News Live-Action ‘Cowboy Bebop’ tv series in the works

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The Royale with Cheese joke in the hamburger restaurant menu makes me suspect Tarantino was an influence on the script and direction but there definitely seems to be a lot of Whedonish snark in there as well. However, I don't feel inclined at all to do a blow-by-blow comparison of the dialogue and scenes with examples from other writers to try to establish who had the greatest influence. I'd rather the writers did their own thing rather than try to look cool by referencing or imitating Pulp Fiction, Firefly, Buffy, whatever... Quite a few shots and some of the dialogue derived directly from the anime and that mostly worked. The Vicious and Julia storyline was bungled, especially in the last two episodes, but it wasn't terrible unless perhaps you were familiar with the anime version.

 

[Maurice]

Whedon is part of a style where characters are never without a quip and you can see the writer through the characters. The “problem” is that doesn’t work for everything, and yet it’s a style way too many shows strive for even when it’s inappropriate.

 

[JD]

Watched episode 3 this morning, and I was surprised how different the introduction of Ein was.

Spoiler: Episode details

I was a bit surprised by scene with naked people at the drug lab, since the show hadn't really had like that in the first couple episodes. It felt a bit random, like someone decided to throw some naked people in the scene just for the hell of it.
The stuff with Jet and the doll was hilarious, and the way it lead to them ending up with Ein was pretty good.

Does Jet having a daughter come from the anime? I don't remember a daughter being shown or talked about in the episodes I saw.

"Bad" is a judgment of quality. And you're making the wrong assumption about what the purpose of an adaptation is. The word "adapt" literally means to adjust or modify something to suit a new context or purpose. What makes something a good adaptation has nothing to do with how similar it is to the original. The original is not the goal you're aiming for -- it's the starting line, not the finish line. The goal you're aiming for is a worthwhile new version. You do a good job of adapting something if the adaptation itself is good.

But if you are adapting something, then it's usually a good idea to at least include something from the source material, which some "adaptations" have no even done. All I'm saying is, if you're going to call something an adaptation, then we should at least be able to see some real influence from the source material.
I just don't see the point of even calling something an adaptation if you are going to tell a different story, about different characters, in a different world, with a different style, and different themes, ect.

After all, the whole point of adapting something to a new medium is to expose it to a new audience. You want to make something that can be enjoyed by people who don't even know it's adapted from something else, or who can't tell one way or the other. You want it to satisfy people for whom it's their first exposure to the work, so that they're judging it purely on its own terms rather than constantly comparing it to something else. Ideally, even people who do know the original should be engaged enough that they just let themselves experience the work in the here and now, rather than distracting themselves with comparisons to something else.

Oh course, this all beyond obvious, but you also should put in something for the fans of the source material too.

Well movie to book would be difficult. You'd get the screenplay, and hope it's the one that was shot, then you write. It would be easier to do if you could see the movie, describe locations etc but the novel adaptation is usually concurrent so they have to guess or make it up. Then add content because a screenplay would make a very short book.

It's not all guess work, the scripts actually get pretty detailed at times, and from what I've heard the studios are usually willing to at least let the novelization writers seen concept art or pictures.

 

[Christopher]

Does Jet having a daughter come from the anime?

Nope. The closest he gets is in "Boogie Woogie Feng Shui" where he teams up with the teenage daughter of an old friend.

But if you are adapting something, then it's usually a good idea to at least include something from the source material, which some "adaptations" have no even done. All I'm saying is, if you're going to call something an adaptation, then we should at least be able to see some real influence from the source material.
I just don't see the point of even calling something an adaptation if you are going to tell a different story, about different characters, in a different world, with a different style, and different themes, ect.

Art should not be defined so narrowly. It's about innovation and experimentation, not building arbitrary fences around the imagination. There are countless different ways to do anything. "Adapt" literally means to change something, to alter and modify it into something new. It's contradictory to say that a word that literally means change somehow ceases to apply once it changes more than a certain arbitrary amount.

After all, any creative work has multiple different elements. The premise, the plots, the characters, the setting, the themes -- you don't have to adapt every one of them. Some of the most creative adaptations just take one part and change others. For instance, Sherlock, Elementary, and Japan's Miss Sherlock all take the characters and elements of the plots from Sherlock Holmes canon and put them into a different, modern setting. Forbidden Planet adapts the general plot and ideas of The Tempest with new characters and situations.

