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Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today
Speaker 3: is a joyous day for the small proportion of us
Speaker 3: who are both geeks and loves sports ball, specifically baseball
Speaker 3: and bat ball and all the rest of it. They
Speaker 3: see his opening day for the rest of the league
Speaker 3: that didn't start in Japan's So I am in my
Speaker 3: New York Mets best. But today we're here to talk
Speaker 3: about a topic that we've kind of been bouncing around
Speaker 3: thinking about but became kind of perfect for today, the
Speaker 3: ethics of remakes, reboots and adaptations. Now, if you're one
Speaker 3: of the loyal fans who's been tracking us on our
Speaker 3: Google calendar, which I strongly recommend you do, information about
Speaker 3: that is in the show notes, along with everything else
Speaker 3: about this podcast. You'll see we're trying to announce our
Speaker 3: upcoming podcasts as often as we can so that people
Speaker 3: can get ready for them. They can send in questions
Speaker 3: and thoughts and discussion, and so they can if they
Speaker 3: want to join us in our live broadcast every Thursday
Speaker 3: at noon twelve o'clock Central. That'll change sometimes, but that's
Speaker 3: the general time and today. The reason I mentioned all
Speaker 3: that is if you've been looking ahead, you would have
Speaker 3: seen that we had scheduled that today we'd be talking
Speaker 3: about the first half of the Daredevil TV show. We
Speaker 3: did an episode on episodes one and two. When I
Speaker 3: made the schedule, we were all pretty excited about it,
Speaker 3: me and especially Jessica Plumber, who's a freaking guest on
Speaker 3: this podcast and like me, a huge fan of the
Speaker 3: character of Daredevil. We thought we were gonna want to
Speaker 3: watch the whole season and be really excited to talk
Speaker 3: about the first half. Well, that kind of changed within
Speaker 3: about the first three minutes of the first episode of
Speaker 3: Daredevil Reborn. I won't rehash all of it here. I'm
Speaker 3: sure it'll come up a little bit, but as you
Speaker 3: heard if you listened to our podcast about it, Danielle
Speaker 3: and I really didn't like it. We particularly we thought
Speaker 3: it was a very unfaithful reboot and adaptation of both
Speaker 3: Daredevil character in general, but especially of the character that
Speaker 3: had been established in the Netflix MCU and so Rieky
Speaker 3: and I had kind of looked at each other and thought, well,
Speaker 3: we were a couple other episodes we were trying to schedule,
Speaker 3: but we couldn't line up any of them for this week,
Speaker 3: and thought, since we're not doing our normal topic because
Speaker 3: one of the co hosts is so doesn't like the
Speaker 3: way it's being adapted and remade, why don't we about
Speaker 3: remaking and adaptation. So that's kind of my pitch and
Speaker 3: where I'm coming from, though I promise you do have
Speaker 3: a lot of positive things to say as well. But Riki,
Speaker 3: for you, what makes this an interesting topic?
Speaker 5: Well, most of the franchises that I follow either rebooted
Speaker 5: or have continued in a way that is new. I'm
Speaker 5: thinking of Star Wars right, Like Star Wars is all
Speaker 5: in the same continuity, but for every generation, like a fandom,
Speaker 5: there's been kind of a new thing and it's gone
Speaker 5: in a different direction than the previous iterations of like
Speaker 5: the movies, and now we see the TV shows are
Speaker 5: starting to do different things. So I think like these
Speaker 5: franchises have become very much like entities in themselves that
Speaker 5: adapt with the times and change, and I always find
Speaker 5: that interesting, you know. I have a lot of interest
Speaker 5: also in the comic book industry, and that of course
Speaker 5: has been going on for much longer and has seen
Speaker 5: many more changes in characters that have existed almost for
Speaker 5: a century now at this point. In some cases, I
Speaker 5: think we're coming up on like Superman's hundredth right within.
Speaker 3: Or so fourteen years away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, like take a character, take a character like
Speaker 5: Superman and what he means to people, and to just
Speaker 5: examine like why he endures as a popular character, but
Speaker 5: also like how he has changed in many ways.
Speaker 3: We really like the way you framed it because I
Speaker 3: think you covered a number of the different things we're
Speaker 3: going to be talking about today, Because something like Daredevil
Speaker 3: is kind of a very obvious example of like a
Speaker 3: remake or a reboot where they are keeping the same
Speaker 3: characters and they're staying in the same visual medium, but
Speaker 3: they are in this case and they're sticking with a
Speaker 3: lot of the same actors. I don't think any actual
Speaker 3: characters have been recast, but they are kind of rebooting
Speaker 3: the canonicity, and of course they'll also kind of you know,
Speaker 3: so there's discussions about how accurate are there being both
Speaker 3: to the comic books but also to the earlier version
Speaker 3: of the show. But if you brought up like Star
Speaker 3: Wars shows, are's actually a lot of other kind of
Speaker 3: things that can happen. Because first of all, there is,
Speaker 3: as you said, kind of the over time and over generations.
