Two of the Easiest Cases I Could Make
May. 3rd, 2016 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastRemaking World War Z and Jen and the Holograms. Just freaking respect the source material.
I could easily throw the Percy Jackson series into this, but there's just less detail to go into, there. If you've read the book, you know how the story should go, because that's how the story went.
Really, in general, this shouldn't be a difficult concept. If a fandom loves a story, there's a freaking reason. More detail below the cut.
I wasn't a fanboy of Jem and the Holograms, but I did watch a few episodes before school... okay, perhaps later than I should have been watching what was a children's cartoon. (Note: I do so enjoy that cartoons for kids are more adult-friendly these days. Thank you, Gargoyles and Avatar and Adventure Time and I'm going to give Steven Universe a try.) But, a few things should be essential to a Jem and the Holograms movie.
1. They're adults. Not teenagers, adults, with their own careers.
2. It's two bands, but also two basic methods of operating a recording company. Starlight Industries versus... whoever it was that signed on The Misfits. (And, with a name like Misfits, I kinda want to like them, more.)
3. The Misfits have to be included.
4. Action Rock Musical. Really, that was the genre. You had action, death-defying feats in order to save lives, set to glam-rock music.
5. Synergie has to be the talking, hologram-projecting computer, really.
And, I might consider setting it in the 80s, because that's a setting that it likely takes to get away with all of the above.
But, seriously, Action Rock Musical. How does somebody make a Jem and the Holograms movie and not take that route? It would have had people begging theaters to take their money... Moving right along.
This one really hurts, because I am a fanboy, here. World War Z.
Part of the reason that this one hurts is obvious. Everybody who's read World War Z knows exactly how this can be turned into a movie. And, from the first trailer, everybody knew that the movie did not take this most obvious route.
World War Z, the book, is framed as interviews, about a year after the finish of the titular World War Z, of people and their parts in the Oral History of the Zombie War. Through these many stories, mostly with people who have never met giving their own tales, we see the whole world's story of how the Zombie Apocalypse started, how it got so bad, how we came to the brink as a species, and how we survived and retook the world. Those last two parts are important.
For the movie, it's easy. Just do a mockumentary. Even label the scenes people are talking about as "recreation" in the bottom of the screen, like a documentary.
Someone, for some reason likely to do with somebody who'd never read the book, decided this all needed to be an action piece with a singular protagonist. I sincerely hope that person has been fired.
The second reason that hurts is because of those last two parts to the story that I mentioned. Thanks to the framing device, you can go into World War Z, ostensibly a horror book that can get quite scary, firm in the knowledge that the people doing the talking survived. Whatever hell they're going to describe, they got through it.
The fast zombies are merely an annoyance. But, the moment we saw that Brad Pitt was the singular protagonist, we knew we were going to have an In Name Only adaptation.
Two online reviewers that I enjoy are The Dom* who does a series called "Lost in Adaptation" and Krimson Rogue** who does a series called "The Book Was Better". Both compare books to their movie adaptations. Both would be wasting their time with this movie.
Like I said, these were easy. It's just a matter of respecting the source material and acknowledging that their respective fandoms liked that source material for a freaking reason. Not exactly rocket surgery.
* https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPtiXdv7RoU8IkrJeNY73qw
** https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSqyKubmwPrg3ZayK8KE-kA
I could easily throw the Percy Jackson series into this, but there's just less detail to go into, there. If you've read the book, you know how the story should go, because that's how the story went.
Really, in general, this shouldn't be a difficult concept. If a fandom loves a story, there's a freaking reason. More detail below the cut.
I wasn't a fanboy of Jem and the Holograms, but I did watch a few episodes before school... okay, perhaps later than I should have been watching what was a children's cartoon. (Note: I do so enjoy that cartoons for kids are more adult-friendly these days. Thank you, Gargoyles and Avatar and Adventure Time and I'm going to give Steven Universe a try.) But, a few things should be essential to a Jem and the Holograms movie.
1. They're adults. Not teenagers, adults, with their own careers.
2. It's two bands, but also two basic methods of operating a recording company. Starlight Industries versus... whoever it was that signed on The Misfits. (And, with a name like Misfits, I kinda want to like them, more.)
3. The Misfits have to be included.
4. Action Rock Musical. Really, that was the genre. You had action, death-defying feats in order to save lives, set to glam-rock music.
5. Synergie has to be the talking, hologram-projecting computer, really.
And, I might consider setting it in the 80s, because that's a setting that it likely takes to get away with all of the above.
But, seriously, Action Rock Musical. How does somebody make a Jem and the Holograms movie and not take that route? It would have had people begging theaters to take their money... Moving right along.
This one really hurts, because I am a fanboy, here. World War Z.
Part of the reason that this one hurts is obvious. Everybody who's read World War Z knows exactly how this can be turned into a movie. And, from the first trailer, everybody knew that the movie did not take this most obvious route.
World War Z, the book, is framed as interviews, about a year after the finish of the titular World War Z, of people and their parts in the Oral History of the Zombie War. Through these many stories, mostly with people who have never met giving their own tales, we see the whole world's story of how the Zombie Apocalypse started, how it got so bad, how we came to the brink as a species, and how we survived and retook the world. Those last two parts are important.
For the movie, it's easy. Just do a mockumentary. Even label the scenes people are talking about as "recreation" in the bottom of the screen, like a documentary.
Someone, for some reason likely to do with somebody who'd never read the book, decided this all needed to be an action piece with a singular protagonist. I sincerely hope that person has been fired.
The second reason that hurts is because of those last two parts to the story that I mentioned. Thanks to the framing device, you can go into World War Z, ostensibly a horror book that can get quite scary, firm in the knowledge that the people doing the talking survived. Whatever hell they're going to describe, they got through it.
The fast zombies are merely an annoyance. But, the moment we saw that Brad Pitt was the singular protagonist, we knew we were going to have an In Name Only adaptation.
Two online reviewers that I enjoy are The Dom* who does a series called "Lost in Adaptation" and Krimson Rogue** who does a series called "The Book Was Better". Both compare books to their movie adaptations. Both would be wasting their time with this movie.
Like I said, these were easy. It's just a matter of respecting the source material and acknowledging that their respective fandoms liked that source material for a freaking reason. Not exactly rocket surgery.
* https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPtiXdv7RoU8IkrJeNY73qw
** https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSqyKubmwPrg3ZayK8KE-kA
Seed of Bismuth
Date: 2017-08-24 01:07 am (UTC)Re: Seed of Bismuth
Date: 2017-08-24 01:16 am (UTC)But, yeah... "why, Disney, why?"
In a rare move, I walked out on the movie right about when Hades showed up in a campfire as being of fire with horns.
It was as bad an adaptation as The Last Airbender.