March 27, 2024 • 44 mins
There's nothing wrong with making an adaptation, as long as you get certain things right about it. In this podcast, I discuss the essential elements to get right with any adaptation.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
I'm Stephen Monteeth, and I'm hereto talk about adaptations. I'll mostly be
getting into movie adaptations and remakes,but there's more to adapting stories and whatnot
than that. I'll also be talkingabout TV shows, adapting a TV show
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from pre existing property, et cetera, et cetera. I have nothing against
a movie or a TV show adaptinga previous intellectual property. Frankly, some
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of the best movies and TV showshave been based on previous properties. We're
talking about The Godfather. It wasbased on a book. Godfather Part two
was a sequel. It wasn't originallyintended to be its own story. It
came about because Godfather one was sosuccessful. Wizard of Oz based on a
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book, and in fact, ithad already been a movie before the nineteen
thirty nine movie was even a thing. They were excited to show just how
good and how advanced movies had becomeand could become. So they decided to
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make The Wizard of Oz even thougha movie had already been made about it,
even though it was nothing like thebooks. Nobody cares about that at
this point. People just cared thatit was a really great movie, a
really good, great adaptation. I'mnot saying that people shouldn't care when a
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movie or a TV show adapts aprevious work and steps all over it.
I'll get into that too, don'tworry. I'm just saying that sometimes you
can create something great and something newand something original, even if it was
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based on something that came before.Let's talk about what what you need to
do if you're going to adapt something. First of all, you need to
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decide what to keep from it,and conversely, you need to decide what
to delete from it. And evenif and even with what you keep,
you need to decide what you're goingto change about what you keep, you
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also need to decide what you're goingto add to it. Let's be honest.
Even the best writers in the worldin history are not perfect. Sometimes
things just get left out. Sometimesthings need to be added in. Sometimes
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things are in there that shouldn't bein there. When you think about The
Lord of the Rings, the PeterJackson trilogy, it's one of the most
successful and thrilling adaptations from literature tothe big screen to movie, and it
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may a lot of changes to theoriginal Lord of the Rings. Now,
I'm a big fan of fantasy books, movies, television, cartoons, video
games. Fantasy is probably my favoritegenre of all time. I write fantasy
myself, and I shudder to thinkof what's going to happen to my stories
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if somebody tries to adapt them someday. But the point is, when I
first tried to read The Lord ofthe Rings, I couldn't get through it.
Tolkien is an amazing writer. He'san amazing world builder. He's second
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to none in that category as faras I'm concerned. But he's not very
good at writing stories. The Hobbitwas great. I mean, he wrote
that as a kid's stories. Maybethat had something to do with it.
But but when you actually read theThe Fellowship of the Ring and the Two
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Towers and Return of the King,it's a slog to get through. Serious.
So obviously, when you're trying toadapt that into a movie, you
know you're gonna do a bit ofrewriting here and there. You're going to
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tweak the dialogue a bit, You'regoing to move around certain certain passages.
Some people who just drone on andon and on and on for pages at
a time, it needs to bebroken up. I mean, it's not
a podcast, but anyway. UhSo, when Peter Jackson was adapting it,
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obviously he had to he had tomess around with it a little bit.
Respectfully, you do need to respectthe source material. I can't stress
that enough. I'm a big trekye, you know. In addition to loving
fantasy, I love science fiction aswell. And when Star Trek was being
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rebooted in two thousand and nine forthe big screen, JJ Abrams, the
director, he actually admitted that hewas not a fan of Star Trek.
And I'm not, you know,going to cast any aspersions on his talent
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or anything like that. But he'sdefinitely better suited to making Star Wars than
he is to make in Star Trek. See, there are some things that
even though you have to change thesource material, sometimes there are some things
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that you just cannot mess with.There are some things that you cannot change,
at least not drastically, when you'retalking about adapting a work. See,
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fans will forgive a lot of thingswhen they're watching a movie. They
will forgive bad acting, they willforgive bad dialogue, they will forgive cliches
and a lot of other things.But there are certain things that fans,
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even if they're not die hard fansare always going to be looking for in
an adaptation. First, They're goingto be looking for the characters. I've
always said on this podcast in otherposts that I've made that the characters are
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the most important part of any story, and if a franchise becomes beloved,
it's because people love the characters somuch. There are some franchises, you
know, where other aspects of themare the most important part. But when
it comes to stories, when itcomes to enduring franchises, it's the characters
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who make it so. And that'swhy anytime you adapt a story, you
have to get the characters right.They have to at least have a strong
resemblance to the characters who came before. I was back when I had my
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my recommendation feature on my on mywebsite. I I watched HBO's version of
Perry Mason and it was and itwas basically an origin story for Perry Mason
and I and I only made itthrough the first season. I never came
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back for for any more episodes afterthat because the Perry Mason in the show
just didn't resemble the Perry Mason I'dgrown up with the books. The TV
shows nothing I couldn't. I couldn'trecognize them at all. If you didn't
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call him Perry Mason, I wouldnever have made the connection if you And
that's and that's the rule of thumb. That's the standard you have to measure
your adaptation by. If you wereto change the names of the characters in
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the places, would people be ableto tell what you're adapting. The next
thing that you have to get rightis the lore the world built in the
background. Because when we're talking aboutfantasy and sci fi, obviously we are
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we're dealing with world builders. Youknow, Geene Roddenberry Jr. R.
