Legal situation concerning the new TV series
- Thread starter Jinn
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That doesn't quite fit in with "Records of that period are fragmentary" though, does it? But apparently Spock or the Enterprise computers were able to find a photo of Khan Noonien Singh without too much trouble. Marla must have had some photo reference for that painting, too. But I suppose it's possible that she was copying some other painting of Khan. Working from other paintings is not unheard of, especially if you're trying to learn from the masters.
Malachi Throne was born on December 1, 1928, so he was still shy of 40 when "The Menagerie" was shot. He's barely two years older than Shatner (Born March 22, 1931).Or, to a guy as old as Mendez, everybody from their twenties to their forties was "about the same age."
To be fair, the guys had skimpy gold outfits too. And Khan didn't bring out the jumpsuits until he revived his crew.
Has anything ever fit with that line, though? I can't think of any time that anyone in Trek has ever had actual difficulty at finding information on something from the late 20th or early 21st century.
My theory was that they didn't have that much information on that time until Kirk started the trend of traveling to the late 20th century. At least Voyager could have got some information from Future's End.
I mean, you can hate it all you want for making different creative decisions than Baum.
But the simple fact is that the 1939 MGM adaptation of The Wizard of Oz is in every measurable sense the most successful version of the Wizard of Oz story. It is a film that almost every single American child has watched for almost 80 years. It has penetrated American culture on a scale and with a level of intensity that Baum's books can scarcely match. It is a fundamental part of modern American culture in a way the Baum books are not, because they are simply not experienced by the overwhelming majority of Americans growing up. The MGM film is a version of the story that still successfully connects with millions upon millions of people every year; the Baum books are read by a tiny fraction of Americans.
The simple fact of the matter is that while the MGM version is not the original version of the story, it is the definitive version of the story. It is the version of the story that matters on a cultural level in a way the originals do not. The Baum books are beloved by Baum devotees, but on a macro level, they have virtually been forgotten. The MGM version lives in the hearts of millions. It has supplanted the Baum stories for the overwhelming majority of the population.
A similar process is at work in, say, the 1964 version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Sure, it's an adaptation of the song and the original 1939 children's book, but let's be frank here -- the 1964 special is the definitive version. Because it is the one that people love and remember in far, far greater numbers and which has had more cultural impact.
And if we look at the history of art, this sort of thing is fairly common. Le Morte d'Arthur was not the first version of the Arthurian legend, but it is by any meaningful sense the definitive version, because it has had the greatest cultural impact over the centuries. Shakespeare's Hamlet was not the original version of the Hamlet story, but it is the definitive version because its impact has far outlasted other versions of the story.
This is just how art works: It evolves. New versions of old stories come along, and those new versions sometimes end up being far more beloved and have far greater cultural impact than the original versions. Such is life.
"Reboots" are just the modern incarnation of this process in our corporatized, copyrighted cultural playground.
Yeah, well, Captain Kirk's communicator doesn't lose reception if a cell tower goes down or if he gets in an elevator.
The fact that you, and so many people, believe this assertion about a movie (especially one that is quite frankly a hatchet job on the story) is PRECISELY MY OBJECTION TO THE MGM MOVIE!
I cannot for one second believe that without that movie, Baum's OZ books would languish in any worse obscurity than they already languish in because of that movie (which never would have been made, were not the books already perennially popular).
Think about something that's a bit closer to our time: Tolkien's LotR. It was wildly and perennially popular, and has not gone out of print since it was first published; that's why Rankin and Bass did a made-for-TV version of The Hobbit; that's why Ralph Bakshi did his animated version of the first half of LotR (that was so gruesome, so crudely rotoscoped, and so univerally panned that he thankfully didn't to the rest of the story). Until the Peter Jackson film version (which I still haven't bothered to see), it stayed in print (in editions for every budget, ranging from unillustrated MMPBs to deluxe slipcase editions with color plates), and kept tie-in authors like Robert ("The Complete Guide to Middle Earth") Foster and Karen Wynn ("The Atlas of Middle Earth") Fonstad busy, to boot. Thankfully, Bakshi's vision of LotR has been relegated to the status of being little more than a footnote.
Or think of Harry Potter. People were lining up at the bookstores for the latest installment long before the first movie was made.
I think by definitive, he means what most people think of when you say "Wizard of Oz". And I don't think he's wrong. Ruby slippers will win almost every time.
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And not enough people read Homer in the original Greek anymore! 
Seriously, more people know Bond from the movies these days than from the original Fleming novels. And I'm sure the world is full of SHERLOCK fans who have never read the Conan Doyle stories. And JAWS the movie is arguably more of a classic than the Peter Benchley novel.
Such is the way of things. I confess it bugs me that Robert Bloch tends to get overlooked where Norman Bates is concerned, but I'll concede that the Hitchcock movie long ago eclipsed the novel in the popular imagination. It happens.
Seriously, more people know Bond from the movies these days than from the original Fleming novels. And I'm sure the world is full of SHERLOCK fans who have never read the Conan Doyle stories. And JAWS the movie is arguably more of a classic than the Peter Benchley novel.
