanda’s voice.
**** Steam does not work that way.
Adapting popular books isn’t new in Hollywood. Some of the best known movies are based on written works, be they books, short stories, or plays. Historically, the accuracy of adaptation has fluctuated, though some works included a change of name to reflect the differences. It is possible that, right now, we are in the middle of a Golden Age of adaptations, where authors have just enough clout to ensure that their works are adapted faithfully instead of being mined for ideas and left an empty corpse in Hollywood Hills.
Outside Hollywood, studios and directors tend to be more aware of the original work and its audience when it comes to adapting. The approach is to keep the original work in tact where possible, and can be seen in The Guns of Navarone. The original novel, released in 1957 by Alistair MacLean, featured a hand-picked team of specialists being sent to destroy the anti-ship artillery guns on the titular Greek island after previous attempts, including a bombing run, failed to destroy them. At stake, the lives 1200 British soldiers and the British ships being sent to retrieve them before the German offensive starts. Without the guns destroyed, the flotilla would be under a heavy barrage from the guns, out of range of the ships’ own weapons.
The movie follows the plot of the book reasonably closely. Events from the book do show up in the movie. The changes between the two occur in the characters. Captain Keith Mallory, Corporal Dusty Miller, and Andrea, a former Greek colonel all appear and serve in the same roles in both movie and book, with some minor alterations. Supporting characters, though, did see changes, some minor, some massive. Mallory, a New Zealander in the novel, picked up Gregory Peck’s American accent in the movie. Andrea, played by Anthony Quinn, originally was Mallory’s confidante, and didn’t harbour the grudge he had in the movie. Miller was cynical in the book, but David Niven gave him a touch of resigned whimsy. The Greek resistance members Louki and Panayis became Maria and Anna, played by Irene Papas and Gia Scala, respectively. The gender flip allowed the producer to add a romance that didn’t exist in the original novel.
As I mentioned above, the plot remained unchanged. The change from novel to movie meant that different means of keeping up tension had to be used. The destruction of the guns occurred “off-screen” in the novel, leaving the tension to the reaction of the characters as they waited for their explosives to detonate. The movie, though, turned the focus of the tension to the search for the planted explosives and the raising and lowering of the cargo lift, where if the lift dropped down far enough, the circuit needed to detonate the charges would be complete. Camera angles, the tempo of the music, the cuts from the cargo lift to the flotilla to the main characters waiting heightened the tension.
Is the movie version of The Guns of Navarone a perfect adaptation? No; many changes, some for the sake of expanding the demographic to have something for everyone, were made. However, the plot remained unchanged, as did the general feel of the novel. The core ideas – the guns being a danger, the stakes, the race against time – remained. Helping was the quality of the cast*; the odd actor out was James Darren, whose movie works prior to being cast as Spyros Pappadimos included two Gidget movies. However, Darren turned out to be up for the challenge and held his own among the rest of the cast.
The Guns of Navarone has been adapted in other ways, beyond just the movie. A radio play was produced in 1997 for the BBC. The original Battlestar Galactica had an episode, “The Gun on Ice Planet Zero”, that combined The Guns of Navarone with another of MacLeans’s novels, Ice Station Zebra. The core story – the race against time by a small team to protect thousands – reaches out and grabs the audience, no matter the format.
Next week, The Man of Steel.
* Today’s cast equivalent would be Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp, and Patrick Stewart, in terms of talent and draw. James Darren would essentially be Rihanna in Battleship except with a better role to work with.
Charles “Chas” Addams had a macabre sense of humour. His one-panel cartoons were mainly around the theme of the mundane meeting the bizarre. From this mind came the Addams Family, first depicted in 1938. The Addamses were a typical American family, just one that enjoyed the darker things in life. Today, the mere mention of the name can trigger the TV show’s theme song as an earworm.
The first adaptation came in 1964, when The Addams Family appeared on ABC as a sitcom, lasting for two seasons and sixty-five episodes. The TV show required Chas Addams to give his characters names for the first time. The series continued to show the family as being macabre, but not dysfunctional. Sure, they were bizarre and creepy, but Gomez and Morticia loved each other, in their own way. The portrayal of the family mirrored Chas Addams’ cartoons, with minor changes: Grandmama was originally Morticia’s mother, not Gomez’s; and Pugsley was more like Bart Simpson in the original one-panel cartoons.
Fast forward to 1991. By this point, most people were more familiar with the television series than the original cartoon, thanks to the magic of TV syndication. The TV series reached the magic number of sixty-five, which would allow a station to re-broadcast the series five days a week for thirteen weeks. However, adapting an adaptation can be troublesome; each iteration introduces interpretation gaps, where the portrayal of a character or even of the tone of the new work is slightly off. Part of the issue is that getting two people to agree perfectly on an interpretation is rare; everyone involved has different experiences filtering and colouring what is being seen. Yet, the original work was available.