Tolkien. They built or at thevery least initiated worlds beyond almost anyone's imagination,
and that fascinates people. That's oneof the biggest draws for fans of
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these of these genres, of thesetypes of stories, and getting the lore
right is important to them. I'llgive you an example of another Tolkien work
Amazon just last in twenty twenty two. Rather they they took a little bit
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of they took more than a bitof liberties with the characters. But I
feel that where most Tolkien purists tookmost issue with was with the lore itself.
See Tolkien. When I say he'sa master world builder, I'm I'm
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saying that he that he put thousandsof years of history and mythology and even
new languages into building Lord of theRings. And there were just there were
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a lot of I don't want toget into how many different how many mistakes
that Rings of Power made when whengetting when trying to portray all this history
and all this mythology in Rings ofPower. If you're not if you're not
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a fan of fantasy or sci fi, you may be wondering why this is
so important to people. You maybe you may have a little bit of
trouble holding on to it. Letme see if I can let me see
if I can make an analogy.Say you're a sports fan or a fan
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of baseball specifically, or say thatyou're from New York or both. Let's
say that you are a sports fan, a baseball fan from New York.
And let's say that you've heard thatsomebody out there is going to make a
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big budget movie or Amazon limited seriesabout the life of Babe Ruth. And
let's say that they've got great actorsand great writers, and everybody says that
they've put a lot of effort intothis, and that it's going to be
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very faithful to Babe Ruth's life.And then, let's say, before it's
even released, you see a picturepromotional image of Babe Ruth and he's wearing
a New York Mets uniform. Now, for those of you who are not
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from New York and and or arenot baseball fans, not only did Babe
Ruth play for the New York Yankees, but the New York Men were not
even a baseball team when Babe Ruthwas alive. Now, if you do
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know that stuff, and you're andyou see something like this, you're probably
going to lose all faith in thein the adaptation at all. You're probably
going to lose all faith in themovie or series or whatever he it is.
And that's how fans of Tolkien feltabout Rings of Power. I mean,
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how hard is it really to getpeople to fact check these things when
the story is being written. Now. I don't think that the show is
particularly bad myself. I think thatit's perhaps better than people give it credit
for being. But the writing andthe action and the special effects, like
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I say, they're not as importantto fans as getting the characters right and
getting the lore right. Now,the third thing that you have to get
right is the tone. The toneof the story needs to match what came
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before. This is probably this isprobably the hardest one. I mean,
you can fact check whether whether Galadrieland Gandalf were alive during a certain period
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in Middle Earth's history, and youcan, and you can, and you
can match the characters on the screenup against the characters and the pages and
say, hey, do these twoseem right? But the overall tone of
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the story is one that's going tocapture people, whether they whether they know
that much about the world building ornot, and whether they know that much
about the characters or not. Seepeople have this have a connection to these
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stories based on how the stories makethem feel inside. And I'm not saying
that you can't take characters from anaction movie and have an action franchise and
have them go through a romance orcomedy or horror and vice versa. But
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the tone and the message of thestories that these characters have been through is
what really speaks to the fans.It's what helps them connect with the characters
in the first place. It's whathelps them overlook things like bad special effects
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or cheesy acting or terrible writing.The tone is what really resonates with people,
and one of my favorite examples ofthat when it comes to adaptations is
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Zack Snyder's DC movies. Now,there are a lot of people who have
widely different opinions about the qualities ofhis movies, and a lot of them
have valid points too. Some say, well, this Superman is going through
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different things than other Superman's have,and then there are people who say,
well, there were times when Supermanwas like that in the past, and
same thing with Batman, and samething with Wonder Woman and the other heroes
and other characters. You can argueall day, all night, all year.
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We've been at it for over adecade now about whether Zack Snyder's DC
characters are a good fit for thecharacters that they are in the comics,
or the characters that they were inthe cartoons, or the characters that they
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were in other live action movies.You can say, well, he's just
putting them in a different situation thanthey were before and seeing how they react
in this situation now, And youcan argue the merits of doing that as
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much as you want. But whatyou can never argue with is how a
movie or a story makes a personfeel. This is the one thing that
whenever I see it online, Ican't you know, I can't think of
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any kind of response to it.When somebody says that they see Zack Snyder's
Superman up there and they don't feelthe way they should when they're watching Superman,
I, you know, have nothingto say to that. I mean,
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I appreciate what his Superman is likeand how his Superman makes me feel.
That's one of the reasons I amsuch a big fan of Zack Snyder
and his movies because I can Ican connect with the kind of story he's
trying to tell. But I can't. But I can understand that other people
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just aren't able to connect with it. You know, I could give them
examples from comic books or cartoons ofSuperman that are just like this, what
Zack Snyder's Superman is like, butI would never be able to convince them,
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And I shouldn't be able to convincethem that their own feelings while watching
the movie are not valid. Theirfeelings are absolutely valid. A movie,
a story should be able to makeyou feel, whether it's one way or
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another. It should be able tomake you feel. And if you don't
appreciate how that story makes you feel, then then it's not for you.