There are a couple of current CW remakes, Charmed and 4400, that adapt the general concepts and premises of the original shows, but with completely different characters and significantly different worldbuilding. In both cases, the results are quite interesting and effective; I daresay that the first and third seasons of the current Charmed are better than the original show. They're also both notable in that they've replaced the mostly white casts of the original shows with mostly nonwhite casts. Having new characters and reinvented situations lets them stand on their own; they're adapting the concepts, the scenarios, but the specifics are distinct so they don't have to be compared. I found it a surprising approach at first, but it's worked quite well.

Oh course, this all beyond obvious, but you also should put in something for the fans of the source material too.

But what does that mean? Just the superficial level of familiar names and images and story beats? Is that all that stories are about? Hell, no. Surely the things that make people fans of the source in the first place are deeper than that -- good stories, engaging characters, intriguing ideas, thrilling action, etc. The goal should not simply be to copy the surface forms of the thing they loved, but to create something with the same kind of quality that made them care about those surface forms in the first place. That, to me, is how you really give something to the fans -- by respecting their intelligence and taste, rather than just expecting them to perk up at familiar stimuli like lab rats.

It's not all guess work, the scripts actually get pretty detailed at times, and from what I've heard the studios are usually willing to at least let the novelization writers seen concept art or pictures.

Scripts are constantly rewritten during film production, and more changes are introduced in editing. Even if you base a novelization on a complete script, there's no guarantee the finished film will match it. (Like how the hardcover Star Trek Generations novel contained the original version of Kirk's death scene rather than the one that was added in reshoots after the first one tested poorly.)

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Scripts are constantly rewritten during film production, and more changes are introduced in editing. Even if you base a novelization on a complete script, there's no guarantee the finished film will match it. (Like how the hardcover Star Trek Generations novel contained the original version of Kirk's death scene rather than the one that was added in reshoots after the first one tested poorly.)

Ah... we've come full circle to something said upthread about adaptions...

Everything about movies and TV Is an act of adaptation. The director and actors and crew adapt the screenplay to work on camera, and the editors adapt the raw material of the footage into a narrative. Change is happening at every single step. What works in animation does not necessarily work in live action. What works in a novel does not necessarily work at all in a film and vice versa (see the bomb in The English Patient which in the novel is the A-bomb the characters react to as an existential problem whereas in the film there’s a small bomb that affects the them personally).

Not to defend the Bebop adaptation, which I do not think is well-scripted. But I see how it happens.

 

[Maurice]

Ah... we've come full circle to something said upthread about adaptions...

Funny how that was not acknowledged, eh?

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

During THE ORVILLE's second season they used a surprising NINE TO FIVE reference which inexplicably inspired a feminist alien to quote Dolly Parton during a political meeting. In a strange way, it worked for me. What say you, if you saw it?

That would've thrown me outta the episode.

 

[Commander Troi]

We watched episodes 2, 3, and 4.

Watched episode 3 this morning, and I was surprised how different the introduction of Ein was.

Spoiler: Episode details

I was a bit surprised by scene with naked people at the drug lab, since the show hadn't really had like that in the first couple episodes. It felt a bit random, like someone decided to throw some naked people in the scene just for the hell of it.
The stuff with Jet and the doll was hilarious, and the way it lead to them ending up with Ein was pretty good.

Regarding that scene:

Spoiler: Episode Spoiler

I figured they were naked so Vicious could keep them from trying to steal. And because he was too cheap to buy them proper equipment!

Yes, the doll! The dog! So perfect. I loved that we are SHOWN that Ein is smart because he figures out the passcode on his kennel! Also, nice worldbuilding that dogs are rare and expensive.

During THE ORVILLE's second season they used a surprising NINE TO FIVE reference which inexplicably inspired a feminist alien to quote Dolly Parton during a political meeting. In a strange way, it worked for me. What say you, if you saw it?

I saw it and it worked for me. Based on what we'd seen already of the Fed... er, I mean, Planetary Union, I just figured various Earth things had spread to other worlds (and vice versa).

 

[Mudd]

Whedon is part of a style where characters are never without a quip and you can see the writer through the characters. The “problem” is that doesn’t work for everything, and yet it’s a style way too many shows strive for even when it’s inappropriate.

The only problem I have with it is that not many writers are clever enough with dialogue or have the sharp senses of humor to make it entertaining. Whedon and his people always were.

That would've thrown me outta the episode.

Well, you'd have to see it to know for sure.

The style of The Orville remains enough of a romp that stuff like this delights me when it shows up in an episode. This is not Star Trek: Goddamn We Are Fucking Serious after all, and thank God for that.