Speaker 3: The world in the nineteen seventies is incredibly different than
Speaker 3: the world of the late nineteen nineties and then the
Speaker 3: world of the twenty tens. One of our three kind
Speaker 3: of major generations of films have come out. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, within Star Wars, you've also had the
Speaker 3: adaptation of characters from books come and in some ways
Speaker 3: full stories coming into live action. You've had like with
Speaker 3: the Ahsoka Tales of the Jedi, or of course the
Speaker 3: character of General Thran. You've had characters who start out
Speaker 3: in animation coming into live action, Ahsoka being the most
Speaker 3: obvious example, but Sagerera, a number of others. Thron starts
Speaker 3: in the books but then goes to animation before he
Speaker 3: comes to live action. And then you've had characters that
Speaker 3: have gone the other direction. You know, with the Clone Wars,
Speaker 3: you had a lot of characters who started in live action,
Speaker 3: then became animated characters, and now are back to being
Speaker 3: live action characters. And I think with all of these
Speaker 3: there's so many questions that comes up about, you know,
Speaker 3: how do we do adaptations, what does it mean to
Speaker 3: do an adaptation? All these kind of things, and we're gonna
Speaker 3: kind of bounce back and forth with a couple offent
Speaker 3: directions of approaching this, but let me kind of just
Speaker 3: start with the most general question for you, Riki, why
Speaker 3: do you think, well, actually, let mean back up even
Speaker 3: a little bit further before I get the kind of
Speaker 3: ethics of it. Why do you think we're getting so
Speaker 3: many remakes today and reboots? And does it feel like
Speaker 3: it's more than there has been in previous years?
Speaker 5: It feels like it. One of the stats I guess
Speaker 5: I heard from twenty twenty four in movies, like the
Speaker 5: top ten grossing movies in theaters were either reboots of
Speaker 5: things or sequels to existing movies. I don't know that
Speaker 5: that was like around November, and I don't know if
Speaker 5: it held up all the way through, but I think
Speaker 5: like Wicked was like just about to break into the
Speaker 5: top ten. And of course that is an adaptation of
Speaker 5: a novel slash stage play.
Speaker 3: Right, they're both themselves at you know, take ons of
Speaker 3: a franchise seventy years old that is literally one hundred
Speaker 3: years old.
Speaker 5: So I mean, you cannot ask a question like this
Speaker 5: without engaging with just the business side of it of movies,
Speaker 5: TV et cetera. And there's a safety in the business
Speaker 5: of making an adaptation of something that you know already
Speaker 5: has an established fan base, like the Wicked movie. Right,
Speaker 5: Like people went to see the play, people read the book,
Speaker 5: and like, oh, movies coming out. I know the story,
Speaker 5: but like now I'm excited to see it in theaters.
Speaker 5: It is like a thing. Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 5: happens with any of these franchises right that adapt something
Speaker 5: certainly like the young adult novel into movie trend brought
Speaker 5: a lot of fans and especially like those younger fans
Speaker 5: that read the novels into theaters.
Speaker 3: Right, if you grew up with something, A, you want
Speaker 3: to see it yourself, and B, especially if youre an adult,
Speaker 3: maybe this is how you introduce your kids to it.
Speaker 3: You really want to kind of you know, focus on that.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a lot of this that's kind
Speaker 3: of outside the purview of this podcast. In terms of
Speaker 3: the economics of it, I can't say I know all
Speaker 3: of it. I do know that we're in economic time
Speaker 3: with movies a lot because of the special effects budgets,
Speaker 3: but for many other reasons where yeah, it's harder to
Speaker 3: take a chance on something and people want much more
Speaker 3: safe bets. And I think there's a lot of conversation
Speaker 3: that we talked about about how that hurts movies in
Speaker 3: general and media in general. Although it means that there's
Speaker 3: a lot more possibility on TV, but even then, sometimes,
Speaker 3: you know, the budgets can be astronomical.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the thing is that I think when you
Speaker 5: say it's harder to take a chance on something, it's
Speaker 5: harder for a movie that costs two hundred million dollars,
Speaker 5: like let's just say as a ballpark to take a
Speaker 5: chance on something, right, Like a high budget action movie
Speaker 5: has to draw in a certain amount of people a
Speaker 5: certain amount of money. But I do like for me,
Speaker 5: like you know, I am a huge horror movie fan,
Speaker 5: and those movies have very small budgets, you know, relatively
Speaker 5: speaking for movies. Oh yeah, like somewhere between like ten
Speaker 5: to fifty million, right, it's a small budget. But those
Speaker 5: there's a lot of horror movies that take chances right
Speaker 5: with new things. You know, there are established franchises like Scream,
Speaker 5: Nightmare on Elm Street, that kind of thing, but a
Speaker 5: lot of my favorite horror movies within the past five
Speaker 5: years are just like new things and the studios and
Speaker 5: the filmmakers are just taking a chance on something and
Speaker 5: it's exciting, and there is this thing where, yeah, like
Speaker 5: some of them are probably gonna spa spawn new franchises,
Speaker 5: like Muthrigan for example, Like I know there's already a
Speaker 5: sequel being worked on.
Speaker 3: Right Well, So let's with that, let's kind of talk
Speaker 3: about some of the other reasons, because I think money
Speaker 3: is obviously a big one, but I do think there
Speaker 3: are other reasons why people make remakes and I just
Speaker 3: kind of put a couple of them together if you
Speaker 3: want to jump in a comment any of them or
Speaker 3: add others to the list. But I think one is
Speaker 3: because the desire to tell a story in a new medium.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of this time it's the
Speaker 3: let's take a novel or a you know, a comic
Speaker 3: book or something like that and put it on the
Speaker 3: big screen. A lot of times it's the let's take
Speaker 3: something animated and put it into live action. And that's
Speaker 3: a topic that you and I have, like, you know,
Speaker 3: some mixed feelings about We've discussed we needed to touch
Speaker 3: on again. There's the idea of bringing characters into an
Speaker 3: established EU, you know, And so with the MCU. This
Speaker 3: is the biggest one we have with we're kind of
Speaker 3: like remaking the X Men movies now so they can
Speaker 3: and the Fantastic Four because they've been to bring them
Speaker 3: into the MCU, although Fantastic Four will hit another reason
Speaker 3: on my list or with this new Daredevil show, it's
Speaker 3: to more explicitly bring it into the MCU. Animational live
Speaker 3: action in which we've talked about modernizing a story, I
Speaker 3: think is often kind of one of the reasons for it.