And there's nothing else to say aboutthat. Trying to evoke the same feelings
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when you're adapting a story is thehardest thing to do because there's no there's
no checklist, there's no line ofboxes that you can just check off and
say, hey, these all matchup. You know, we've got the
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right feelings and everything. Tone,the tone of the story is just something
that you have to to organically createas you go along. It's not a
it's it's it's harder to describe thingsthan you might think. Sometimes the story
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and the care there is just justtake you in a direction you weren't prepared
to go. I mean, thisis this is a phenomenon that any writer,
any storyteller can tell you about.Sometimes you just sometimes the story just
drags you along with it and you'releft chronicling it. You're left, you
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know, trying to trying to explainwhat happened when the story is basically just
telling itself. So you can't alwayscontrol the tone. And because of that,
if somebody else comes along, it'sjust as difficult for them to replicate
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that tone. You know, It'snot like it's not like having two different
piano play both playing the same tune. It's trying to create a new song
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that sounds like the original but isstill itself original. And this is where,
and this is where the most recentadaptation I think that we're going to
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talk about in this podcast is anexample of all three things that I just
said. It's an example of somethingwhere you need to get the characters right,
you need to get the lore right, and the world building and everything
else, and you need to getthe tone of it right, because those
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are the three things that fans ofa franchise care about the most. And
the example I'm going to give you, the example I'm going to use for
this is Netflix's live adaptation of theAvatar The Last Airbender. Now, I'm
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gonna give you some background for thosewho are listening and may not know about
it. You've got you've got firstof all. Back in two thousand and
five, you had Nickelodeon its animatedseries Avatar The Last Airbender, a show
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about a world where the four elementsearth, firewater, air. You had
different races that could each control oneor more of the element. They were
called benders. You had earth benders, and you had water benders, and
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you had airbenders, and you hadthe fire benders. And then you had
the Avatar. And the Avatar wasthe one person who could master all four
elements, he or she whatever there. In every generation, a new Avatar
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would be born and they would beable to balance the elements, they would
be able to keep them in harmony, and the nations of the world lived
in peace because of that because theAvatar was there. But then, but
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then one Avatar comes along. Hisname is and he's a young Airbender.
And while he's still a kid,while he's still learning how to airbend,
the firebenders the Fire Nation, theydecide that they're going to wipe out all
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the Airbenders. They don't know whothe Avatar is yet, they but they
want to to eliminate the Avatar fromthe world, so they just wipe out
all the Airbenders, hoping that theyget the Avatar so that they can so
that they can then conquer the entireworld. Now, Aang, he isn't
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killed. I'm not spoiling too muchhere. This is all first couple of
episodes stuff, So if you stillwant to watch it, it's not going
to be it's not going to betoo spoiled for you. But but Aang
disappears and he's sort of magically Thisis honestly the weirdest part of this franchise
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for me. He is sort ofmagically trapped in an iceberg for one hundred
years and in anyway, and whilehe's trapped in there, the Fire Nation
they haven't completely conquered the world,but they've definitely done a lot of damage.
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And then the series starts off.The animated series starts off with these
two these two siblings brother and asister from a water tribe who discover Aang
and free him. And he's justa kid, like I said, and
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they're kids too, they're all liketwelve to sixteen or something like that.
And they and they try and explainto him what's been going on in the
world, and he's obviously very upsetand very distraught about it. And he's
got one hundred years of catching upto do, not only in learning the
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other elements and trying to to understandwhat's been happening in the world since he's
been trapped and coming to grips withall of that, but also in trying
to determine how exactly he's going tostop the Fire Nation. It lasted for
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three seasons. The first season it'smostly water bending related stuff. The third
season is mostly Whenang is learning aboutearth bending. You know, new characters
get introduced here and there, someof them minor, some of them very
major. And the third season isabout him learning to fire bend and going
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up against the fire Lord and hisforces. Now, this was a very,
very successful series. It was onlythree seasons long, like I said,
but it was It told a verycontained story Aang coming coming out of
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the iceberg, learning the other elementsand facing off against the Fire Nation along
the way. And it got severalspin offs. It got an animated sequel
series about the next avatar in linecalled The Legend of Cora Korra is the
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next Avatar after Aang. It gotsome It got some comic books and some
novels, I believe, and ithad a lot of a lot of lore
built into the past avatars and evensome future avatars, I believe. And
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then in twenty ten, m NightShyamalan released a He released a live action
movie. Then theoretically, like Isaid, theoretically, there's nothing wrong with
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adapting a TV series into a movie, or adapting a cartoon into live action.
And like I said, this movie, the problems with it weren't so
much problems of writing. Even thoughthe writing was bad. It wasn't so
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much that they compressed the entire firstseason of Avatar into one movie. They
were planning to do a trilogy ofmovies. I believe it was one movie
per season. It wasn't so muchthe compressed storytelling. It wasn't so much
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that sometimes the visual effects were greatand sometimes they were really bad. I
think, like I said, fanscould have gotten over all of that.
But the movie violated all three ofthe things that I said, mess with
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It messed with the characters. Theyeven changed how the characters' names were pronounced
for the movie. Aang They startedpronouncing him on they he's called the Avatar.
They say it like Avatar throughout theentire, uh the entire animated series.
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In the movie, they start sayingAvatar for some reason. I don't
know. All the characters, mostof them at least had there had the
pronunciations for their names changed. Infor reasons passing understanding, but they also
changed the how the characters themselves wereportrayed. Now, first of all,
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the two siblings that Ang meets inthe animated series are called well the Soaka.