Fortunately, the movie makers had read some of the one-panel cartoons. The cast included Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and a young Christina Ricci in her third movie role ever. Julia took John Astin’s manic portrayal of Gomez Addams and replaced the mania with intensity while still being Gomez. Ricci portrayed an older Wednesday, one that’s more devious and darker than her television counterpart. Meanwhile, Pugsley, originally played by Ken Weatherwax and portrayed by Jimmy Workman in the movie, lost his intelligence and deviousness and becamse the younger sibling. However, the sibling relationship between Wednesday and Pugsley remained intact – Wednesday would try injure Pugsley who would somehow survive and possibly enjoy what was happening.
The plot of the movie followed a scam to take advantage of Gomez and his search for his long lost brother, Fester. Hoping to cash in with a look-alike to pay off a loan shark, Gomez’s lawyer uses the loan shark’s son to pose as Fester. Through machinations, the Addamses are forced to leave their home and deal with the real world. The major problem with the movie was having the Addamses try to adjust to the mundane world, when, in the TV series and the cartoons, it was the mundane that had to make the adjustment. However, when Morticia is taken prisoner and is tortured to give up the AddamsFamily fortune, the classic macabre returns with Morticia complimenting techniques, again, coming from elements in both TV series and cartoon. The end scene, with Morticia knitting a misshapen baby’s outfit comes directly from one Chas Addams’ own cartoons. The name of the new child, Pubert, is reused from the TV series, where it was discarded because it sounded to close to “puberty” and “pubic”, words that were considered unfit for broadcast.
As an adaptation, the movie stumbled a bit by forcing the Addamses to adjust to the rest of the world, a problem corrected in the sequel Addams Family Values, where the cheerful could not stand in the way of the sardonic. However, The Addams Family movie managed to blend the style of the original cartoons with the TV series and kept the feel of both.
The movie and its sequel weren’t the only adaptations. There have been two animated series, a direct-to-video pilot, a rebooted TV series. video games, and even a stage musical. The core has always been a family who, despite their macabre ways, love each other.
Next week, heading back for a classic adaptation, The Guns of Navarone.
Back before I started the Adapting Games, I chatted with Steve on unofficial adaptations; works that don’t share the name and may not even have permission to build on an original. This opened up a wide vista and possibly a can of worms. A good number of such adaptations come from adapting a work that’s long out of copyright protection; the various adaptations and reworks of Shakespeare’s plays are the obvious examples. However, the idea struck me after watching Alien from L.A.*, an adapation of Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which may be reviewed in later installments.
In a manner similar to slightly changing the name of an adaptation**, the use of a completely different title allows some distance between the original and the adaptation. The change allows viewers to know that the new work won’t be faithful in some manner to the original. If the adaptation is unofficial, it also gives some legal maneuvering room. If the original work is famous or infamous, the new name will prevent potential viewers from leaving, either because of preconceived ideas about the original work or because of real issues with the original. The change of title from Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story allowed the movie makers to change the Shakespearean play set in Renaissance Italy to blue-collar 1950s New York City; the change also could bring in people who, thanks to English classes, felt Shakespeare was too high brow for them to understand. Similarly, if Plan 9 from Outer Space were to be remade, it would need a new name; Plan 9 is infamous for being bad, a quality that gets people to watch it. A good or even a “not bad” version of the movie would lose the charm Plan 9 and Ed Wood fans see in the film.
Sometimes the name change comes from translation. Changing the setting of the original work can force a twist. The Western The Magnificent Seven was based on the Japanese movie, The Seven Samurai. The core of feudal honour of the samurai became personal honour for the gunmen; katana were exhanged for revolvers. Yet, The Magnificent Seven still tells the same story as The Seven Samurai. The switch in language, in era, in tone still allows the original story to reach a new audience. This is where many localizations fail. The cast gets “Americanized”, but the background is left as is, creating a jarring dissonance. The live action Akira may be a victim of this, even during pre-production. It is not enough to move the action to New York City; Tokyo is as much a character in Akira as the titular character. If the makers still want to move the story to New York, they’d be better off re-titling the movie after the main character and adjusting the story to reflect the character of New York.
For older works long out of copyright protection, changing the name creates a distance that helps separate the new work from the old. As mentioned, West Side Story places Romeo and Juliet into an at-the-time modern New York***. Romeo Must Die turns the play into an action movie. The animated film Romie-0 and Julie-8 turns the cast into robots; Gnomeo and Juliet turns them into garden gnomes. Each title lets the audience know what the twist is in advance. Shakespeare’s plays tend to receive a disproportial number of adaptations by other names. Disney’s The Lion King is based on Hamlet. The musical Kiss Me, Kate is based on The Taming of the Shrew. Part of the reason for the updating is that the plays are presented as written works in English classes, not as performed works; Shakespeare’s entire library then gets seen as a very high brow form of entertainment for a limited number of people. The adaptations are then seen as being simplified for a larger audience.