Speaker 3: And to some extent this is a purely financial thing
Speaker 3: of that there's a need to protect copyright. I think
Speaker 3: the most famous of these was the second in or
Speaker 3: of the Final Four Final Four the Fantastic Four characters
Speaker 3: known with Michael P. Jordan as uh, Johnny Speed, Johnny
Speaker 3: Rockett was his name, Johnny Storm, Johnny Storm, thank you.
Speaker 3: Where you know you have to protect a copyright by
Speaker 3: making something every twenty years or so, but also just
Speaker 3: sometimes you know, you know, my characters like Superman, like Batman,
Speaker 3: like the stories can be great, but sometimes you want
Speaker 3: to introduce them to an audience, partially to make money,
Speaker 3: but also sometimes to update the story in some ways.
Speaker 3: And then and then I think, uh, and then of
Speaker 3: course just you know, the money grab anything I missed
Speaker 3: on that list, you think, or any comments want to
Speaker 3: make on the things on that list.
Speaker 5: Sure, I think I always think of Spider Man as
Speaker 5: the we are just trying to hang on to VIP.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because we had the Toby Maguires and then Andrew
Speaker 5: Garfields and now we get like the Venom Slash Spider
Speaker 5: versus Villain boes that just come out every couple of years,
Speaker 5: and it's like, that's what they That's what Sony Studios
Speaker 5: needs to do in order to hold on to their license.
Speaker 3: As part of the right hold on to the the
Speaker 3: other characters as well. You know, that's why they'll do
Speaker 3: Venom and then have a lot of the other villains
Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: But yeah, like animation, I think is a very important
Speaker 5: one to me because I love anime. We all love,
Speaker 5: you know, like the Star Wars animated serieses like Rebels,
Speaker 5: and to see those characters come into live action there's
Speaker 5: something special about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The one piece anime, like Japanese anime to live action
Speaker 5: has a very mixed bag, mostly bad, right, But you know,
Speaker 5: we talked about the one piece live action in my
Speaker 5: opinion was probably the best anime to live action adaptation
Speaker 5: i've seen. Yeah, and the the fact that it was
Speaker 5: done well is just heartwarming and promising for other future projects,
Speaker 5: and I hope that they happen and that people like
Speaker 5: the people who are doing these things pay attention to
Speaker 5: why it succeeded. Yeah, and the love and care that
Speaker 5: the people involved had for the property and put into it.
Speaker 5: You talked a lot about the business and the money,
Speaker 5: but I do also believe that there are people who
Speaker 5: love these things and just like want to make them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think Star Wars a lot of the people now
Speaker 5: who are creating the Star Wars things we're watching are
Speaker 5: like us. They grew up on Star Wars and they're like,
Speaker 5: I now have this opportunity to add to this thing
Speaker 5: I love. Yeah, and true, why wouldn't you take that
Speaker 5: chance if you're like a writer or director?
Speaker 3: Right? I think that's true. I'm really glad you brought
Speaker 3: up the anime to TV one because I think that's
Speaker 3: one where I think there's actually another thing I'm should
Speaker 3: put on the list, which is expanding the audience because
Speaker 3: and this is again where I think it's kind of
Speaker 3: a mixed bag because as you and I have discussed,
Speaker 3: I think both of us think there can be a
Speaker 3: fantastic storytelling in animation anime specifically, but also just in
Speaker 3: other forms of animation. And sometimes I don't like the
Speaker 3: idea that it's not really a real story until it's
Speaker 3: become live action, and that's been a lot. I think
Speaker 3: we're probably not even gonna touch the whole debates over
Speaker 3: the Disney live action remakes, but I know that discussion
Speaker 3: comes up a lot there. But with anime, like there's
Speaker 3: two examples that come to me that really kind of
Speaker 3: do two different things. One is One Piece, which I
Speaker 3: think was very intentionally and very successfully. It did expand
Speaker 3: the audience for a lot of people. I didn't love
Speaker 3: it as much, but for me that I'd more do
Speaker 3: with the characters than anything else. But I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people who don't necessarily love animation really loved it,
Speaker 3: and of course the anime fans who really did loved it.
Speaker 3: But for me, Cowboy Bebop is one of my favorite stories,
Speaker 3: and I don't like the anime very much. I loved
Speaker 3: the live action, and now a whole bunch of fans
Speaker 3: are throwing a whole bunch of things that they're at
Speaker 3: their phones. Please don't do that. If you want to
Speaker 3: send me tomatoes, just send them to me. I'll turn
Speaker 3: them into an I sauce. But like, I loved it
Speaker 3: in part because I found and again, this is just
Speaker 3: the way my brain works. It's my own fault not
Speaker 3: critiquing the medium. But I found the medium of the
Speaker 3: original Cowboy Bebop really hard to understand, and the TV
Speaker 3: show totally clicked for me. And I do think like
Speaker 3: when there's a story like Cowboy Bebop that is very
Speaker 3: tied to anime but has a kind of universal story
Speaker 3: to be understood that I think is worth telling. I
Speaker 3: do like the idea that putting it into different formats
Speaker 3: in different genres, not different genres, but different mediums can
Speaker 3: help more people to find that story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I fully agree. Like that's the thing with the
Speaker 5: one piece live action is that I just want it
Speaker 5: in front of as many eyes as possible. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: in that case, like there's doubly the animation to live action,
Speaker 5: but also like the Japanese to English audience right, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's a very niche audience for anime still, even though
Speaker 5: it's become quite popular.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 5: I'm sure there's a lot of people who watched it
Speaker 5: on Netflix and maybe didn't even realize when they started
Speaker 5: watching it that it was adapted from an anime. And
Speaker 5: just like getting over that hump of resistance, I think.