He's the he's the older one,he's the brother. And Katara and
she's the younger one. She's anascent water bender herself, and she's the
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one who helps Saying learn water bending. Now, Sokka is is is the
comic relief character. He's not aclown, he's not a buffoon, but
he's definitely funny. You know,you need some lightheartedness, especially in an
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animated show that's primarily geared towards kids. And Katara she's a very motherly character
in the show, talks a lotabout hope, gives a lot of stirring
speeches about it and whatnot. Andof course, as a I said,
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she's a teacher. She teaches Sayingand and none of that comes up in
the movie at all. I mean, you'd barely have anything that that,
even that even ties the siblings togetheras siblings, you barely have any kind
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of real relationship between them, letalone between the two of them. And
On and Soka as they call himin the movie, is not funny at
all. You know, he getsa little bit of uh, he gets
a little bit of slapstick humor.I say a little bit. You'd have
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to think hard to realize that it'ssupposed to be slapstick. But and Katara,
I can't remember anything in Spotiring thatshe did in the movie at all.
Of course, I haven't seen themovie in over a dozen years,
so maybe I've just forgotten it.It's a pretty forgettable movie overall. But
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the thing that makes it reviled amongstAvatar the Last Airbender fans. Like I
said, it messes up the characters. And I haven't even gotten into the
fire Nation characters themselves. I don'thave a lot of time for it,
so I'm just gonna say that italso messed with the war. A lot
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of a lot of world building goesinto a story like this, as you
could probably imagine. They messed thatup in the movie too. And the
tone of it. I'm not evensure what tone they were going for in
the movie, but whatever they weregoing for, they certainly didn't reach the
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tone of the show. The showwas hopeful, and even though it's aimed
at kids. It doesn't talk downto them. It's something that I mean,
it's not like Door the Explorer oranything like that. It's a show
that would appeal to adults as muchas it appeals to kids. And that
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is part of its longevity. That'swhat contributes to it being such a beloved
franchise. It's something that can thatcan stay with you and teach you and
inspire you, something that you'll enjoylong after you've grown up. You know,
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Like I say, the show isalmost twenty years old and it still
has new fans cropping up, andthe original fans still love it, can
still go back to it and lookat it and say, hey, yeah,
this still holds up even today.So after so after m Night,
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Shamalan's movie completely bombed, you wouldwonder why anyone would bother trying to go
at the franchise again. But Netflixis nothing if not gutsy. They have
tackled adaptations of a lot of showsand a lot of movies, and a
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lot of literature itself. My podcaston Mike Flanagan I covered his Haunting series.
That's a fantastic adaptation of numerous worksof literature over time. So I
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had a little more faith perhaps thatNetflix would be able to get their version,
their live action version of Avatar TheLast Airbender right, And for myself,
I would say they mostly succeeded.They got the lore right, I'm
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gonna I'm gonna start with that.They included a lot of elements from supplemental
materials, those novels and comics thatI mentioned, a lot of details from
those come out in the in thestory itself. They they got the they
got the characters much closer. Imean, there were some some things that
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were changed about Sokka, but theywere changed in such a way that what
like in the show, in thein the animated show, he is a
bit of a misogynist at first,and he needs to get over that.
Netflix goes in a slightly different directionin Netflix is Live Action Avatar The Last
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Airbender. They they go with himbeing fundamentally insecure about his about his living
up to his father's expectations. AndI think that's a more relatable character arc
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for him, and he and Katarathey have their they have their sibling rivalry
and whatnot, and they have theirtheir moments where they're trying to respect each
other, but they're also trying toget the other to respect them. They
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have a pretty good arc with eachother in the first season, going through
their going through their differences and goingthrough the problems that they have with each
other, trying to resolve the problemsthat they have and overcome their own insecurities
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so that they can grow not justas siblings but as individuals as well.
Aang's relationship with the two of them, it's not explored too much, but
he does have plenty of his owncharacter growth and it matches up a lot
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with what Aang in the animated seriesdoes. So as far as the characters
go, I would say Netflix dida pretty good job of adapting that as
well. Now, as far asthe tone goes, it's definitely more mature.
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The animated series starts off with Aang, you know, waking up in
the in the Southern Water Tribe,and the first thing he asks of Katara
is will she go penguin sledding withhim? You know, it's a kid's
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show. There's plenty of kids stuffin it. This show starts off with
the Fire Nation attacking the Airbenders.We don't really get to see that in
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the animated series, but we dosee it in the live action series,
and it's along with a lot ofother violin it's very much a it's very
much a grown up version of theoriginal animated series. And like I say,
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the original animated series had plenty ofgrown up moments itself, but it's
a more mature version of that series, so it still matches the tone.
But it's like when you met someoneas a kid, and then you meet
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someone and then you meet them againas an adult, and you can still
see the kid inside of them.As far as I'm concerned, Avatar the
Last Airbender is probably the best adaptationthat I've seen in a long time.
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It gets the lore right, itgets the characters right, it gets the
tone right. It's right up therewith Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson's Lord
of the Rings movies as far asadapting a franchise, especially from one medium
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to another, you know, goingfrom an animated series to a live action
series. And that's really all Ihave to say about that right now.
There are a lot of other adaptations, of course, that I could talk
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about, but I think I've coveredthe important stuff and I'm running out of
time here, so I'm just gonnasay thank you. For listening, and
I'll talk to you more later
I'm Stephen Monteeth, and I'm hereto talk about adaptations. I'll mostly be
getting into movie adaptations and remakes,but there's more to adapting stories and whatnot
than that. I'll also be talkingabout TV shows, adapting a TV show
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from pre existing property, et cetera, et cetera. I have nothing against
a movie or a TV show adaptinga previous intellectual property. Frankly, some
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of the best movies and TV showshave been based on previous properties. We're
talking about The Godfather. It wasbased on a book. Godfather Part two
was a sequel. It wasn't originallyintended to be its own story. It
came about because Godfather one was sosuccessful. Wizard of Oz based on a
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book, and in fact, ithad already been a movie before the nineteen
thirty nine movie was even a thing. They were excited to show just how
good and how advanced movies had becomeand could become. So they decided to
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make The Wizard of Oz even thougha movie had already been made about it,
even though it was nothing like thebooks. Nobody cares about that at
this point. People just cared thatit was a really great movie, a
really good, great adaptation. I'mnot saying that people shouldn't care when a
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movie or a TV show adapts aprevious work and steps all over it.
