Adaptation

... So there I was, beer in one hand, penis in the other, having to confront the awful reality that neither of them were mine.

• 13. I love cereal. Not in a physical/sexual way, but cereal is one of my favourite things. Breakfast? I'll have some cereal thanks. What's for lunch? Nothing planned, no prob, I'll just have some cereal. Dinner, screw it, I'm too lazy to make stuff, I'll have some cereal. It is a wonder food. There's nothing else you can have for all three meals of the day, in a single day. Unless you've got ALOT of leftover frozen pizza.

I think the above is my new favourite NSS.

Something I've touched on before is the propensity hollywood has towards remakes and adaptations of old intellectual properties. Charlies Angels was popular enough to warrent a sequel, they've invested nearly 200 million in the Transformers follow up, X-men and Spiderman were both made into a trilogy, and they're making a Night Rider movie.

I've already covered why hollywood does it, and lamented the lack of risk taking involved (even No Country for Old Men, a movie I absolutely loved, was adapted from a book), but now I'm going to try and discuss what changes need to be made to allow for adaptations.

A rather poor trend in movie adaptations from previous attempts is the current wave towards literal interpretation. In Spiderman 3 they gave Sandman the EXACT same costume to what he wears in the comics, even down to the T-shirt. In X-men 3 they didn't show any fighting scenes with Colossus because they couldn't get him to look 7 feet tall while in metal form. Speed Racer looked like someone with the ability to alter reality took acid and watched the old cartoons.

This is a true pity, since while it can be controversial among some people to deviate from the original material, doing so is what made alot of the original movies good. The Green Goblin in Spiderman 1 was brilliant precisely because he wasn't a nutter in a green warty bodysuit with purple rags on. If the Transformers in that movie were brightly coloured blocky things with size shifting abilities, the movie would be ridiculous.

Instead they feel the need to ape their inspiration as closely as possible.

... You know, I had a whole post ready to go on this subject, but suddenly I'm feeling really quite unwell. Just pretend you've been dazzled by my incredible oratory(/typatory?) capacities and feel wowed.