Greg Cox wrote:
I was addressing the "they're just doing this to cash on those other Holmes projects" argument--which doesn't strike me as a good enough reason to dismiss a show or movie sight unseen.
|
Oh, okay. I completely agree with that.
|
How far you can reinterpret classic characters and stories before you lose their essence is a whole other issue. I have a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards such things, but I understand that others are more protective of the original versions.
|
Aside from the issue of artistic integrity, my point is that once you re-imagine something to be totally different from the source material, then you've got something new.
Monk would not have been a better show if they called him Holmes;
Buffy would have looked ridiculous if she called herself Spider-Man;
Lost would not have been improved if it were named
Gilligan's Island.
|
(Heck, my first professional sale--to Amazing Stories decades ago--was a tongue-in-cheek mashup of Peter Pan and The Tempest, so I'm a big believer in messing with classic characters!)
|
Well, that's an homage or a pastiche. No problem there. As I've said before, there's no problem with
Forbidden Planet being inspired by
The Tempest-- but if they had called it
The Tempest and slavishly named the characters after Shakespeare's, it would lack the unique sparkle that it has.