Speaker 3: It's important and I think that it's important to understand,
Speaker 3: especially when animation is one but there's a number of
Speaker 3: other mediums in which people are telling great stories, and
Speaker 3: that medium isn't very accessible to lot to many people,
Speaker 3: or at least there's some people who for who find
Speaker 3: it more difficult. And you know, there's a ton of
Speaker 3: moralizing on the fact that as a society, people don't
Speaker 3: read as much as they used to in terms of
Speaker 3: actual books, and I'll leave that aside. So I think
Speaker 3: it's with positives and negatives there, but I think we
Speaker 3: can sometimes have this very like my point being, I
Speaker 3: don't want to make a judgment about why or why
Speaker 3: it is that why it is or isn't that people
Speaker 3: are finding it harder to read books a lot of
Speaker 3: the time, But the fact is a lot of people
Speaker 3: don't read as many books anymore. And when I look
Speaker 3: at a character like Admiral Throng, you know, especially with
Speaker 3: Star Wars, I think that there's a considerable level of like,
Speaker 3: you know, you're one level of fan if you just
Speaker 3: want to watch the movies and nothing judgment, but like
Speaker 3: it's more of an investment to then watch the TV shows.
Speaker 3: It's more of an investment to watch the animated shows.
Speaker 3: And then that last level of investment is reading the books,
Speaker 3: and maybe beyond that is like you know, video games
Speaker 3: and the encyclopedias and stuff. But like characters like General Throng,
Speaker 3: characters like some of the people from the High Republic
Speaker 3: who I have really loved. It can be dangerous and
Speaker 3: there's problems with it, and we'll discuss that. But I
Speaker 3: think to me, one of my favorite kind of adaptations
Speaker 3: is when you take something in a medium like that
Speaker 3: that is less accessible for whatever reason and bring it
Speaker 3: to a more accessible medium like TV or movies.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean like just comic books. Yeah, we
Speaker 5: talked about the MCU being this mega franchise, but prior
Speaker 5: to those first movies, comic book movies were seen as
Speaker 5: a joke. Yeah, and many were many were bad, and
Speaker 5: just like comic books in general, a lot of people
Speaker 5: did not consider them to be good storytelling or like
Speaker 5: they weren't for adults or what you know, whatever, the
Speaker 5: derogatory thing. But being a comic book fan, like in
Speaker 5: the eighties and nineties wasn't popular, right, Like, it wasn't
Speaker 5: a popular thing in the in the mainstream media, and
Speaker 5: so many of those stories are iconic. And now we
Speaker 5: are we are seeing like this this shift and people
Speaker 5: are trying to retell some of those stories in movies
Speaker 5: and TV. And sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't,
Speaker 5: and sometimes like they have to change because the story
Speaker 5: itself is like fifty years old. Like we start with
Speaker 5: the MCU. I know the incredible hook exists, but iron Man, right,
Speaker 5: is considered by a lot of people to bequote unquote
Speaker 5: the first MCU movie and the very the start of it.
Speaker 5: His origin story in the movie begins in Afghanistan, whereas
Speaker 5: in the comics it was the Vietnam War, right, And
Speaker 5: I remember the debates of people like, well, like they
Speaker 5: changed his backstory. It's like yo, but it's the year
Speaker 5: two thousand. Yeah, it can't be Vietnam anymore.
Speaker 3: Right. And that's totally an issue that I want us
Speaker 3: to get into when we talk about like how what
Speaker 3: works sure doesn't work with an adaptation because I think
Speaker 3: often one of the better things you can do is
Speaker 3: to kind of, you know, bring the story into the
Speaker 3: modern day in a way that we've seen a lot
Speaker 3: of stories do well and a lot of stories really
Speaker 3: struggle with. The last thing. I'll just say though on
Speaker 3: the kind of like kind of the last thing. I'll
Speaker 3: say though on this general idea of like shaping the
Speaker 3: terms what we're talking about, because I think this is
Speaker 3: more recent and until very recently has very much been
Speaker 3: a joke. But by the last couple of years we
Speaker 3: started to really see it work. Is the video games
Speaker 3: to TV movie type things? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Part of this is I think that just video games themselves,
Speaker 3: as the technology has gotten better, but also a generations
Speaker 3: who started on video games have grown up with them.
Speaker 3: You know, pac Man isn't telling a story. I have
Speaker 3: no idea why the ghosts are trying to chase pac
Speaker 3: Man and why he wants to eat those little pellets.
Speaker 3: I just knew that when I was eight years old
Speaker 3: it was fun. I don't think there was a story
Speaker 3: behind Tetris. There probably was somewhere, but I just knew
Speaker 3: it was fun, Russian music and moving the blocks around. Today,
Speaker 3: like you know, so many video games have these really
Speaker 3: in depth stories to them, and some of those are
Speaker 3: being made into you know, major motion pictures or TV shows,
Speaker 3: and you think of just comparing the the reaction that
Speaker 3: the World of Warcraft movie got when it came out,
Speaker 3: and granted I saw it in theaters, it was real bad.
Speaker 3: But compared to the Last of Us a show that
Speaker 3: was nominated for Emmy Awards and won one for Nick
Speaker 3: Offerman for a guest Actor in an episode and episode three,
Speaker 3: and a number of other video game movies have been
Speaker 3: very well received. Fallout was one. The Resident Evil movies are,
Speaker 3: I think, I don't think they've been OSCAR nominated, but
Speaker 3: they're definitely considered like some of the best of you know,
Speaker 3: just when you want like a fun zombie shoot them
Speaker 3: up movie, like Resident Evil movies are quite beloved by
Speaker 3: a lot of people. Rieky is shaking his head, and
Speaker 3: that's very fair.
