Agents of Shield - Season 4

Right, the LAND OF THE GIANTS guy.

 

That one's apparently called Count Dracula. I wasn't trying to list every adaptation (we'd be here all night), just ones that were titled simply Dracula.

Apparently that's known as Dracula in the US, Bram Stoker's Dracula in the UK (and on Wikipedia, which is why I missed it), and Dan Curtis' Dracula [sic] on the home video edition. The Coppola version is also called Bram Stoker's Dracula, interestingly.

 

Well, sure, if you care about the source material (and artistic integrity), seeing egregious liberties taken with the source material is not going to inspire confidence.

And that's the key thing. Quality is what ultimately matters. But the fact is, for every Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, there's a million nuTreks. And TV's The Incredible Hulk would have been just as good if they had not used the names "Banner," "Hulk," and "gamma ray."

Bingo. The inspiration for much writing-- including my own-- is the thought "I can do better than that"-- or maybe just "Not bad, but here's how I'd do it." The Arts, at least in terms of culture, can ultimately be seen as a conversation, but that doesn't mean you should be recycling other people's ideas.

 

Fantastic Four, I'ma lookin at you.

 

^^ Oh, man, yeah, you could see that train wreck coming from a mile away.

 

I'm probably in the minority, but I'm of the opinion that Fantastic Four just isn't well suited to a movie adaptation. A TV show type format seems much more suited. I mean it's basically a family sitcom that happens to feature trans-dimensional adventures and dictators with curious fashion sense, no?

I recall back when the latest movie was released (apparently it sucked? I never saw it) and people were wondering if they could be integrated into the MCU like Spider-Man.
The way I'd do it is to frame the whole thing as an in-universe reality TV show. You know that if powered/gifted people existed in our world, it'd only be a matter of time before someone went there and I think there's great potential for satire here.

Is there even a "definitive" version of the Arthur one can be faithful to? From what I recall, even the medieval source material disagrees with itself. Ironically I think in today's terms one might even describe Monmouth's work as a "reimagining" since it was based mostly on old Welsh folk tales, albeit with massive liberties, alterations, invention and heavily romanticised.

Mind you one could make a similar argument for Clark Kent. I mean which version is "the" version to which all others must be faithful? The 'Action Comics #1' version? Late Golden Age? Silver Age? Post crisis? The National radio series? The George Reeves TV show? The Chris Reeves movie? Fleischer? Timm & Dini?

I think there's a world of difference between adapting something that has previously had only one incarnation and something that has continually evolved over decades, even centuries. The latter is far more nebulous a concept to "adapt". More typically it's a lenses through which one can view the time in which the story was retold.

 

I don't think you can really say that it can't work for a movie (The Incredibles is still one of the best superhero movies around), but there may be something to be said for the argument that it doesn't work very well for a big-budget, flashy adaptation that's trying to take itself so seriously. It needs a good balance between big and small to keep that family dynamic front and center, and huge Hollywood blockbusters aren't currently inclined to allow that sort of thing.

 

"Can't work" is not the same thing as "isn't well suited". You can do it, but it's not the best fit. Sure, 'The Incredibles' is a great superhero movie but it has a very specific tone and setting. If we're talking about adapting if for the MCU that simply won't work.
This is sort of why I suggested a reality TV show as the conceit as it allows a certain degree of levity and playfulness while still credibly existing within this world. Think 'EDtv' with superpowers.

 

Just as good, no doubt but would a Jekyll and Hyde mashed together with The Fugitive been enough to make my 16 year old self to bug the parents to let me have control of the TV for an hour on Friday night?

 

I don't think it can't be done well as a movie, I just think all the movies so far have focused on the wrong part of the story. The really interesting thing about the FF isn't their origin, it's what they become afterward -- a family of celebrity adventurers who are also a scientific think tank, the elder statespersons of the superhero community, and the diplomats between regular humanity and other, more exotic civilizations. For me, the most effective of the movies so far was Rise of the Silver Surfer, the only one that wasn't a rehash of their origin and that showed them doing essentially the sort of thing they do in the comics. So what I'd like to see is a movie that just skips over the origin quickly and focuses on the established, mature team. Maybe just have a scene where some villain is trying to sneak into the Baxter Building with a tour group and the FF's origin story is being told on a video loop in the background, something like that.

Right -- Arthurian lore is a compilation of several different sources of history and myth, even in its earliest forms before the French got involved. For instance, the guy who was (perhaps) the most likely historical basis for Arthur (who was Cornish) probably never met the historical basis for Merlin (who was from somewhere closer to Scotland).

Exactly. It's a meaningless question. This isn't a real entity, so there is no "true" version. It's an idea, and ideas get added to and reinterpreted as they pass through different minds. Superman isn't a person, but a tradition, and traditions evolve.