I'll get into that too, don'tworry. I'm just saying that sometimes you
can create something great and something newand something original, even if it was
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based on something that came before.Let's talk about what what you need to
do if you're going to adapt something. First of all, you need to
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decide what to keep from it,and conversely, you need to decide what
to delete from it. And evenif and even with what you keep,
you need to decide what you're goingto change about what you keep, you
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also need to decide what you're goingto add to it. Let's be honest.
Even the best writers in the worldin history are not perfect. Sometimes
things just get left out. Sometimesthings need to be added in. Sometimes
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things are in there that shouldn't bein there. When you think about The
Lord of the Rings, the PeterJackson trilogy, it's one of the most
successful and thrilling adaptations from literature tothe big screen to movie, and it
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may a lot of changes to theoriginal Lord of the Rings. Now,
I'm a big fan of fantasy books, movies, television, cartoons, video
games. Fantasy is probably my favoritegenre of all time. I write fantasy
myself, and I shudder to thinkof what's going to happen to my stories
(04:21):
if somebody tries to adapt them someday. But the point is, when I
first tried to read The Lord ofthe Rings, I couldn't get through it.
Tolkien is an amazing writer. He'san amazing world builder. He's second
(04:46):
to none in that category as faras I'm concerned. But he's not very
good at writing stories. The Hobbitwas great. I mean, he wrote
that as a kid's stories. Maybethat had something to do with it.
But but when you actually read theThe Fellowship of the Ring and the Two
(05:08):
Towers and Return of the King,it's a slog to get through. Serious.
So obviously, when you're trying toadapt that into a movie, you
know you're gonna do a bit ofrewriting here and there. You're going to
(05:29):
tweak the dialogue a bit, You'regoing to move around certain certain passages.
Some people who just drone on andon and on and on for pages at
a time, it needs to bebroken up. I mean, it's not
a podcast, but anyway. UhSo, when Peter Jackson was adapting it,
(05:58):
obviously he had to he had tomess around with it a little bit.
Respectfully, you do need to respectthe source material. I can't stress
that enough. I'm a big trekye, you know. In addition to loving
fantasy, I love science fiction aswell. And when Star Trek was being
(06:24):
rebooted in two thousand and nine forthe big screen, JJ Abrams, the
director, he actually admitted that hewas not a fan of Star Trek.
And I'm not, you know,going to cast any aspersions on his talent
(06:45):
or anything like that. But he'sdefinitely better suited to making Star Wars than
he is to make in Star Trek. See, there are some things that
even though you have to change thesource material, sometimes there are some things
(07:06):
that you just cannot mess with.There are some things that you cannot change,
at least not drastically, when you'retalking about adapting a work. See,
(07:26):
fans will forgive a lot of thingswhen they're watching a movie. They
will forgive bad acting, they willforgive bad dialogue, they will forgive cliches
and a lot of other things.But there are certain things that fans,
(07:51):
even if they're not die hard fansare always going to be looking for in
an adaptation. First, They're goingto be looking for the characters. I've
always said on this podcast in otherposts that I've made that the characters are
(08:15):
the most important part of any story, and if a franchise becomes beloved,
it's because people love the characters somuch. There are some franchises, you
know, where other aspects of themare the most important part. But when
it comes to stories, when itcomes to enduring franchises, it's the characters
(08:41):
who make it so. And that'swhy anytime you adapt a story, you
have to get the characters right.They have to at least have a strong
resemblance to the characters who came before. I was back when I had my
(09:07):
my recommendation feature on my on mywebsite. I I watched HBO's version of
Perry Mason and it was and itwas basically an origin story for Perry Mason
and I and I only made itthrough the first season. I never came
(09:31):
back for for any more episodes afterthat because the Perry Mason in the show
just didn't resemble the Perry Mason I'dgrown up with the books. The TV
shows nothing I couldn't. I couldn'trecognize them at all. If you didn't
(09:52):
call him Perry Mason, I wouldnever have made the connection if you And
that's and that's the rule of thumb. That's the standard you have to measure
your adaptation by. If you wereto change the names of the characters in
(10:13):
the places, would people be ableto tell what you're adapting. The next
thing that you have to get rightis the lore the world built in the
background. Because when we're talking aboutfantasy and sci fi, obviously we are
(10:37):
we're dealing with world builders. Youknow, Geene Roddenberry Jr. R.
Tolkien. They built or at thevery least initiated worlds beyond almost anyone's imagination,
and that fascinates people. That's oneof the biggest draws for fans of
(11:05):
these of these genres, of thesetypes of stories, and getting the lore
right is important to them. I'llgive you an example of another Tolkien work
Amazon just last in twenty twenty two. Rather they they took a little bit
(11:39):
of they took more than a bitof liberties with the characters. But I
feel that where most Tolkien purists tookmost issue with was with the lore itself.