Speaker 5: Okay, I love the Resident Evil game franchise. The movies
Speaker 5: are just so we're going to talk about this in
Speaker 5: more in depth, but they're they're not true to the
Speaker 5: video games.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 5: They are based on is how I would phrase it.
Speaker 3: Okay, that that one's fair. I've heard a lot of
Speaker 3: debate on those. Well, so let's start with that. What
Speaker 3: do we mean when we say that, Well, actually, even
Speaker 3: back of a bit, what do we think should happen? Like,
Speaker 3: what do we want from an adaptation, reboot, a remake?
Speaker 3: And because you mentioned this idea of being true to it,
Speaker 3: what does that mean?
Speaker 5: I mean to me? The reason I would say that
Speaker 5: Resident Evil movies are not true of the games is
Speaker 5: that the main character played by Mila Jovovic, Alice, just
Speaker 5: like doesn't exist in any of the games, Like it
Speaker 5: was made up for the movies. So like she's the
Speaker 5: focus of those movies and her entire backstory and storyline
Speaker 5: is just from the movies.
Speaker 3: Okay, So that's.
Speaker 5: That's where I'm like, this is an adaptation of the material,
Speaker 5: right like Umbrella Academy, Zombies, t Virus, et cetera. And
Speaker 5: there are some beats that match, like the Nuke King
Speaker 5: of Raccoon City, but it just it just like does
Speaker 5: its own thing, which is fine. Like I'm I'm I
Speaker 5: don't I think the movies are bad, like from a
Speaker 5: movie making perspective, but I think like the fact that
Speaker 5: they are different from the games shouldn't be the reason
Speaker 5: to be like, you know this, this shouldn't exist because
Speaker 5: they're different. They're they're different, and they exist. And I
Speaker 5: don't like what they've done with it, but I respect
Speaker 5: that a like they had this passion to do what
Speaker 5: six movies out of this, Like that is something. And
Speaker 5: what it did was also to continue the franchise and
Speaker 5: keep the name right like in the public eye. And
Speaker 5: I think at various points the game franchise itself may
Speaker 5: be kind of like interest in it flagged because there
Speaker 5: were a couple of stinkers in the middle, and the
Speaker 5: movies helped keep it alive in some sense, so like
Speaker 5: there's this synergy between them.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, so if that means not, maybe be the
Speaker 3: best example to get to my question. But then so
Speaker 3: I'll return to the question, what do you think is
Speaker 3: important when making a reboot or a remake or an adaptation.
Speaker 5: I mean, it depends on what you want to do,
Speaker 5: I guess is my answer, which is like a non answer,
Speaker 5: but it's okay, I don't know, like just love the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And even even if it is not to every fans liking,
Speaker 5: like the Resident Evil movies are not to my liking
Speaker 5: as a fan of the video games. I still acknowledge
Speaker 5: and appreciate the passion, and I think you have to
Speaker 5: you have to have the passion. Like it's it's hard
Speaker 5: for us as fans to tell, right, are you just
Speaker 5: making this because of the money?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: So I don't know that that's like a judgment call
Speaker 5: that each of us has to like decide, like what
Speaker 5: do we think is going on here?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah? I think for me, I think I do
Speaker 3: have a little more specific about it, but I do
Speaker 3: I do have a lot of I do think it's
Speaker 3: very contextual and even some of the kind of specific
Speaker 3: things I'm about to say, I think there's exceptions to
Speaker 3: but I do think what you said about having a
Speaker 3: love for it and a passion for it, and I
Speaker 3: think for me at least, it is important to be
Speaker 3: trying to honor the work that you're doing. And what
Speaker 3: I mean by that is and here I'll say, I
Speaker 3: think here's a market difference for me, And this is
Speaker 3: one of theggest questions that comes up, is I want
Speaker 3: it to be true to the spirit of the original work,
Speaker 3: and for me, what that is less about the look
Speaker 3: of something and more about the ideas behind it, you know.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna take Star Trek for example, because I
Speaker 3: think actually this is a important divide that comes up
Speaker 3: a lot. The original Star Trek series and the Next
Speaker 3: Generation series. Obviously, you have a huge fan base. I
Speaker 3: would count myself as one of them, and we're a
Speaker 3: lot of people are very invested in the look of
Speaker 3: those ships. And for the most part, every generation has
Speaker 3: had a like, you know, literally the next Generation, and
Speaker 3: so when you had a new generation of TV making,
Speaker 3: you were also telling a new generation of technology in
Speaker 3: the story, so that a story made in the eighties
Speaker 3: and early nineties, like the New Next Generation and its
Speaker 3: follow ups, they looked like they were more technologically advanced
Speaker 3: than the original Star Trek because the movie making TV
Speaker 3: making of the late eighties was a lot different than
Speaker 3: the late sixties. Then in this kind of third wave
Speaker 3: you've gotten that started with shows about you know, going
Speaker 3: back to the time of Captain Kirk and Spock and
Speaker 3: even a little bit before then, but they made a
Speaker 3: conscious decision to make them look much more technologically advanced,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people didn't like that. And I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that that's wrong by any means, but for me,
Speaker 3: at least, what I care about is that not that
Speaker 3: it looks the same, but that it feels the same,
Speaker 3: Because for me, an essential part of what Star Trek
Speaker 3: is about is the spirit of exploration, is the idea
Speaker 3: of infinite diversity and infant combinations. Is the idea that
Speaker 3: we often don't know things, and that our first understanding
Speaker 3: of something may well be wrong, and that we need
Speaker 3: to look deeper and passed our emotional responses to things,
Speaker 3: and that a lot of times negotiation and bridging miscommunications
Speaker 3: can solve conflicts a lot better than just warfare. And
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the TV shows really honor that.