Such is the way of things. I confess it bugs me that Robert Bloch tends to get overlooked where Norman Bates is concerned, but I'll concede that the Hitchcock movie long ago eclipsed the novel in the popular imagination. It happens.
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I did like the way a few years ago they released some of the Conan Doyle stories with cover photos from the Sherlock series. Steven Moffat said they wouldn't do novelizations of their episodes but would rather do this so people would be encouraged to read the original stories and not their versions. They did write some forwards to the reprints though.
I mean, I don't know how you untangle which is the correlation and which is the causation. But it's not like the overwhelming majority of late-19th/early-20th Century popular literature, especially children's literature, lives on in anything other than relative obscurity. Sure, kids still read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass or Little Women, but that's a goddamn miracle; how many people still read The Adventures of Pinocchio or The Story of Doctor Dolittle? Does anybody still read The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes?
Personally, I'd wager that having a film that has fundamentally inserted itself into American culture on a level that very few stories of any type ever achieve -- seriously, how many films or books are experienced by so many children for eight decades that it achieves the level of near-universal experience? -- would probably make the Baum books less obscure than they would otherwise be. I mean, would anybody really remember "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816) if not for the Tchaikovsky ballet?
That is not a remotely fair comparison, because the Lord of the Rings film trilogy is not yet 15 years old -- so in no way can you compare the success of the film trilogy vs. the Tolkien books to the success of the MGM Wizard of Oz film to the Baum books. 14 years of popularity is not comparable to being an established film classic experienced by almost every American child for 77 years. The level of cultural penetration is just not remotely comparable. Talk to me in 2078 and we'll see how the Jackson films are doing.
Also not a comparable situation, because the films were being released simultaneously with the books for six years. In many ways, the HP films were an extension of the HP experience -- it was a multimedia franchise in the way the Baum books certainly never were. And that's setting aside that, once again, the oldest film in that series is only 15 years old.
Yep. By any meaningful standard, the MGM film is the definitive version of The Wizard of Oz; the 1978 Superman is the definitive version of Superman (Christopher Reeve not only eclipsed George Reeves's six years on Adventures of Superman, but continues to eclipse Brandon Routh, Tom Welling, Dean Cain, and Henry Cavill); the Walt Disney Pinocchio film is the definitive version of the Pinocchio story, far eclipsing the Coloddi children's novel; and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker is the definitive version of the Nutcracker story, far eclipsing the 1816 story.
Yep. Or another example: Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (c. 1592) is hardly the first version of the Faust story, but it is for most English-speakers the definitive version which continues to eclipse both its predecessors and its successors.
Those damn Elizabethan playwrights, rebooting old stories that become more beloved than their source materials rather than making their own stuff!
And not enough people read Homer in the original Greek anymore!
Seriously, more people know Bond from the movies these days than from the original Fleming novels. And I'm sure the world is full of SHERLOCK fans who have never read the Conan Doyle stories. And JAWS the movie is arguably more of a classic than the Peter Benchley novel.
Such is the way of things. I confess it bugs me that Robert Bloch tends to get overlooked where Norman Bates is concerned, but I'll concede that the Hitchcock movie long ago eclipsed the novel in the popular imagination. It happens.
It's awful hard to compete with Anthony Perkins's Kubrick stare.
And I would argue that the 1968 film version of PLANET OF THE APES long ago eclipsed the Pierre Boulle novel, and that the entire APES franchise owes more to that first movie (co-written by Rod Serling) than the original novel.
Which is not to say that Boulle does not deserve full credit for conceiving of the "Monkey Planet" notion in the first place, but it's undeniable that the movie version has had more impact on the general public, and you can't condemn the movie for being better-known than the book, anymore than you can blame the Judy Garland movie for eclipsing the original Oz novels in the popular imagination.
That's just the way it goes sometimes.
Which is not to say that Boulle does not deserve full credit for conceiving of the "Monkey Planet" notion in the first place, but it's undeniable that the movie version has had more impact on the general public, and you can't condemn the movie for being better-known than the book, anymore than you can blame the Judy Garland movie for eclipsing the original Oz novels in the popular imagination.
That's just the way it goes sometimes.
On the other hand, I confess to being slightly annoyed when the movie FORREST GUMP swept the Oscars a few years back and none of the winners thought to thank the guy who wrote the book . ...
"A few years back?"
The 67th Annual Academy Awards ceremony took place on 27 March 1995. A child born on that day is old enough to drink legally.
You think that's bad? Thanks to Hollywood accounting techniques,
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"A few years back?"
The 67th Annual Academy Awards ceremony took place on 27 March 1995. A child born on that day is old enough to drink legally.
I'm old enough to remember when Marlon Brando sent a faux Indian to refuse his Oscar. 1995 feels recent to me.
And I'm still bitter about the fact that "The Morning After" beat "Ben" for Best Song back in '72 . . . .
Pretty sure Sacheen Littlefeather is a real Indian.I'm old enough to remember when Marlon Brando sent a faux Indian to refuse his Oscar. 1995 feels recent to me.
And I'm still bitter about the fact that "The Morning After" beat "Ben" for Best Song back in '72 . . . .
Oops. My mistake. I thought I remembered that she later turned out to be a white actress dressed up as a Native America, but clearly my memory deceived me.
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