In future installments, I’ll take a look at a few adaptions in other names and see how well they stack up to direct adaptations.
Next week, the Addams Family.
* Well, the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 take on it.
** For example, Real Steel.
*** West Side Story started on Broadway in 1957 before being adapted as a film in 1961.
Welcome to Lost in Translation‘s quick – wait, not so quick – series of adapting games to television and film. The series grew, but now it’s time to wrap up.
Part I – Video Games
Part II – Boardgames
Part III – Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Part IV – Adapting Games to Games
Part V – Adapting Games to Games: Tabletop RPGs
Wrapping Up
The core through the series kept going back to the key to adapting anything: respect for the original. In the case of games, there just happened to be a few elements that don’t exist in other media. Game mechanics do create a feel for a game; a game of Battleship should be different from a game of Parcheesi while a game of Clue should be different from a session of Vampire: The Requiem*. Video game adaptations also have to factor in that many viewpoint characters are there to represent the player and have no pre-determined personality. Tabletop RPGs allow the players to create their own characters. Boardgames may not even have a being beyond a marker.
Game adaptations have ranged from successful (Mortal Kombat, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), failures (Dungeons & Dragons, The Legend of Chun Li), and the in between (Battleship**, Street Fighter). When an adaptation works, the new work captures the feel of the original. The failures, though, seem to miss the point completely or have no respect for the fans of the original. Warner Bros. is developing a new movie based on D&D, with the project originally working on adapting the RPG’s predecessor Chainmail. With luck, the scriptwriter has played the game and can bring the feel through to appease fans while still not alienating the audience that doesn’t play.
This series barely scratched the surface. I focused on television and movies, but skipped past books. Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October began with the Games Designer Workshop wargame Harpoon. Red October would go on to be adapted as a movie, which then got adapted as a wargame by TSR. The Wild Cards series of books got its beginnings in a Superworld campaign with George R.R. Martin as the GM; in 2007, Green Ronin picked up the license for an RPG based on the setting. Works get adapted, then the adaptations are adapted. Pull one thread and the next thing you know, you have half of a different medium following like cats chasing a laser dot.*** With the proliferation of gaming, whether board, role-playing, card, or video, more and more creators are going to find inspiration in what they play. Amazon’s foray into publishing fanfiction (see Steve’s thoughts, parts one and two for more), we could be seeing more game adaptations in a few years.
Next week, an adaptation by any other name.
* Less blood drinking in Clue, ideally.
** Battleship wasn’t a bad movie in and of itself. It didn’t live up to expectations or to the budget it had.
*** There was a metaphor here, but it got lost.
Welcome to Lost in Translation‘s quick series about the ins and outs of adapting games to television and film.* As seen since the first post, if something is popular, someone else will want to adapt it to a different medium. Today, 2013, the most likely medium to adapt from elsewhere is the Hollywood film.
Part I – Video Games
Part II – Boardgames
Part III – Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Part IV – Adapting Games to Games
Adapting Games to Games: Tabletop RPGs
Two weeks ago, I went through how to adapt boardgames and video games as other games, leaving tabletop role-playing games aside for later. A few minutes of quick, barely scratching the surface research later had me wondering just what, exactly, had I gotten myself into.
Back in 1974, Tactical Studies Rules released Dungeons & Dragons, based on a miniatures wargame called Chainmail. Since then, D&D has been the most popular and best selling RPG released, the 800 pound gorilla of the industry. When computer gaming appeared, many games, including Rogue and its imitators**, emulated the feel and, at times, the mechanics of the RPG. Similar adventure games, such as the Ultima series and the Bard’s Tale series, owe their existence to D&D. The influence of D&D is still felt today, with terminology*** appearing in games like The Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, and Diablo, not to mention the concept of a Massive Multiplayer Online RPG (aka, the MMORPG). Two MMORPGS, Everquest and World of Warcraft eventually had tabletop RPGs released, both based on the Dungeons & Dragons third edition open gaming license. A third, Neverwinter Nights was an SSI-licensed game based on Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms and was available on AOL in the early 90s.
TSR and Wizards of the Coast eventually did license official video games. Strategic Simulations Inc, now owned by Ubisoft, created a series of games based on both the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance settings. At least one project, Curse of the Azure Bonds was created as a video game, an adventure module for the RPG, and a tie-in novel, with all three having good reception on release. When WotC bought TSR and released D&D3E, Bioware received the license and released the Baldur’s Gate series of games.