Speaker 3: I think the jj Abrams movies absolutely do not, and
Speaker 3: J like, if you want a fun movie about light,
Speaker 3: you know, laser fights and people fighting with laser guns
Speaker 3: and ships fighting with phasers and torpedoes. The jj Abrams
Speaker 3: movies are fine, but they don't feel like Star Trek
Speaker 3: to me, And so I use that as kind of
Speaker 3: an open example of to me, there has to be
Speaker 3: some understanding of what's the message that's being portrayed by
Speaker 3: the show. What are the questions that it's asking, Even
Speaker 3: if you're not giving the right answers, or if there
Speaker 3: aren't right answers that to me is I think the
Speaker 3: first thing I look to is what's the heart of
Speaker 3: the characters, what's the heart of the series of whatever
Speaker 3: it is, and is that being honored. Yeah? I like that.
Speaker 5: Partly because, Yeah, the whole Star Trek thing is interesting
Speaker 5: because an nineteen sixties TV show, like the budget and
Speaker 5: the technology that they have, it's a very cheap show.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was expensive for the time, but like
Speaker 5: compared to now, especially like the lack of CGI like it,
Speaker 5: it looks cheap. It looks like a TV set, right
Speaker 5: that the crew of the sorry, the bridge of the
Speaker 5: Enterprise looks like a TV set, And that's fine for
Speaker 5: what it was. But I absolutely do not think that
Speaker 5: like a new adaptation of Star Trek should hold to
Speaker 5: that look because then it just looks like something from
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixties, and you want it to look like
Speaker 5: something from you know, two thousand, two hundred or whatever,
Speaker 5: twenty three hundreds. I do think though, it's interesting to
Speaker 5: compare that to Star Wars, which was late seventies, and
Speaker 5: it's it's very different because the storytelling and Star Wars
Speaker 5: takes place in a very narrow window, right of about
Speaker 5: fifty years let's say, like it's all within the lifetime
Speaker 5: of the Skywalkers, right, right, kind of two generations of Skywalkers.
Speaker 5: The movies at least and most most of the TV
Speaker 5: shows happen in that same window, and they have all
Speaker 5: intentionally stuck to the visual aesthetic of that first movie
Speaker 5: to the point where you get like a sound effect
Speaker 5: like from the targeting computer of a starfighter, right, like
Speaker 5: that little beeping sound. They reuse that, and we all
Speaker 5: recognize it, and like we cheer when we hear that sound.
Speaker 5: Of all things, I love every time a Gonkroid appears
Speaker 5: on my screen and it looks like the most plastic
Speaker 5: y trash can thing ever. But I think like that
Speaker 5: shows the magic of that original Star Wars movie, Like,
Speaker 5: even though some of it is of its time, yeah,
Speaker 5: it still looks very good.
Speaker 3: You know. We know now, we've always known, but just
Speaker 3: people didn't care as much that starships don't bank like
Speaker 3: they turn in much more direct ways. And we've had
Speaker 3: a lot more science fiction shows that acknowledge that. Battle
Speaker 3: Star Galactica is one of the best examples of this,
Speaker 3: so is Babylon Five. But they still bank in Star
Speaker 3: Wars because just it looks cool, and we all know
Speaker 3: it doesn't make any sense. I will say, though, there
Speaker 3: is one area in Star Wars where what you said
Speaker 3: is not true. I think it stands out because overwhelmingly
Speaker 3: what you said is correct. But it's interesting to me
Speaker 3: because it does spark a lot of debate about this,
Speaker 3: which is lightsaber fighting. They were no choreography, but yeah,
Speaker 3: the lightsaber choreography. If you compare Obi Wan Kenobi and
Speaker 3: Darth Vader, they're basically stationary. They're moving around a little
Speaker 3: bit and they're just swinging these two handed weapons. Neither
Speaker 3: of them are martial artists in the slightest. Now, compare
Speaker 3: those exact same they're twenty years younger. But those same
Speaker 3: characters in Rise of Skywalker or look at like the
Speaker 3: characters at any other point they're doing. There's like lightsaber fighting,
Speaker 3: it becomes a martial art I think at some point
Speaker 3: along the way, and also incorporates a lot of martial arts,
Speaker 3: or at least like you know, Parker or something like that.
Speaker 3: You know, there's just a lot more body movement and
Speaker 3: a lot faster movement of the lightsabers, and also they
Speaker 3: often become one handed weapons instead of two handed weapons,
Speaker 3: and there are people who complain about it, and I
Speaker 3: think you can kind of explain it, but but also
Speaker 3: just sort of accept that, like fight choreography is a
Speaker 3: lot easier to do on screen these days, and that's okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean you have to point to the casting
Speaker 5: of Ray Park in The Phantom Menace like an actual
Speaker 5: martial artist, and what he brought to the character of
Speaker 5: Darth Maul became the new blueprint for lightsaber fights, like
Speaker 5: it was cool at the time, and then you know,
Speaker 5: now everyone's doing flips and stuff and spinning the Yoda
Speaker 5: one perhaps is a little ridiculous.
Speaker 3: My comments about that and the able is involved on record,
Speaker 3: but we can move on.