The proposition that Barry Manilow will be held up as a musical genius in four centuries is a hoot and terribly entertaining. I suppose if it were an obscure composer of eighteenth century (royalty-free) chamber music I might be moved to genuflect at the show's Hopeful Utopian vibe.

 

[Maurice]

20th century references almost invariably knock me out of what little suspension of disbelief I've been able to muster, because, c'mon, how many people today are going to quote Annette Hanshaw? Who, you ask? Exactly, I reply.

 

[Christopher]

Naked or underwear-clad drug workers are a commonplace pop-culture trope, though opinions differ on how true to life it is. According to Quora, it's an urban myth that filmmakers run with for titillation purposes, but according to SciFi Stack Exchange, or whatever it's called, there's some truth to it:

There are three main reasons;

• Cocaine and heroin are very expensive. No pockets = less theft
• Ether is a common substance used in drug manufactury. Given its flammability your choices are to either provide costly fireproof clothes or make your staff work in their (easily extinguished) skin
• Most illegals drugs have a distinctive smell. If your workers aren't wearing their clothes, they can make it past sniffer dogs more easily.

From a movie perspective, it's also a way of getting scantily clad women (who are invariably aged between 18-30, slim and attractive) past the censors.

20th century references almost invariably knock me out of what little suspension of disbelief I've been able to muster, because, c'mon, how many people now are going to quote Annette Hanshaw? Who, you ask? Exactly, I reply.

But people quote Shakespeare, Dickens, Dumas, etc.

 

[Mudd]

20th century references almost invariably knock me out of what little suspension of disbelief I've been able to muster, because, c'mon, how many people today are going to quote Annette Hanshaw? Who, you ask? Exactly, I reply.

Never bothers me, I suppose because the first show of this kind I took seriously, the original Star Trek, so often sought to ground itself historically in events from "way back in the 20th century."

Obviously this kind of thing is based not on portraying future people authentically - no one does that - but on what references the writers assume the audience will get.

 

[JD]

Art should not be defined so narrowly. It's about innovation and experimentation, not building arbitrary fences around the imagination. There are countless different ways to do anything. "Adapt" literally means to change something, to alter and modify it into something new. It's contradictory to say that a word that literally means change somehow ceases to apply once it changes more than a certain arbitrary amount.

Yes, adapt means to change something, but generally if something is an adaptation, it still contains elements of what came before. To go to nature, when fish adapted feet to move around on land, they still looked like fish with feet, they didn't just instantly transform into dogs, cats, or horses. I'm talking about saying you found a new breed of fish, but then when it shows up it's a 20 hh Percheron.

After all, any creative work has multiple different elements. The premise, the plots, the characters, the setting, the themes -- you don't have to adapt every one of them. Some of the most creative adaptations just take one part and change others. For instance, Sherlock, Elementary, and Japan's Miss Sherlock all take the characters and elements of the plots from Sherlock Holmes canon and put them into a different, modern setting. Forbidden Planet adapts the general plot and ideas of The Tempest with new characters and situations.

Yes, and all of those adaptations still included enough elements of the original Sherlock Holmes and The Tempest, that a person can watch them, and point out where specific things were influenced by the original. I'm talking about when they call something an adaptation, but then don't even do that much.

There are a couple of current CW remakes, Charmed and 4400, that adapt the general concepts and premises of the original shows, but with completely different characters and significantly different worldbuilding. In both cases, the results are quite interesting and effective; I daresay that the first and third seasons of the current Charmed are better than the original show. They're also both notable in that they've replaced the mostly white casts of the original shows with mostly nonwhite casts. Having new characters and reinvented situations lets them stand on their own; they're adapting the concepts, the scenarios, but the specifics are distinct so they don't have to be compared. I found it a surprising approach at first, but it's worked quite well.

Yes, but the new Charmed is still about 3 sister witches in contemporary America, and the new The 4400 is still about 4400 people traveling through time from the past to the present.

But what does that mean? Just the superficial level of familiar names and images and story beats? Is that all that stories are about? Hell, no. Surely the things that make people fans of the source in the first place are deeper than that -- good stories, engaging characters, intriguing ideas, thrilling action, etc. The goal should not simply be to copy the surface forms of the thing they loved, but to create something with the same kind of quality that made them care about those surface forms in the first place. That, to me, is how you really give something to the fans -- by respecting their intelligence and taste, rather than just expecting them to perk up at familiar stimuli like lab rats.