D&D isn’t the only tabletop RPG, though. Other RPGs have been adapted as well. White Wolf‘s Vampire: The Masquerade has had two video games released – Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. Hero Games’ Champions was the original inspiration for City of Heroes, which led to the Champions MMORPG. GDW’s MegaTraveller had two games, The Zhodani Conspiracy and Quest for the Ancients, both based on elements in the Third Imperium setting.
The goal, as it was back in Part III is to keep the feel of the tabletop experience. However, since many RPGs are simulating a genre already, care must be taken to avoid the added filter that the game might need. The game mechanics can be hidden away in the code; the player doesn’t need to know why he or she missed the dragon with the crossbow shot, just that the dragon’s full attention is now on the player’s character. Since there’s no guarantee on the type of character that will be played, since that will be the player’s choice, the writers will need to have the plot come from a non-player character, with the PC out to thwart the evil plans. If a game comes with a setting, the feel of the setting needs to be replicated. Fortunately, most RPGs come with illustrations, which should allow the video game designers to get a visual feel of the game. When done well, the game is successful. If not, fans of the game may avoid the video game.
This holds even if the RPG is being adapted as a boardgame. Vampire would not work well as a boardgame; the elements of the RPG include the struggle to keep the monster within in check, political machinations, and keeping the mundane world unaware that the supernatural exists and is hostile, none of which is easy to portray on a board. D&D, however, has had several boardgames based on the elements of exploring a subterranean maze and killing the evil creatures who dwell within. Ideally, an adaptation should fit within the setting, or one of the settings, of the game, feature iconic character types, and be representative of a typical game if possible.
Next week, the series wrap up.
* And theatre, though I’d be surprised if someone made that leap.
** Known as “roguelikes”, and includes Larn, Hack/, Nethack. and Diablo.
*** A non-exhaustive list of examples: Class, Level, Hit Points, attribute names
Welcome to Lost in Translation‘s quick series about the ins and outs of adapting games to television and film.* As seen since the first post, if something is popular, someone else will want to adapt it to a different medium. Today, 2013, the most likely medium to adapt from elsewhere is the Hollywood film.
Part I – Video Games
Part II – Boardgames
Part III – Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Part IV – Adapting Games to Games
Tabletop Role-Playing Games
A relatively new form of gaming, tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) evolved from fantasy wargaming. The grandpappy of RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons came from adding elements to the Chainmail rule set allowing for individual characters to gain experience. From those humble beginnings, RPGs have spread to cover almost every conceivable genre, from swords & sorcery to space opera, historical romance to post-apocalyptic horror, Wild West to hard science fiction. Players take on the role of their character, unravelling the Game Master’s (GMs) plots.** The simplest and oldest of plots is the dungeon exploration, where a group of specialists go into a structure to kill the inhabitants and take their belongings.
For the purposes of this week’s entry, I’ll be including tabletop wargaming. RPGs were originally an offshoot of wargaming. Several franchises, such as Warhammer and Battletech have related role-playing lines. Other franchises, such as Traveller had tactical and strategic wargames based off the RPG’s setting.
I’ll return again to the four elements noted in Part I – plot, setting, characters, and gameplay. Each of these need to be acknowledged and included for an adaptation to succeed. With RPGs, though, the plot and characters are created by the players. Some games, notably Steve Jackson’s GURPS and Hero Games’ Champions, come without a setting in the core rules. Gameplay may be critical; players will want to be able to duplicate what the characters do on-screen.
If plot is player created, then what can the writers do? Ideally, they can figure out the sort of adventures player characters (PCs) are meant to go on. A fantasy game tends to imply an epic. Dungeons & Dragons should also include a dungeon*** and a dragon; some items are just expected. Meanwhile, the cyberpunk/Tolkien-esque fantasy fusion Shadowrun should involve a group of specialists hired to be expendable assets who break into a mega-corporate facility to retrieve the plot coupon, as in the shadowruns the title implies. Not all RPGs provide such inspiration, though. The various editions of Traveller allow GMs to create a huge sandbox for the players to wander in, to find adventure both in space and on the ground. The writers will have to pick a potential plotline out of supplemental material. Other games, such as TSR’s Boot Hill and R. Talsorian’s Mekton, bring their genres to the table to play in; in the examples given, Westerns and giant mecha anime, respectively. At this point, why license (other than to get the name)?