Speaker 5: But I think that's a very good example of a
Speaker 5: franchise updating, not even to the times, right, Yeah, Like
Speaker 5: martial arts movies existed, like you know, Bruce Lee movies
Speaker 5: in the seventies, so you could have cast Bruce Lee
Speaker 5: as a Jedi and had him fighting in that in
Speaker 5: that way.
Speaker 3: But I I like it.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I don't know what to say other
Speaker 5: than yeah, stuff changes, styles changed, Like we as much
Speaker 5: as as fans were like this is this is real,
Speaker 5: Like this is real history. So it doesn't make sense
Speaker 5: that like X would happen, and then why would happen?
Speaker 5: And this changes. They're also just like movies that we
Speaker 5: like to have fun watching, and I would I would
Speaker 5: rather watch ray Park do his thing than just have
Speaker 5: like King Arthur versus the Black Knight type of sword.
Speaker 3: Fight, right yeah, and that and that makes no sense
Speaker 3: to me, And I think that that it's you know, again,
Speaker 3: you can kind of squee squint your eyes and find
Speaker 3: a way to explain it and canon. But also I
Speaker 3: just don't think you have to. And I want to
Speaker 3: be very clear that I'm not trying to disregard what
Speaker 3: matters to the people for whom, you know, the colors
Speaker 3: of the uniform or the style of fighting that like,
Speaker 3: you know, one example we've talked about before, and maybe
Speaker 3: this is a good good segue into it. For me,
Speaker 3: the height of Wolverine is utterly and completely unimportant to me.
Speaker 3: And one of that is because I don't have an
Speaker 3: investment in the originals, and so I'll say that, and
Speaker 3: so I'm able to enjoin the adaptations on their own.
Speaker 3: And I do think there's an important ethical question thereof that, well,
Speaker 3: there's nothing wrong with that, and I think I should.
Speaker 3: No one should ever feel bad for not knowing the
Speaker 3: source material. I do think that people who just know
Speaker 3: the newer version can sometimes be a little quick to
Speaker 3: denigrate the importance of the concerns of the people who
Speaker 3: do love the source material what I do think. But
Speaker 3: but you know, to me, even I believe, at least
Speaker 3: for myself, even if I had read a lot of
Speaker 3: source material, the height of Wolverine would be so far
Speaker 3: away from a thing that I would care about. But
Speaker 3: I know it's really important for you and for a
Speaker 3: lot of other fans.
Speaker 5: It is important. Wolverine needs to be a short king.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so here.
Speaker 5: That may be weird to people, but I would consider
Speaker 5: his height to be like an essential part of his character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fair, like top.
Speaker 5: Five, you know, like the healing and the clause being Canadian,
Speaker 5: like being short. And that's not just like, oh well,
Speaker 5: he's like always short, but it they use that in
Speaker 5: stories like the Fastball Special. Right, being thrown by Colossus
Speaker 5: is specifically a battle tactic they use because he's he's short.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, No, that makes all of sense to me,
Speaker 3: And and I think it kind of gets to what
Speaker 3: I was saying earlier. Is that I am a lot
Speaker 3: less interested. And again I don't want to be dismissive,
Speaker 3: but when someone's concerns are purely aesthetic, I tend to
Speaker 3: tune it out a little bit. But when it is
Speaker 3: something that is like it's not that he's short, it's
Speaker 3: that there is discrimination to get short people in our society,
Speaker 3: and it's something that he experiences and is a part
Speaker 3: of who he is that I have a lot more
Speaker 3: sympathy towards rather than just like, oh, the uniform is
Speaker 3: supposed to be this color or that color kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, like color was the thing I was
Speaker 5: thinking of. H I don't know, because like the nineties
Speaker 5: X Men movie did that whole thing with like, oh
Speaker 5: what like you you were expecting yellow spandex Yeah, like
Speaker 5: specifically called out the comics, which was weird, and of course,
Speaker 5: like X Men ninety seven just flip that on its
Speaker 5: head thirty years later and we all cheered. The comic
Speaker 5: book fans cheered.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I don't know. I think, to me, like aesthetics,
Speaker 5: colors like that is part of it, especially when you
Speaker 5: talk about visual mediums like comic books. As a visual medium,
Speaker 5: color is so important mkay, right, And then we can
Speaker 5: go to extreme examples like what if the MCU had
Speaker 5: decided that the Incredible Hulk, instead of being green, should
Speaker 5: be blue. That would just be like mind bogglingly weird, right,
Speaker 5: Like no one would accept that because being green is
Speaker 5: part of his character. Right Why I don't know, Like
Speaker 5: originally he was gray in the very first issue ever
Speaker 5: won and they changed it because I think of the
Speaker 5: ink issues or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, which is also kind of why the Luke
Speaker 3: Lightsaber changes from green to blue, is that in Return
Speaker 3: of the Jedi, it may have been from Fluda green.
Speaker 3: I think it's from green to blue green. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: because the blue really didn't show up against the desert
Speaker 3: in the job of the hot scenes. But no, okay,
Speaker 3: you're right, and I will take that back to some
Speaker 3: extent that may well, it doesn't matter to me. I
Speaker 3: probably should have more sympathy and understanding for those kind
Speaker 3: of concerns. And I always say, if I can just
Speaker 3: say further on that, the example you brought up is
Speaker 3: actually a perfect one because at the time I loved
Speaker 3: the line you know, what do you expect yellow spandex
Speaker 3: And that was a line that I would use in
Speaker 3: trying to convince my friends to go see this movie.