See Tolkien. When I say he'sa master world builder, I'm I'm
(12:01):
saying that he that he put thousandsof years of history and mythology and even
new languages into building Lord of theRings. And there were just there were
(12:22):
a lot of I don't want toget into how many different how many mistakes
that Rings of Power made when whengetting when trying to portray all this history
and all this mythology in Rings ofPower. If you're not if you're not
(12:50):
a fan of fantasy or sci fi, you may be wondering why this is
so important to people. You maybe you may have a little bit of
trouble holding on to it. Letme see if I can let me see
if I can make an analogy.Say you're a sports fan or a fan
(13:16):
of baseball specifically, or say thatyou're from New York or both. Let's
say that you are a sports fan, a baseball fan from New York.
And let's say that you've heard thatsomebody out there is going to make a
(13:37):
big budget movie or Amazon limited seriesabout the life of Babe Ruth. And
let's say that they've got great actorsand great writers, and everybody says that
they've put a lot of effort intothis, and that it's going to be
(13:58):
very faithful to Babe Ruth's life.And then, let's say, before it's
even released, you see a picturepromotional image of Babe Ruth and he's wearing
a New York Mets uniform. Now, for those of you who are not
(14:24):
from New York and and or arenot baseball fans, not only did Babe
Ruth play for the New York Yankees, but the New York Men were not
even a baseball team when Babe Ruthwas alive. Now, if you do
(14:45):
know that stuff, and you're andyou see something like this, you're probably
going to lose all faith in thein the adaptation at all. You're probably
going to lose all faith in themovie or series or whatever he it is.
And that's how fans of Tolkien feltabout Rings of Power. I mean,
(15:11):
how hard is it really to getpeople to fact check these things when
the story is being written. Now. I don't think that the show is
particularly bad myself. I think thatit's perhaps better than people give it credit
for being. But the writing andthe action and the special effects, like
(15:37):
I say, they're not as importantto fans as getting the characters right and
getting the lore right. Now,the third thing that you have to get
right is the tone. The toneof the story needs to match what came
(16:00):
before. This is probably this isprobably the hardest one. I mean,
you can fact check whether whether Galadrieland Gandalf were alive during a certain period
(16:22):
in Middle Earth's history, and youcan, and you can, and you
can match the characters on the screenup against the characters and the pages and
say, hey, do these twoseem right? But the overall tone of
(16:42):
the story is one that's going tocapture people, whether they whether they know
that much about the world building ornot, and whether they know that much
about the characters or not. Seepeople have this have a connection to these
(17:08):
stories based on how the stories makethem feel inside. And I'm not saying
that you can't take characters from anaction movie and have an action franchise and
have them go through a romance orcomedy or horror and vice versa. But
(17:34):
the tone and the message of thestories that these characters have been through is
what really speaks to the fans.It's what helps them connect with the characters
in the first place. It's whathelps them overlook things like bad special effects
(17:57):
or cheesy acting or terrible writing.The tone is what really resonates with people,
and one of my favorite examples ofthat when it comes to adaptations is
(18:17):
Zack Snyder's DC movies. Now,there are a lot of people who have
widely different opinions about the qualities ofhis movies, and a lot of them
have valid points too. Some say, well, this Superman is going through
(18:44):
different things than other Superman's have,and then there are people who say,
well, there were times when Supermanwas like that in the past, and
same thing with Batman, and samething with Wonder Woman and the other heroes
and other characters. You can argueall day, all night, all year.
(19:06):
We've been at it for over adecade now about whether Zack Snyder's DC
characters are a good fit for thecharacters that they are in the comics,
or the characters that they were inthe cartoons, or the characters that they
(19:27):
were in other live action movies.You can say, well, he's just
putting them in a different situation thanthey were before and seeing how they react
in this situation now, And youcan argue the merits of doing that as
(19:48):
much as you want. But whatyou can never argue with is how a
movie or a story makes a personfeel. This is the one thing that
whenever I see it online, Ican't you know, I can't think of
(20:11):
any kind of response to it.When somebody says that they see Zack Snyder's
Superman up there and they don't feelthe way they should when they're watching Superman,
I, you know, have nothingto say to that. I mean,
(20:36):
I appreciate what his Superman is likeand how his Superman makes me feel.
That's one of the reasons I amsuch a big fan of Zack Snyder
and his movies because I can Ican connect with the kind of story he's
trying to tell. But I can't. But I can understand that other people
(21:00):
just aren't able to connect with it. You know, I could give them
examples from comic books or cartoons ofSuperman that are just like this, what
Zack Snyder's Superman is like, butI would never be able to convince them,
(21:22):
And I shouldn't be able to convincethem that their own feelings while watching
the movie are not valid. Theirfeelings are absolutely valid. A movie,
a story should be able to makeyou feel, whether it's one way or
(21:45):
another. It should be able tomake you feel. And if you don't
appreciate how that story makes you feel, then then it's not for you.