For games that come packaged with a setting, most of the work is done. Typically, there’s still room left for GMs to add their own twists, but basic facts are provided to help out. Catalyst Game Labs’ Shadowrun and Battletech and Alderac Entertainment Group’s 7th Sea are good examples, coming with a well-formed setting in each game mentioned plus numerous supplements that expand options. In Shadowrun‘s case, the history of the world from 2012 until 2070 is given, including the return of magic, the fragmentation of nations, and the rise of the mega-corporations. Battletech provides the background of factions, the different types of gear, including the game’s king of the battlefield, the BattleMech, and the various fronts of the wars between 2375 and 3072. 7th Sea shows a fictional Earth, called Théah, its history, and the political alliances that form the backdrop to a campaign. An adaptation needs to remember these details; players will be looking for them. Some items, such as history, can be glossed over, be referenced in throwaway line, or even forgotten about if the characters don’t care about the matter. However, ignoring the fracturing of Canada and the US in Shadowrun/ or dropping an alliance from 7th Sea because it’s inconvenient to the plot will have players complaining, killing word-of-mouth.
Characters for an RPG adaptation gives the writers room to maneuver. In some settings, there are a number of key non-player characters, such as Elminster for the Forgotten Realms and Seattle Governor Kenneth Brackhaven in Shadowrun. They don’t need to appear necessarily, but their existance may provide some inspiration for writers. Ideally, the characters created for the adaptation should be possible under the game’s character generation system. That said, most games try to make it possible for believable characters. Even when the power level is stratospheric, there needs to be room for character improvement. The other question is how experienced the characters of the adaptation are. Level based games such as Wizard of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons and Palladium Games’ Rifts start new PCs as youngsters heading out to adventure at the beginning of their career. Even games that aren’t based around levels can start PCs as rookies; White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade had PCs start as recently turned vampires. Other games, the various Travellers in particular, had PCs begin play with a years of experience under their belt. Still other games allowed for a variety of prior life experience, from the hot-shot rookie to the world-weary veteran, before play started. The key here for writers is to make sure that the main characters reflect what’s possible. A D&D-based movie can have a mid-level**** character as the hero as long as his or her abilities match what they should be for a PC in a game of that level.
The last, gameplay, is going to be a sticky point. Game mechanics do try to represent the genre, but abstraction does happen. A PC in D&D can keep going without a drawback as long as his or her hit point total remains above zero. Loss of hit points represents minor scrapes, twisted ankles, fatigue, and luck, but there is no mechanical disadvantage for being wounded. On screen, people may have trouble setting aside suspension of disbelief and believing that the fighter who just took an arrow to the knee can still run. Some mechanics may have to be set aside. However, if the game system uses Vancian magic+ and a wizard in the adaptation keeps casting Fireball multiple times without stopping to pull out his or her spellbook, there’s a problem. Writers need to keep the mechanics in the back of their mind to prevent glaring mistakes.
There hasn’t been many movie and TV adaptations of RPGs. The main factor is that tabletop RPGs are a niche market. Many exist to let players play in a specific genre, so adapting one of those games can seem silly. The best known RPG has had two adaptations; Dungeons & Dragons was first adapted as a Saturday morning cartoon, then later as a movie. Vampire: The Masquerade was turned into an Aaron Spelling nighttime soap called Kindred: The Embraced, lasting eight episodes. Over in Japan, the fantasy RPG Sword World became the basis for the novel series and anime Record of Lodoss War, based on the creator’s home campaign. The mecha wargames and RPGs Battletech and Heavy Gear have been turned into animated series. At one point, Rifts was optioned by Jerry Bruckheimer, though that seems to be at least stuck in development.
Record of Lodoss War may be the route to use, at least for a TV series – base the series off an actual campaign that has been played. The characters will have been developed, the setting is already fleshed out, and plot lines will have flowed from events naturally. For movies, the best way may be to give the game a test play and see if the results were both fun and lead to exciting visuals.
Next week, part IV, adapting games as games.
* And theatre, though I’d be surprised if someone made that leap.
** Like a cat unravels a wool sweater.
*** Or other underground structure.
**** Levels 5 through 8 or so. Enough to start dealing with serious threats without becoming responsible for a town’s security.
+ Magic where spellcasters memorize a spell, then release it later, “forgetting” the spell afterwards. Named after Jack Vance, who used the method in his works.
Welcome to Lost in Translation‘s quick series about the ins and outs of adapting games to television and film.* As seen since the first post, if something is popular, someone else will want to adapt it to a different medium. Today, 2013, the most likely medium to adapt from elsewhere is the Hollywood film.
Part I – Video Games
Part II – Boardgames
Part III – Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Part IV – Adapting Games to Games
Boardgames
Boardgames and card games are the oldest form of gaming, found in all cultures throughout history. From mere diversions to gambling to war preparations, boardgaming has spread far and wide. While there are some games designed for just one person, such as the various solitaire games for cards, the vast majority of games require at least two people. And, yet, there are few projects based on a boardgame. There are many movies that feature a game or are centred on a game, but very few that bring the game to the screen. Part of the reason is that the conflict is between the players. The musical Chess** features the drama between two chess players during the Cold War. Poker is a fixture in many movies, from Maverick to God of Gamblers where, again, the conflict between the poker players is the focus. Battleship became part of the plot in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
As for boardgame movies, there is Clue and there is Battleship. Jumanji, for all its appearances of being based on a boardgame, is based on a short story. The boardgame came out after the movie. Hasbro does have some movies in the works based on their game lines, detailed earlier.
