In the past fifteen years, Marvel has made strides with theatrical releases. Iron Man, released 2008, paved the way for a number of movies that are now part of The Avengers Initiative. However, during that time, superheroes on television have been the realm of DC, starting with Arrow in 2012. The Arrowverse, though, was separate from DC’s cinematic universe.
Disney’s acquistion of Marvel in 2009 would become a game changer. Disney has the money to spend to compete. Disney also has the money to buy the competition. The company’s acquisition of Fox and its subsidiaries took two years with the transition ending in 2019. However, before the acquisition, Fox managed to make one of the most comic book movies ever, Deadpool. The other most comic book movie ever is, of course, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, distributed by Universal Pictures. Once Disney had Fox’s assets, could Marvel Studios make a comic book TV series?
Enter Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Both characters have extensive history in the Marvel comics. Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, has been both hero and villain. She was once a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants under Magneto and later a member of the Avengers and its spin-off team, the Avengers West Coast. In both cases, she was with her twin brother, Pietro, aka Quicksilver. Wanda’s powers, her mutant ability to manipulate probability combined with witchcraft, put her as one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe. The Vision is a synthezoid, a synthetic android with a Solar Gem that provides him sentience. He was built by the villainous sentient robot, Ultron, using the template of the original Human Torch android and was given the goal of destroying the Avengers. The Vision’s powers include superhuman strength and reflexes, a durable body shell, and the ability to control his density from superdense to intangible.
Wanda and Vision met as Avengers, fell in love, and got married, becoming one of the rare superhero couples, though the West Coast Avengers also had Hawkeye and Mockingbird. As a couple, they had two volumes of their own series, Vision and the Scarlet Witch, for a total of 16 issues combined. In the second volume, Wanda became pregnant with twins. However, her happiness didn’t last long. Vision was destroyed and rebuilt, now with chalk white skin and no emotions or memories. Wanda’s twins later started to disappear, leading to a string of nannies at the West Coast Avengers’ compound in California. After consulting with Agatha Harkness, it was determined that Wanda’s children weren’t real, created by her desires and her powers but with no substance when her attention was focused elsewhere.
Team superhero titles are soap operas, really.
All of the above leads to WandaVision, a nine episode series on Disney+ first available September 2021. WandaVision stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda, Paul Bettany as Vision, Kathryn Hahn as Agnes, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, Randall Park as Jimmy Woo, and Kat Dennings as Dr. Darcy Lewis. The first episode begins with the usual Marvel Studios bumper, but at the end, it switches to 1.33:1 aspect ratio instead of widescreen, black & white instead of colour, and mono instead of stereo. The episode itself is homage to sitcoms of the 50s, particularly The Dick van Dyke show, and shows the titular couple trying to live a mundane life in the sleepy town of Westfield. The effects reflect the era; no CGI for Wanda’s magic, just wires.
The second episode brings the show up to the 60s, in the style of Bewitched. However, little things start looking odd for Wanda, such as a red helicopter with a sword logo landing in her front yard. very odd, considering the show was in back and white until the final minutes when colour appeared. The colour remains for the third episode, now in the 70s and in the style of The Brady Bunch. Wanda has television’s fastest pregnancy, giving birth to twins at the end of the episode.
Episode four goes behind the scenes of Wanda’s show, with a look at what’s happening outside Westfield. A barrier surrounds the town in the shape of a hexagon. Agents from both the FBI, including Jimmy Woo, and SWORD, the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division, Monica Rambeau’s agency, are trying to figure out what is going on inside the hex. One of the scientists, Dr. Darcy Lewis, examines the wavelengths emitted and finds one worth tapping into. The wavelength requires and older TV, but once it’s on, Darcy is able to watch WandaVision.
Episode five returns into Wanda’s show, this time in the style of Family Ties from the 80s. As the episode title says, it’s, “A Very Special Episode”, with the twins aging up, twice. As with any very special epiusode from the 80s, a tragedy happens, and Wanda has to help her boys cope with the loss. The next episode leads into the 90s, with shows like The Wonder Years, and Wanda starting to notice that things aren’t going as expected. Episode seven leads to the 00s and reality television and the return of Wanda’s brother Pietro, who was killed in Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, Pietro is played by Evan Peters, the Quicksilver of the X-Men films.
The final two episodes pull all the strings together, with the eight episode ending in the reveal of the villain. The final episode has Wanda fighting for not just her life, but the life of the citizens of Westfield, Vision, and her twins, and, ultimately, her own sanity. The entire series is about Wanda and her grief over the loss of the people she loves, her parents, her brother, her husband, and her children, and learning more about her abilities. The sitcom reality she created was based on what she watched to escape reality as a child, and what she watched with Vision as they fell in love. But her fantasy held people prisoner, hurting them unknowingly while she grieved.