And there's nothing else to say aboutthat. Trying to evoke the same feelings
(22:08):
when you're adapting a story is thehardest thing to do because there's no there's
no checklist, there's no line ofboxes that you can just check off and
say, hey, these all matchup. You know, we've got the
(22:33):
right feelings and everything. Tone,the tone of the story is just something
that you have to to organically createas you go along. It's not a
it's it's it's harder to describe thingsthan you might think. Sometimes the story
(22:59):
and the care there is just justtake you in a direction you weren't prepared
to go. I mean, thisis this is a phenomenon that any writer,
any storyteller can tell you about.Sometimes you just sometimes the story just
drags you along with it and you'releft chronicling it. You're left, you
(23:22):
know, trying to trying to explainwhat happened when the story is basically just
telling itself. So you can't alwayscontrol the tone. And because of that,
if somebody else comes along, it'sjust as difficult for them to replicate
(23:48):
that tone. You know, It'snot like it's not like having two different
piano play both playing the same tune. It's trying to create a new song
(24:10):
that sounds like the original but isstill itself original. And this is where,
and this is where the most recentadaptation I think that we're going to
(24:32):
talk about in this podcast is anexample of all three things that I just
said. It's an example of somethingwhere you need to get the characters right,
you need to get the lore right, and the world building and everything
else, and you need to getthe tone of it right, because those
(24:55):
are the three things that fans ofa franchise care about the most. And
the example I'm going to give you, the example I'm going to use for
this is Netflix's live adaptation of theAvatar The Last Airbender. Now, I'm
(25:22):
gonna give you some background for thosewho are listening and may not know about
it. You've got you've got firstof all. Back in two thousand and
five, you had Nickelodeon its animatedseries Avatar The Last Airbender, a show
(25:45):
about a world where the four elementsearth, firewater, air. You had
different races that could each control oneor more of the element. They were
called benders. You had earth benders, and you had water benders, and
(26:07):
you had airbenders, and you hadthe fire benders. And then you had
the Avatar. And the Avatar wasthe one person who could master all four
elements, he or she whatever there. In every generation, a new Avatar
(26:33):
would be born and they would beable to balance the elements, they would
be able to keep them in harmony, and the nations of the world lived
in peace because of that because theAvatar was there. But then, but
(26:56):
then one Avatar comes along. Hisname is and he's a young Airbender.
And while he's still a kid,while he's still learning how to airbend,
the firebenders the Fire Nation, theydecide that they're going to wipe out all
(27:21):
the Airbenders. They don't know whothe Avatar is yet, they but they
want to to eliminate the Avatar fromthe world, so they just wipe out
all the Airbenders, hoping that theyget the Avatar so that they can so
that they can then conquer the entireworld. Now, Aang, he isn't
(27:45):
killed. I'm not spoiling too muchhere. This is all first couple of
episodes stuff, So if you stillwant to watch it, it's not going
to be it's not going to betoo spoiled for you. But but Aang
disappears and he's sort of magically Thisis honestly the weirdest part of this franchise
(28:11):
for me. He is sort ofmagically trapped in an iceberg for one hundred
years and in anyway, and whilehe's trapped in there, the Fire Nation
they haven't completely conquered the world,but they've definitely done a lot of damage.
(28:32):
And then the series starts off.The animated series starts off with these
two these two siblings brother and asister from a water tribe who discover Aang
and free him. And he's justa kid, like I said, and
(28:57):
they're kids too, they're all liketwelve to sixteen or something like that.
And they and they try and explainto him what's been going on in the
world, and he's obviously very upsetand very distraught about it. And he's
got one hundred years of catching upto do, not only in learning the
(29:22):
other elements and trying to to understandwhat's been happening in the world since he's
been trapped and coming to grips withall of that, but also in trying
to determine how exactly he's going tostop the Fire Nation. It lasted for
(29:47):
three seasons. The first season it'smostly water bending related stuff. The third
season is mostly Whenang is learning aboutearth bending. You know, new characters
get introduced here and there, someof them minor, some of them very
major. And the third season isabout him learning to fire bend and going
(30:11):
up against the fire Lord and hisforces. Now, this was a very,
very successful series. It was onlythree seasons long, like I said,
but it was It told a verycontained story Aang coming coming out of
(30:42):
the iceberg, learning the other elementsand facing off against the Fire Nation along
the way. And it got severalspin offs. It got an animated sequel
series about the next avatar in linecalled The Legend of Cora Korra is the
(31:07):
next Avatar after Aang. It gotsome It got some comic books and some
novels, I believe, and ithad a lot of a lot of lore
built into the past avatars and evensome future avatars, I believe. And
(31:29):
then in twenty ten, m NightShyamalan released a He released a live action
movie. Then theoretically, like Isaid, theoretically, there's nothing wrong with
(31:51):
adapting a TV series into a movie, or adapting a cartoon into live action.
And like I said, this movie, the problems with it weren't so
much problems of writing. Even thoughthe writing was bad. It wasn't so
(32:14):
much that they compressed the entire firstseason of Avatar into one movie. They
were planning to do a trilogy ofmovies. I believe it was one movie
per season. It wasn't so muchthe compressed storytelling. It wasn't so much
(32:37):
that sometimes the visual effects were greatand sometimes they were really bad. I
think, like I said, fanscould have gotten over all of that.
But the movie violated all three ofthe things that I said, mess with
(33:01):
It messed with the characters. Theyeven changed how the characters' names were pronounced
for the movie. Aang They startedpronouncing him on they he's called the Avatar.
They say it like Avatar throughout theentire, uh the entire animated series.
(33:24):
In the movie, they start sayingAvatar for some reason. I don't
know. All the characters, mostof them at least had there had the
pronunciations for their names changed. Infor reasons passing understanding, but they also
changed the how the characters themselves wereportrayed. Now, first of all,
(33:51):
the two siblings that Ang meets inthe animated series are called well the Soaka.