Last week, I listed key elements that needed to be dealt with to adapt well: plot, setting, characters, and gameplay. Unlike video games where the game needs an icon for the player***, boardgames might just have a coloured token that has no backstory at all. Game bits may include money equivalents, miniatures to represent items, tokens for keeping score, and parts to add to the board. In a few games, the players’ pieces are identified by colour, with the shape of the tokens representing in-game elements.
For the vast majority of movies centred around games, the game shows up as itself within the work. The plot comes from the drama and conflict between the players as they play the game. Gambling games tend to be the focus of this type of movie. It isn’t the poker tournament that is the focus, but the players in it. The setting is where the game is played, whether it’s a saloon on the American frontier, a high class casino in Europe, or a back room in a seedy neighbourhood pool hall. The gameplay is on screen, performed by the characters.
Lately, though, as Lost in Translation previewed last year, boardgames are now being adapted as movies. Monopoly, Risk, Candyland, and a remake of Clue have all been announced. Risk and the similar in scope Axis and Allies involve a world at war, the former set in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the latter during World War II. Typically, movies set during wars of those times would focus on a particular historical element or figure and not need the game at all. Boardgames like Monopoly are about trading and getting rich, again, plots that can be handled easily without the baggage that a boardgame would bring. Monopoly, however, does bring with it a setting, Atlantic City.
For traditional boardgames, the plot can be pulled from the game itself, based on what the winning condition is. Some games, such as The Game of Life and Redneck Life, fit the bill poorly, covering the lifespan of the player’s token. Others, like Battleship, handwave away why there is a conflict between the players, assuming that if the players didn’t want to play the game, they wouldn’t. This leads to the writing staff having to create the reason for the conflict.
In terms of characters, again, few boardgames name their tokens, with Clue being the main exception. Some characters may be named, such as Monopoly‘s Rich Uncle Pennybags and Redneck Life‘s Uncle Clem, but they’re not playable. Typically, the players aren’t placed into a role. They just play the game. To adapt a game, characters will have to be created and cast; few people will pay to see a giant dog token hop down the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
Boardgames do give the adapters a break on setting. The board itself can be turned into the setting. The movie Clue adapted the game’s board well, including the secret passageways and the relative locations of all the rooms. Battleship was set on the Pacific Ocean, providing the nice rich blue sea the game’s boards represent. The exceptions are games similar to Life and Redneck Life, where the boards represent a metaphorical journey instead of a physical one.
Gameplay is going to be the hardest part to adapt properly. Unlike games, people don’t walk a number of steps based on a die roll and don’t move one at a time in order. Games that have inter-player negotiation, such as Monopoly and Diplomacy**** fare a little better here, as players interact with each other in a dramatic conflict, as dramatic as the players want to get.+ In a work of fiction, the desires of both sides of the negotiations can be played up and the movement on the board can be downplayed.
Boardgames will take a deft hand to adapt properly, to keep the feel of the game while still producing characters and a plot that works within the constraints of the original work. The difficulties explain why few boardgames have been adapted directly. Clue managed to keep the feel of the game and worked with the existing characters to produce an entertaining movie. Battleship tried, hard, but might have been a better movie without the name attached.
Next week, part III looks at adapting tabletop role-playing games and wargames.
* And theatre, though I’d be surprised if someone made that leap.
** Someone made the leap.
*** Yes, there are exceptions like Duck Hunt, but the player still is represented by the crosshairs.
**** Diplomacy and, to a lesser degree, Risk and Axis & Allies could also be covered next week as wargames.
+ “Hey, want Reading and B&O for Illinois and Oriental?” “Only if you toss in Boardwalk.”
While getting prepped for the The Avengers review*, a small detail kept drawing my attention. It came up in Iron Man, and continued through each entry of the Avengers Initiative. It’s the setting. Not just Tony Stark’s lab or SHIELD’s headquarters, but the entire universe.