WandaVision shows the strengths of streaming. There is no need to add extra episode to suit the requirements of a network series of being a set episode length for twenty-two episodes. Each episode of WandaVision was the length it needed to be, and nine episodes was the right number to have. Without the restrictions, the writers could get everything they needed to get in, including era-appropriate ads, to get the surface plot and the underlying arc all worked in without stretching or squeezing.
Casting is also important. Olsen and Bettany had chemistry as Wanda and Vision. Without that chemistry, WandaVision would not have had the impact it had. The two portrayed the superheroic couple as a couple, with all the quirks couples have. Even as events started turning dark, the love between Wanda and Vision still shone through. The supporting cast was also key, especially in the town of Westfield, where the characters change by the era of the episode.
The plot takes its cue from the pages of both Vision and the Scarlet Witch and West Coast Avengers/Avengers West Coast. WandaVision is a far better approach to the ideas than what appeared in the comics, really. What helped is that the writing staff was all on the same page with WandaVision, while a change of writer from Steve Englehart to John Byrne led to the massive changes in Vision and to Wanda’s twins. Even given the differences from Marvel’s main 616 universe and the cinematic universe, WandaVision is the better story. Wanda has agency and growth. Vision’s fight with his rebuilt version comes down to philosophy and a discussion of the Ship of Theseus.
WandaVision, as an adaptation, has the task of taking a character arc from the late 80s and bringing it over to a cinematic universe that has been going in its own direction for over a decade while still being fresh. The result is a mini-series that has the twists of the comics while still taking advantage of the medium of television, especially its evolution since the 50s, and improving on the orignal ideas as present in the pages of the original comics.
Last week, Lost in Translation used The Mandalorian as an example of a streaming service adapting a work instead of doing something original for the headline. This week, The Mandalorian gets a closer look.
Created by Jon Favreau and produced by Favreau and Dave Filoni, The Mandaloran became the headliner for Disney+, Disney’s streaming service. While Disney has a huge back catalogue that could be used as hooks into the service, the company went with a new Star Wars series, building from the audience attention on the most recent films in the franchise. The Mandalorian is a space spaghetti western with a strong samurai/ronin influence about a Bounty Hunter With No Name, played by Pedro Pascal, who winds up breaking the bounty hunter code when he decides to not turn over a young target to the Imperial client (Warner Herzog) who set the bounty.
The eight 45-minute episodes build up to a climax that may be one of the best episodes of television, bringing together several plot lines introduced over the course of the season. While episodic, each episode builds on what happened before, invoking several western tropes and modifying them for the Star Wars setting. Every character has an arc, from the Mandalorian’s with the young charge he protected to Nick Nolte’s Ugnaught to Gina Carano’s ex-Rebel soldier.
Visually, the series looks like it should be on the silver screen instead of on even a wide-screen TV. The effects are what people expect out of Star Wars, with a mix of wonder, adventure, and lived in. But the series didn’t stop on the surface. Filoni and Favreau dig into an element of the Galaxy Far, Far Away, the Mandalorians, and pull together from previous works, including the animated series Filoni worked on, to show who and what they are.
If some of the episodes seem familiar, it’s because of the influences. As mentioned, The Mandalorian is a space western with samurai influence. Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, as seen in A Fistful of Dollars is an obvious source, but so are Have Gun Will Travel and Lone Wolf and Cub. The first season can be seen as an extended homage to The Seven Samurai by way of The Magnificent Seven as the people the Mandalorian helps come back to help him, including a reprogrammed IG-11 (voiced by Taiki Waititi).
Even the space spaghetti western with a dash of samurai films is just another layer to the series. The original /Star Wars/ took some of its cues from Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, so the samurai element was always there in one form or another, particularly when the Jedi are considered. What makes The Mandalorian its own work, albeit an adaptation, is how it builds off the Star Wars mythos. Elements may come from westerns or samurai films, but the heart still lies in Star Wars even as the series expands that setting. The time after the fall of the Empire could be seen as the period following the American Civil War, but the details and dynamics between the two eras are different.
The Mandalorian takes a look at the fall out from the Empire’s fall, as warlords try to maintain what control they have, former Rebels try to figure out what to do now that the goal they’ve been fighting for has been achieved and now have to integrate back into galactic society, and former Imperial slaves come to terms with how they helped, even against their will, an oppressive regime. Even on the fringes of the galaxy, lives matter, actions matter, and motives matter. The Mandalorian has difficult choices to make, even with a code of honour to guide him. Choosing to save a youngling has consequences that may shake the New Republic.