Sure, there's a difference, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with either approach. Having different options is good for creativity. Like, with something that's a single play, e.g. Romeo and Juliet, you'd generally want to keep the same plot and dialogue in any adaptation, because that's how plays work. But that doesn't mean you can't vary other things like the setting and the period, because that's also part of how plays can work -- so you can get something like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet set in the 1990s with warring crime families. And it doesn't mean you can't do a derivative work inspired by the play, like West Side Story. Or a sequel like the upcoming ABC TV series Still Star-Crossed from Shonda Rimes's production company. There are many ways to adapt and transform a work, and all of them are part of how creativity has always happened. Even Shakespeare's own Romeo and Juliet was a remake of a story that was already popular in the day; he based it on a narrative poem and a prose tale that were both English-language adaptations of an earlier Italian tragedy that was in turn largely inspired by the Greek myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet#Sources

 

One might argue that Shakespeare's oeuvre has a mythos all of it's own withing English speaking culture. So even though there absolutely is a specific text which all adaptations are measured against, it's stature and influence is such that there have been innumerable adaptations (especially in the last century or so) that have strayed far from the text to explore the subtext and the spirit of the work, beyond the words.

But that's Shakespeare. A titan of English literature. Adapting 'The Tempest' as a sci-fi adventure or 'Romeo and Juliet' as a disaster movie doesn't carry with it the same mindset as adapting a Neil Gaiman book, a comic strip from the 1940's or a video game starring Lara Croft. Everyone is familiar enough with faithful enough with to-the-letter Shakespeare adaptations (of which there are literally hundred being performed all over the world right now) that the only ones that stand out are the ones that re-interpret the material.

Each adaptation comes with it's own unique circumstances.

Nice in theory, but that movie was terrible. So boring, I fell asleep in the cinema and that's something I've only ever done like 3 times in my whole life.

Again though: the movie format is ill suited for something that is so fundamentally designed for serialised storytelling. At it's core, 'Fantastic Four' is a sitcom. A soap opera. It's not about any one adventure, it's about the family unit and how they interact.
They don't even have any particularly definitive stories in the comics akin to say 'The Dark Knight Returns', 'For the Man Who Has Everything' or 'Demon in a Bottle'. Sure, they're involved in a lot of other character's stories (like Silver Surfer) but those aren't *their* stories. With that in mind, a tv show is simply a better fit IMO.

 

And of course that's what Shakespeare himself did, rewriting pre-existing, often quite popular and well-known stories in new ways, and doing it so well that his revisionist versions became definitive.

I'd agree, except that movies these days -- especially comics-based movies -- are becoming increasingly serialized and television-like (and comics-like) themselves. Look at how the relationships among the Avengers have evolved over the past few years of MCU movies, how new movies have built on the foundations of earlier movies.

Storywise, yes. FX-wise, that's a tough proposition, though less so now than it would've been a decade ago.

 

I finally watched the mid-season finale.
I was pretty happy with how they tied up Robbie's story, and I'm glad they left things open enough that he could return if they want to bring him back. I was expecting a bit more of a fight between him and Eli, so I was a bit disappointed, but it wasn't enough to ruin things for me.
I did like that everybody got a moment to shine.
Mace's armor was pretty cool. I've been pretty happy with him so far, they've managed to make him antagonistic towards the team at times, without outright being a bad guy. He really does seem to have S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best interests at heart, even if he doesn't go about things the way the team does.
That was a hell of a twist at the end, and definitely leaves some interesting questions for the show's return.
I think the big one for me is AIDA's motiviation, and whether or not she's doing this on her own or for someone else.

 

The Incredibles is the best Marvel movie ever made and Megamind is the best DC movie ever made. The actual companies can't even capture that ambiance in their own books anymore, let alone their movies.

I don't know, we've never met. But that's really the point-- they licensed the name recognition to sell a completely different character. Undoubtedly wise from a business perspective, but I'm strictly talking about creativity. Would Star Wars have been better as a Flash Gordon adaptation as Lucas originally intended, or are we better off with a brand-new concept? Would Babylon 5 have been improved if it recycled Trek names and species and was billed as the Birth of the Federation? Would Lost have all come together if it were produced as a dark-and-gritty remake of Gilligan's Island? My opinion is that it's better to create something new-- inspired by what's come before-- rather than recycle something that somebody else has created.

 

Probably not as most versions have stuck him in a Medieval time frame rather than the 6th Century AD (the Dark Ages). For versions close with that time frame you've probably got Cornwell's Warlord Trilogy for books and for T.V the Legend Of King Arthur (a U.K series from the late 70s with Andrew Burt as Arthur).

 

Considering Marvel's treatment of Mike Petersen/Deathlok, I have my doubts.

 

Well, that's more to do with J. August Richards' schedule than anything else.

 

Poor Hank Pym, victim of an artist's error. He'll never live it down.