Let me backtrack a bit to explain. Most major comic publisher has its own universe where their heroes live, work, and fight crime. DC’s universe includes fictional cities like Metropolis and Gotham City and fictional countries like Qurac. Marvel doesn’t go for the fictional city, but does have its own fictional countries, like Doom’s Latveria and Silver Sable’s Symkaria. This allows the various characters and titles to crossover and guest star as needed, and leads to team books like Justice League of America (bringing together DC’s iconic characters into one book), Teen Titans (for DC’s sidekicks), and The Avengers (Marvel’s Justice League equivalent.) Image, even though each book is its own universe, does allow its published characters to appear in other characters’ titles, in a form of metaverse**. Over time, as storylines grow and wrap up, as characters are introduced and interact, as villains come and go, each title’s history starts getting complex. Add in the various guest appearances by characters from other titles, and the complexity starts looking like the family tree of European Royalty***. It makes for difficulties to jump in on a title. It also makes for difficulties when adapting.
The first problem with a large universe is licensing. Marvel has had this problem more than DC over the past fifteen years. DC has the advantage of being owned by Warner Brothers, with their main universe titles being released by Warner. Since 1998, Marvel has seen their characters and titles licensed out to New Line Cinema (the Blade series), 20th Century Fox (X-Men and related characters, Daredevil, Elektra, the Fantastic Four movies), Columbia (the Spider-Man series including the reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, the Ghost Rider movies), Universal (the 2003 Hulk), Lionsgate (the Punisher series, Man-Thing), and Marvel Studios (all movies leading to The Avengers). Several things stand out. First up, the Punisher. The Punisher first appeared in a Spider-Man book, then guest starred with other Marvel notables such as Captain America (an Avenger) and Nightcrawler (an X-Man), before making regular appearances in Daredevil and then getting his own title. With the licensing, the Punisher isn’t easily available in any movie with the heroes mentioned. Likewise, Daredevil and Spider-Man share a few opponents, notably the Kingpin, and are based in the same city, New York. Fortunately, New York is big enough that it’s feasible to believe they won’t cross paths often. The excuse will work for movies due to the time between releases.
The next problem is the sheer weight of history. Superman has been published continuously since 1938. That’s seventy-five years worth of stories, continuity, characters, situations, and other dross. Batman dates from 1939. Wonder Woman from 1941. Marvel has characters that predate Marvel, coming in from Timely. Even Spider-Man dates from 1962, over forty years. Some characters even have multiple books. While origin stories may get repetitive, they have the benefit of having the audience come in as a blank slate with no prior knowledge of the character. A movie about a team of diverse heroes, like the Justice League or the Avengers, though, doesn’t have the time to show each team member’s origin and still deal with the central plot. Even in a movie where all the characters gained powers through the same source, like X-Men, there’s a good chance of an outlier (in X-Men‘s case, Wolverine) who has something more happening in his backstory. The X-Men franchise also has the anti-mutant hysteria to add in its setup.
What can the adapting studio do? One way is to just focus on the character and ignore everything else in the universe. This approach works best when the character being adapted doesn’t appear in the same circles as the rest of the universe. The approach also works when the character is best known for the type of story being told. Spider-Man is perfect for a story that’s personal, close to home, or deals with problems that are local to New York. Same thing with Daredevil and Batman. At the other end of the scale, dealing with would-be world conquerors is in line with Superman, the Justice League****, and the Avengers.
Another way is to take in everything from the character’s books, then pick and choose what to keep. This is essentially what happened with X-Men and the Avengers Initiative. It doesn’t hurt that Marvel once split the editorial tasks by group, two of which were the X-Titles and the Avenger titles. The areas are, for the most part, self-contained except for the annual all-title crossover events. Need a villain from Thor to menace the Avengers? No problem! Need a classic Wolverine opponent to act as muscle for Magneto? Easy as pie! The adapting studio has access to a broad range of characters and situations and doesn’t have to worry about having to fill in that man-sized spider hole in the cast.
Then there’s branching off from the main universe to create a new one for the medium. The adapting studio gets the details it needs, the characters it needs, and then branches away at some point, creating its own continuity parallel to the main body. There may be events that are shared, events that are similar, but the two continuities are separate entities. The best example is the Dini-verse, also known as the Timm-verse+, which spun off from the main DC comic continuity as cartoons. The Dini-verse is responsible for the creation of a tragic background for the Bat-villain, Mr. Freeze, and the introduction of Renee Montoya and Harley Quinn into the regular continuity. The Avengers Initiative is doing something similar. In the main Marvel continuity, Iron Man is seen as Tony Stark’s employee and bodyguard. In the movie, Stark just came out and said it; his ego wouldn’t let a lie steal the spotlight.
And there’s the reason for this long aside. The Avengers Initiative are wonderfully done movies, getting the feel of the characters right, but getting some minor but critical details (like Iron Man having a secret identity) wrong. I don’t want to deal with the, “Wait, no, that’s not accurate!” moments while watching an amazing scene. There’s enough small details to show that Marvel’s movie continuity is separate from the main comic line’s. I am acknowledging it here so I can properly watch the movies without having to note discrepancies that don’t make a difference to the scene but do when it comes to continuity.
