An update on updates

[trinityvixen]

Last Friday's poll results are pretty much what I expected.

It is hard to generalize about adaptations and updates, and yet? We all recognize the good from the bad when we see it. You know what I mean. You can look at something like Twelfth Night and go, "Okay, so the period costume has changed. It's still not going to be She's the Man." Well, I mean you would if you weren't my sister (let's just not even go there).

But why is that, even? She's the Man stars no worse a cast than, say, Clueless (back when Alicia Silverstone was just the chick from the Aerosmith videos). What makes a modern Shakespeare update so awful but a modern Austen update so palatable? Perhaps it's the problem of language in Shakespeare--without it, his plots seem awful thin, definitely bawdy, and often unpalatable to modern audiences (the production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that we saw really drove home how hatably unforgiveable Oberon's actions are to me, for instance). With the language, it's harder to move the story into a present time. If it's not comfortably clothed in clearly dated costumes, that language won't fly.

I like how y'all preference the people involved over authorial approval when it comes to adaptations, though. I actually really do. Because there are just always going to be some authors who pick fights and have major hate-ons for anyone who tries to adapt their "genius" (ahem, Alan Moore anyone?); whose works aren't even as good as what was made of them (Michael Crichton, I am looking at you, you global-warming-denying motherfucker); or who are stubborn and refuse to see any good in anything made of their work (I know a lot of shit has been made out of her stuff, but Ursula Leguin seems particularly fussy to me). I agree with you folks: the people doing the legwork on a thing are more important and integral to the success (or failure) of an adaptation than the original author.

Plus, it makes for great fun speculating WTF about certain casting choices, directing choices, settings etc. Like trying to figure out what the fuck Edward Norton is going to do as Bruce Banner. Buh-uh?

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The Miyazaki one wasn't that great either. Perhaps I am just giving her a harder time because she is a useless female.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Well she got really screwed over by Sci-Fi because they wound up owning the rights to the first three books for the next however many years, meaning that's the only adaptation of that work that will exist for a while. I can understand why it's upsetting.

Oh, and I would very much argue that plays make the best movie adaptations.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It depends on the play, just like anything else. Because plays often work with limitations not faced in cinema, yes, many make the transition to film fairly well. Then there are some that suffer for a lack of intimacy like you have when you go to the theater. Happens.