So you would be OK with something saying it's a new version of Lord of the Rings, but then it follows a cop in modern day New York going after drug dealers or something, with absolutely no fantasy elements whatsoever?

Scripts are constantly rewritten during film production, and more changes are introduced in editing. Even if you base a novelization on a complete script, there's no guarantee the finished film will match it. (Like how the hardcover Star Trek Generations novel contained the original version of Kirk's death scene rather than the one that was added in reshoots after the first one tested poorly.)

OK, that's true.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, and all of those adaptations still included enough elements of the original Sherlock Holmes and The Tempest, that a person can watch them, and point out where specific things were influenced by the original. I'm talking about when they call something an adaptation, but then don't even do that much.

Like what? If you can't offer specific examples, that's just a straw man. Also, I find that when people say they don't see the similarities in an adaptation, it just means they're defining their terms too narrowly.

Yes, but the new Charmed is still about 3 sister witches in contemporary America, and the new The 4400 is still about 4400 people traveling through time from the past to the present.

Yes, exactly. They don't have to copy every element in order to be an adaptation. Just taking one key element is enough.

So you would be OK with something saying it's a new version of Lord of the Rings, but then it follows a cop in modern day New York going after drug dealers or something, with absolutely no fantasy elements whatsoever?

Ever see the Coen Brothers' movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? It's a loose adaptation of Homer's Odyssey set in Depression-era Mississippi with no (overt) supernatural elements. It was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

You know what the difference is between creative people and everyone else? The creative people are the ones who put their effort and imagination into figuring out how things can be done, instead of wasting it on excuses for why they shouldn't be tried.

 

[valkyrie013]

Yes yes, you don't want a direct adaptation.. You've nuked the site from orbit.. Multiple times.. The horse is dead.. It's bones radioactive debris..

You know what the difference is between creative people and everyone else? The creative people are the ones who put their effort and imagination into figuring out how things can be done, instead of wasting it on excuses for why they shouldn't be tried.

That's just.. Blah..
Everybody has some imagination.. And most put forth effort, go look at the fan art and fan writing they may suck at times, but there trying and most give uplifting critiques,.

 

[Maurice]

Never bothers me, I suppose because the first show of this kind I took seriously, the original Star Trek, so often sought to ground itself historically in events from "way back in the 20th century."

Obviously this kind of thing is based not on portraying future people authentically - no one does that - but on what references the writers assume the audience will get.

YMMV.

 

[JD]

Like what? If you can't offer specific examples, that's just a straw man. Also, I find that when people say they don't see the similarities in an adaptation, it just means they're defining their terms too narrowly.

I did, in my first post, the Beastmaster movie and TV series.

Yes, exactly. They don't have to copy every element in order to be an adaptation. Just taking one key element is enough.

I'd say it takes a bit more than that.

Ever see the Coen Brothers' movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? It's a loose adaptation of Homer's Odyssey set in Depression-era Mississippi with no (overt) supernatural elements. It was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

Yes, and it still had quite a few clear elements taken from The Odyssey.

You know what the difference is between creative people and everyone else? The creative people are the ones who put their effort and imagination into figuring out how things can be done, instead of wasting it on excuses for why they shouldn't be tried.

Yes, and people are free to use their creativity to make changes to the source material, but they should also recognize that people are going to want to be able to recognize the source material in the adaptation.[/QUOTE]

 

[Maurice]

Ever see the Coen Brothers' movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? It's a loose adaptation of Homer's Odyssey set in Depression-era Mississippi with no (overt) supernatural elements. It was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

The point of which is what? A loose adaptation can win an award?

You know what the difference is between creative people and everyone else? The creative people are the ones who put their effort and imagination into figuring out how things can be done, instead of wasting it on excuses for why they shouldn't be tried.

TruCreative™

 

[Mudd]

You know what the difference is between creative people and everyone else? .

Offhand?

Maybe that "creative" people don't waste energy sorting human beings into nonexistent categories?

 

[DigificWriter]

@JD How many people do you think would recognize 10 Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew), She's the Man (Twelfth Night), Renaissance Man (Hamlet), O (Othello), China Girl (Romeo and Juliet), My Own Private Idaho (Henry IV), or Forbidden Planet (The Tempest) as being adaptations of Shakespearean plays?

Whether or not those works are recognizable as the adaptations they are has nothing to do with the fact that they are adaptations, nor does it say anything about their quality as works of filmic media in their own right.