The series is very much a story in the /Star Wars/ setting, even with the trappings. Star Wars does allow for a great range of stories, from warrior monks trying to cope after becoming leaders of soldiers to a young farmboy becoming a galactic hero to the scruffiest of nerfherders showing that he has a heart of gold. The Mandalorian easily stands beside such stories, with an emotional impact that makes the series memorable.
I’ve been in discussions with Steve of Seventh Sanctum and Serdar of Genji Press about the nature of adaptations and how some works could be done as pure originals instead of being tied to an existing property. There are a few examples of works available today or soon to be released that fall into this realm. The question is, why?
Streaming services are getting competitive due to the number of them starting up. To get subscribers, the services need something that will draw audiences in. Disney+, while having all of Disney’s library, went with The Mandalorian, a space western in the Star Wars setting with a lead dressed in armour similar to what Boba Fett wears and a very young version of Yoda. The series is beautiful to look at and has depth that the movies don’t have, mainly because of the nature of a TV series. CBS All Access went with Star Trek: Discovery and will follow up with Star Trek: Picard, banking on Star Trek fans wanting to subscribe just to watch the shows.
It’s understandable. The streaming services are competing for views, so they are going to maximize the headliner as much as possible, including budget. The services don’t want their headliner to look terrible. The Mandalorian has movie-level production values with casting to match. But the series is a space spaghetti western at its heart. The series adds to the Star Wars setting, but does the Star Wars setting bring anything to the story?
But the need to draw attention means that the services are going to go with their big guns. For Disney+, that’s The Mandalorian. CBS All Access’ go-to is Star Trek. The goal is to get subscribers. But once there are subscribers, why not create a new property? Obviously, if CBS goes for a space spaghetti western with a Bounty Hunter With No Name, with or without a young child, people will suspect the service is trying to follow in Disney+’s footsteps. But what about a new science fiction series, one that isn’t about exploration or isn’t a space western with samurai/ronin influences? There is a demand growing, even if adaptations are still the major draw at the box office.
The problem comes from budget. The headliners are getting a proper budget. The streaming services don’t have unlimited funds. Unlike Netflix, many of the newer services have a back catalogue to help fill time, but there’s only so many episodes of Big Bang Theory people are willing to watch in a day. There’s room for original works in the schedule. The question is, will there be a budget for the original works. Some of the subscriber fees will be going back into the headliners, since they are the draw. The rest, anything leftover after operating costs and CEO bonuses are taken out, may have a number of projects trying to get a chunk. Science fiction tends to be expensive, from special effects to specialized sets. Apartment sets can be redressed as needed. Starship bridges tend to be unique and recognizable.
It will boil down to demand. Will there be enough demand for a new work, and original series exploring new territory? Or will fans demand more of the same?
Viewing habits have changed drastically over the past few decades. Changes in technology are allowing for more choice of not only what to watch but when. Lost in Translation will take a look at how watching TV has evolved.
The first electronic television set was invented by Philo Farnsworth in 1927, using cathode ray tubes to display the images on a screen. The first TV station, WRGB is still on the air today having started in 1926 for mechanical TVs. Between the ubiquity of radio and the Great Depression starting in 1929, it took time for the new medium to be accepted. Radio already had been accepted and had support and listeners; television was a new luxury at a time when basics couldn’t be afforded. Once World War II started, though, TVs started to sell commercially. With the war effort needing more people working, basic needs could be covered by wages, leaving room for a luxury.
By the Fifties, TV had replaced radio in the family living room. Four networks – ABC, CBS, NBC, and, from 1946 to 1956, DuMont – provided programming, with independent stations filling in gaps. Programming was either live or prerecorded, and if a viewer missed an episode, they had to wait for summer reruns. The rerun itself was new in the Fifties, first used with I Love Lucy (1951-1957), allowing viewers a second chance to watch an episode. As a result, most series were episodic, one-and-
done stories that didn’t affect what came afterwards. Once second-run syndication began, with I Love Lucy being the forerunner there, too, viewers had more opportunity to re-watch a favourite episode. That’s not to say that multi-part episodes didn’t happen. Splitting an episode over two or three parts meant that viewers would have to tune in the following weeks to see how the story ended. They were rare and used for key episodes in a series.
