Last week, I wrote about adaptations and how faithfulness is
second to quality. Since then, I’ve been thinking about my stance more and
more. Which is good; part of the reason I write about these things is to
reflect on my opinions and see if they hold up.
And in reflection, I feel like I might draw the line
somewhere. I mean, it would be one thing to change the origin of a character to
better fit in different take on an adapted universe. For Christopher Nolan’s
Batman films; the more fantastic elements of Batman are gone (a super-drug that grants
strength? Or a hole in
the ground that resurrects people?). Or, see last
week’s Iron Man example; gone is the traditional Mandarin, with ten magic
space rings that don’t particularly fit in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe
(not even getting into the unfortunate racial implications of the character,
since he started as something of a stereotype).
But we have to draw the line somewhere, right? It might be
unlikely, but let’s pose a hypothetical: since I’m a Spider-Man fan, let’s say
Sony decides to scrap the Amazing movies and move in a totally
new direction. Gone is the awkward-yet-well-meaning teen inventor Peter Parker;
in his place is a violent gun-wielding 30-year-old vigilante defecting from a
gang known as “The Spiders” who intends to clean up their crime ring.
Now, let’s ignore how bad that idea sounds (to be fair, that
took me all of two minutes to come up with) and pretend that it becomes an
actually good movie. Like I said, it’s always important to make a good movie
first and an adaptation second. I stand by that; if you’re going to go through
the trouble of creating anything, you
might as well make it something good.