Next time, the penultimate Avengers Adaptation entry.
Correction: Last week’s Lost in Translation was listed as number 52 when it should have been number 53 instead.
* That is, watching the movies and reading the comics.
** The authors maintain control of their books, and discrepancies are written off as how the character perceived the crossover.
*** Not so much a family tree as a family tumbleweed.
**** Especially if people forget that Batman is a member.
***** My argument really breaks down when people remember that Spider-Man is an Avenger, too. But teamwork can let even the weakest heroes combine to defeat the worst villain around.
+ Named after Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, the showrunners for the DC animated universe starting from Batman: The Aninated Series through to Justice League Unlimited.
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with Serdar about remakes, specifically, why remake a work when the result winds up being the same. This got me to thinking about the nature of a remake. Serdar’s thoughts can be seen on his blog, and are well worth reading on their own, too.
What is the purpose of the remake? Sure, at some point, it’s “make money”. Beyond that, why remake? Is there a new interpretation to explore? Is the focus changing to a different character? Or, as in Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, a shot for shot remake? Lost in Translation has looked at many adaptations and remakes. One could argue that an adaptation is just a remake in a different medium. In this case, though, the purpose is to interpret the original work in a new medium. Look at the number of books adapted as movies and television series. Just the going through the book and finding the key scenes alone means that someone is already creating a new interpretation. When remaking in the same medium, a new interpretation is needed.
Compare the two Battlestar Galactica TV series. The original was space opera, coming on the heels of Star Wars, telling the tale of a ragtag band of refugees of worlds lost to killer robots. The remake’s twist on the original was to remove the space opera. The remake took a hard look at the needs of maintaining the human race in a hostile environment while still being chased by the exterminators. The original, there was hope that humanity would survive, even if the discovery of Earth wasn’t shown.* The remake, on the other hand, kept a close track of the number of survivors, and an increase was a major point of celebration; humanity’s survival wasn’t certain. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Psycho remake was shot for shot the same. There was nothing new that an audience couldn’t get from the original. That’s a danger; if a remake gets audiences to go back to the original and not see the new version, something has gone wrong. Something to remember – novels don’t get remade, just reissued. There’s little point for an author copying an existing story word for word. At most, an author will revise a story to reflect changes in the real world.
What types of remakes are possible, then? I’ve grouped a few, and these may not be comprehensive or completely exclusive ways, but I’ve added examples to try to make things clearer.
Shot for Shot Remake: Like it says on the tin, the remake redoes the original work using the same approach. If the original work is an older movie filmed in black and white, the new version may just add colour. Once again, Psycho is the best example. Unless a great deal of time has passed between the original work and the remake, most people will prefer the original.
Remake with a Twist: This sort of remake changes something in the original, whether it is the main character, the setting, or the mood, among many other elements. This sort of remake doesn’t need to be “official”. An example of changing the setting is The Magnificent Seven, a Western take on The Seven Samurai. The seven ronin (masterless samurai) become gunslingers in the remake, thus changing expectations of the characters. Battlestar Galactica is a great example of a change in mood, plus changes in characters.
Remake Continuation: Instead of remaking the original work, the remake continues from where the original left off. Usually, the new work acknowledges what has happened before. Best example of this is Star Trek: The Next Generation, which advanced the timeline of the Star Trek universe to show how the voyages of the USS Enterprise has affected the galaxy. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek could fit here, too, except instead of continuing, it fills in details of the characters before they were first seen in the original series.
Cross-media Remake: Usually called an adaptation, this is when a work in one medium is adapted for another. Typically, the path is from long-form (novels, television series) to short-form (movies, video games**). Sometimes, though, a movie will be adapted as a TV series (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and there are the rare novels that go beyond being just a tie-in to a TV series.
As I mentioned, these are not exclusive. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek falls under both Remake with a Twist and Remake Continuation. The animated film Gnomeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s*** Romeo and Juliet only done with garden gnomes, covers Remake with a Twist/ (they’re garden gnomes!) and Cross-media Remake (animated garden gnomes!).
What does this mean for people hoping to remake a work? At a minimum, figure out what you want to do with the work. Few people are going to want to see a shot-for-shot remake*** when the original is still around. There needs to be a reason for the remake to exist. Otherwise, why bother?
Next week, superhero universes and adaptations, on the road to The Avengers Adaptation.
* Galactica 1980 is being ignored here, for many reasons.
** Some video games. Video gaming is turning into its own creative endeavor. See the works of Bioware and Bethesda as examples.
*** The Bard may be an exception to the problems of a shot-for-shot remake. Filming one of Shakespeare’s plays usually requires staying true to the original script. Anything else is just an adaptation.
**** No, I meant three stars. The previous footnote still applies.