He's the he's the older one,he's the brother. And Katara and
she's the younger one. She's anascent water bender herself, and she's the
(34:16):
one who helps Saying learn water bending. Now, Sokka is is is the
comic relief character. He's not aclown, he's not a buffoon, but
he's definitely funny. You know,you need some lightheartedness, especially in an
(34:39):
animated show that's primarily geared towards kids. And Katara she's a very motherly character
in the show, talks a lotabout hope, gives a lot of stirring
speeches about it and whatnot. Andof course, as a I said,
(35:00):
she's a teacher. She teaches Sayingand and none of that comes up in
the movie at all. I mean, you'd barely have anything that that,
even that even ties the siblings togetheras siblings, you barely have any kind
(35:27):
of real relationship between them, letalone between the two of them. And
On and Soka as they call himin the movie, is not funny at
all. You know, he getsa little bit of uh, he gets
a little bit of slapstick humor.I say a little bit. You'd have
(35:50):
to think hard to realize that it'ssupposed to be slapstick. But and Katara,
I can't remember anything in Spotiring thatshe did in the movie at all.
Of course, I haven't seen themovie in over a dozen years,
so maybe I've just forgotten it.It's a pretty forgettable movie overall. But
(36:13):
the thing that makes it reviled amongstAvatar the Last Airbender fans. Like I
said, it messes up the characters. And I haven't even gotten into the
fire Nation characters themselves. I don'thave a lot of time for it,
so I'm just gonna say that italso messed with the war. A lot
(36:39):
of a lot of world building goesinto a story like this, as you
could probably imagine. They messed thatup in the movie too. And the
tone of it. I'm not evensure what tone they were going for in
the movie, but whatever they weregoing for, they certainly didn't reach the
(37:04):
tone of the show. The showwas hopeful, and even though it's aimed
at kids. It doesn't talk downto them. It's something that I mean,
it's not like Door the Explorer oranything like that. It's a show
that would appeal to adults as muchas it appeals to kids. And that
(37:27):
is part of its longevity. That'swhat contributes to it being such a beloved
franchise. It's something that can thatcan stay with you and teach you and
inspire you, something that you'll enjoylong after you've grown up. You know,
(37:50):
Like I say, the show isalmost twenty years old and it still
has new fans cropping up, andthe original fans still love it, can
still go back to it and lookat it and say, hey, yeah,
this still holds up even today.So after so after m Night,
(38:16):
Shamalan's movie completely bombed, you wouldwonder why anyone would bother trying to go
at the franchise again. But Netflixis nothing if not gutsy. They have
tackled adaptations of a lot of showsand a lot of movies, and a
(38:40):
lot of literature itself. My podcaston Mike Flanagan I covered his Haunting series.
That's a fantastic adaptation of numerous worksof literature over time. So I
(39:01):
had a little more faith perhaps thatNetflix would be able to get their version,
their live action version of Avatar TheLast Airbender right, And for myself,
I would say they mostly succeeded.They got the lore right, I'm
(39:22):
gonna I'm gonna start with that.They included a lot of elements from supplemental
materials, those novels and comics thatI mentioned, a lot of details from
those come out in the in thestory itself. They they got the they
got the characters much closer. Imean, there were some some things that
(39:45):
were changed about Sokka, but theywere changed in such a way that what
like in the show, in thein the animated show, he is a
bit of a misogynist at first,and he needs to get over that.
Netflix goes in a slightly different directionin Netflix is Live Action Avatar The Last
(40:08):
Airbender. They they go with himbeing fundamentally insecure about his about his living
up to his father's expectations. AndI think that's a more relatable character arc
(40:30):
for him, and he and Katarathey have their they have their sibling rivalry
and whatnot, and they have theirtheir moments where they're trying to respect each
other, but they're also trying toget the other to respect them. They
(40:53):
have a pretty good arc with eachother in the first season, going through
their going through their differences and goingthrough the problems that they have with each
other, trying to resolve the problemsthat they have and overcome their own insecurities
(41:22):
so that they can grow not justas siblings but as individuals as well.
Aang's relationship with the two of them, it's not explored too much, but
he does have plenty of his owncharacter growth and it matches up a lot
(41:45):
with what Aang in the animated seriesdoes. So as far as the characters
go, I would say Netflix dida pretty good job of adapting that as
well. Now, as far asthe tone goes, it's definitely more mature.
(42:08):
The animated series starts off with Aang, you know, waking up in
the in the Southern Water Tribe,and the first thing he asks of Katara
is will she go penguin sledding withhim? You know, it's a kid's
(42:30):
show. There's plenty of kids stuffin it. This show starts off with
the Fire Nation attacking the Airbenders.We don't really get to see that in
(42:52):
the animated series, but we dosee it in the live action series,
and it's along with a lot ofother violin it's very much a it's very
much a grown up version of theoriginal animated series. And like I say,
(43:13):
the original animated series had plenty ofgrown up moments itself, but it's
a more mature version of that series, so it still matches the tone.
But it's like when you met someoneas a kid, and then you meet
(43:37):
someone and then you meet them againas an adult, and you can still
see the kid inside of them.As far as I'm concerned, Avatar the
Last Airbender is probably the best adaptationthat I've seen in a long time.
(44:00):
It gets the lore right, itgets the characters right, it gets the
tone right. It's right up therewith Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson's Lord
of the Rings movies as far asadapting a franchise, especially from one medium
(44:21):
to another, you know, goingfrom an animated series to a live action
series. And that's really all Ihave to say about that right now.
There are a lot of other adaptations, of course, that I could talk
(44:43):
about, but I think I've coveredthe important stuff and I'm running out of
time here, so I'm just gonnasay thank you. For listening, and
I'll talk to you more later
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