Colour came along in the Sixties, with NBC the first network to go to colour-only in 1965. Reruns and syndication were both well in place, allowing viewers to watch a missed episode or re-watch a favourite one. Time-shifting of viewing, though, wasn’t widely available. With radio, as long as someone could be around to start and stop the tape recorder, a show could be recorded to listen to later. Recording a TV series would have to wait for the Sony Betamax, released in 1975. Networks weren’t thrilled with the idea of audiences recording their shows, but after the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Sony’s favour, they didn’t get much say. The original Betamax tapes could only hold about an hour’s worth of programming. The VHS format, released in 1976, originally held two hours and, later, could get up to six to eight hours of programming. Audiences could record a show and watch it anytime, as long as the videotape recorder, or VCR, was properly programmed.
VCRs gave audiences a way to watch when they were available. Broadcasters and advertisers, though, remained focused on the live audience. The VCR had a drawback – it could only record one thing at a time. If there was a conflict in what to record, only one show in a time slot could be chosen. However, this gave audiences a bit more flexibility if they were at home; they could record one show while watching another. The other catch was that the VCR could record or replay, but not both at the same time.
The Eighties saw the role of cable expand. Originally mainly used to provide a clear picture from over-the-air broadcasters, both locally and from elsewhere, specialty channels bloomed and spread, giving audiences something else demanding their attention. To fill the time, the new specialty channels cycled their line up every eight hours, giving viewers a chance to watch a show that might air when they’re not available. With the expansion beyond the Big Three networks, four when Fox started in 1986, viewers had much more to choose from to the point where one VCR wouldn’t be enough to keep up in a household.
The first commercial digital video recorder (DVR), also known as personal video recorders (PVR), came out in 2001, taking advantage of the revolution in home computing. By using digital storage such as hard drives instead of magnetic tape, the PVR removed the need to store video cassettes and allowed for even more hours of storage. As the technology improved, PVRs were able to both record and replay at the same time and to record from multiple channels at once. With the expanded storage, a viewer could binge watch an entire season at once.
The year 2001 also marked the beginning of commercially available broadband Internet service. As the speeds increased, the ability to stream TV-quality video improved to the point where cable, once the main delivery method for television, started to wane. Streaming services could offer entire seasons at once, either of old series or, especially recently, new series only available through the service. Binge watching is commonplace today, something not even possible in 1951.
Going back to the VCR and its successor, the DVD, both provided another way to catch up on missed episodes – the outright purchasing of entire seasons. With the VCR, a full season would be bulky and take up storage space. Stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video rented out prerecorded, commercially available tapes of movies and some TV series. The DVD, which allowed for more storage space in a digital format, made it possible for entire seasons to take up less physical room than two episodes on a VHS cassette and provided another revenue stream for the studios. Viewers using this route had to wait until the season was over and risked the series not being renewed due to lack of live and time-shifted audiences for the advertisers.
Time-shifting and binge watching provides producers a way past the problem of viewers missing an episode. Today, a viewer would have to work at missing a show with the options available. Studios can produce multi-part episodes and even series with both season-long and show-long arcs without having to worry that the audience will miss something crucial. While shows like Babylon 5 and daytime soap operas paved the way for the idea of ongoing storylines that aren’t wrapped up in one episode, it took advances in technology to bring the concept to prime time. Even in sitcoms, the idea of characters remaining static is being left behind. Development happens over a season and over the run of a series.
To add to the mix, televisions aren’t the only way to watch shows today. With laptops, tablets, and smartphones, viewers aren’t stuck to the one room with a TV anymore. Online streaming, built-in DVD drives, and downloads allows viewers to watch anywhere without needing an over-the-air antenna or a cable subscription. The audience has grown but it also has fragmented. Lowest common denominator programming now competes with specialty channels aimed at a narrower audience who no longer has to negotiate for the use of the lone TV set. The challenge is finding viewers in a fragmented populace.
When it comes to adaptations, today’s television is much more friendlier to longer works than before. In the past, shows adapted from elsewhere either took the characters and created new situations for them, eg, M*A*S*H and The Incredible Hulk, or turned the work into a major event miniseries, such as Roots and Lonesome Dove. Today, books are being turned into TV seasons; A Game of Thrones being the forefront with such series as Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara, adapted as The Shannara Chronicles, following to take advantage of the demand. Even older series being remade are less episodic, as the new Battlestar Galactica can attest.
With the changes in how people watch TV today, television may be the best route for adaptation. While each episode is far shorter than a movie on the silver screen, a season of television provides for more time to delve into the characters, the setting, and the plot. Viewers are more willing to follow a season-long arc now that they don’t have to worry about missing an episode, thanks to time shifting. Television might be regarded as being lesser than film, but the medium now provides for more for both creators and viewers.