Speaker 3: And I realized because what it did was it was
Speaker 3: kind of giving me permission to say, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: this isn't a comic book movie. This is a real
Speaker 3: action movie. It just sort of based on the comics,
Speaker 3: and it was giving me and a lot of other
Speaker 3: people permission to sort of that it was okay to
Speaker 3: watch it, even though it was one of those icky,
Speaker 3: silly comic book movie things, and it worked. I'm looking
Speaker 3: back on it, it's pretty shitty to the origins of the thing,
Speaker 3: and I think that we're now in much more of
Speaker 3: an age where like reading comic books doesn't by definition
Speaker 3: to get you stuffed in the lockers anymore. In fact,
Speaker 3: a lot of people who read comic books stuff other
Speaker 3: people in the lockers, and that's not cool, and don't
Speaker 3: do that. But you know what I mean, Like thee
Speaker 3: I feel like we don't need that anymore. And you're right.
Speaker 3: I didn't cheer in the same way, but I felt
Speaker 3: a little called out by it, and in a good
Speaker 3: way by that by them going back to the ouspand
Speaker 3: X in X Men ninety seven, because yeah, it's an
Speaker 3: interesting example of where I think it's fine to have
Speaker 3: a little fun with the original and to sometimes be
Speaker 3: poking fun at it a little bit. I'll talk about
Speaker 3: another example of that in a minute, but I think
Speaker 3: that if you feel like I'm trying to remember, there
Speaker 3: was a viewer who used this as an example of
Speaker 3: something being really bad and I can't it was one
Speaker 3: of that I think the middle MCU movies. I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: but they said that it felt like the writers were
Speaker 3: embarrassed by the source material. Yeah, you have that, you have.
Speaker 3: You have to be proud of the source material, no
Speaker 3: matter how silly it may be. And otherwise why are
Speaker 3: you doing it?
Speaker 5: Like going back to the whole thing about passion and
Speaker 5: having a love for the property, right, right, I think
Speaker 5: when you when you look at the people involved in
Speaker 5: the making of the MCU, like you cannot get around
Speaker 5: the name Kevin Feige at this point, right, And if
Speaker 5: you look at his biography and his history, he loves
Speaker 5: comic books. Like he was on the he was like
Speaker 5: a production assistant in that first X Men movie, and
Speaker 5: the story goes that he was slipping issues of comics
Speaker 5: to the actors and being like, hey, like look at this,
Speaker 5: like this is what I kind of want your character
Speaker 5: to be like. And he was even at that point,
Speaker 5: like he was influencing things and trying to bring more
Speaker 5: of that comic book authenticity, and now that he's in charge,
Speaker 5: he's like bringing all that to the forefront, right. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And that's to me, that is like my primo example
Speaker 5: of like the passion and having a love for something
Speaker 5: and being able to bring that to a wider audience.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great way to describe it. And
Speaker 3: I think that, like again, that doesn't mean you have
Speaker 3: to take it one hundred percent serious. I think you
Speaker 3: can make fun of things, but there's a difference between
Speaker 3: being the outsider mocking something versus being the insider having
Speaker 3: fun with it. And I'm using this only these example.
Speaker 3: I don't think it really qualifies as a remake or reboot.
Speaker 3: It is very much a send up. But Galaxy Quest
Speaker 3: is making fun of Star Trek left right and center,
Speaker 3: and it's making fun of Star Trek fans left right
Speaker 3: and center. But it is clearly done with love and
Speaker 3: with reverence by people who love those things, And to me,
Speaker 3: that's so different than something like the Big Bang Theory
Speaker 3: or like some of the stuff we're talking about where
Speaker 3: it feels like it's embarrassed by the source material, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think that that like to me that the
Speaker 3: Galaxy Quest is kind of the outer limit of you
Speaker 3: can have fun and you can you can like you
Speaker 3: can laugh about the things that are silly about the
Speaker 3: thing you're remaking while still honoring it.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I was actually like thinking about this the other day,
Speaker 5: that it seems like we have lost that kind of
Speaker 5: parody movie. Spaceballs is another one, right, It's yeah, I
Speaker 5: feel like it's beloved by Star Wars fans, and I
Speaker 5: think Galaxy Quest also is beloved by Star Trek fans.
Speaker 5: I've heard people say like they consider it a Star
Speaker 5: Trek movie in a sense, So we don't really see
Speaker 5: like that kind of parody anymore, which is weird, Like,
Speaker 5: and the parody almost happens within the franchises themselves. Like
Speaker 5: I was thinking about how the whole like the Yellow
Speaker 5: Spandex thing. Nowadays, in Marvel movies, there's almost always a
Speaker 5: scene or a line where some some characters laugh and
Speaker 5: scoff at a name, right, like in Spider Man and
Speaker 5: No Way Home when Doctor Octopus shows up, or yeah,
Speaker 5: they're like, oh, your name is Octavius, like, and they're
Speaker 5: like all snicker, yeah, and like that name thing like
Speaker 5: just happens. It seems like in every movie, and it's
Speaker 5: the franchise saying like, look at these comic book names.
Speaker 5: They're ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we're still doing it, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well I don't love it. I'm just like, oh,
Speaker 5: okays their name, Like, deal with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I do like the Spider Man line, like when he
Speaker 5: meets doctor Strange, he says, oh, we're using our made
Speaker 5: up names. That was a good way of doing it.
Speaker 5: Just like laughing at someone's name because it like describes them.
Speaker 5: That is just the medium of comic books. That's what
Speaker 5: it's always been.
Speaker 3: Well. I also like when sometimes when it's not just
Speaker 3: poking fun at something, but it's acknowledging that a lot
Speaker 3: of these stories that we love have kind of problematic roots,
Speaker 3: sometimes sometimes a lot more than others. And for me,
Speaker 3: the example I want to use about this is Cage,
Speaker 3: and most a lot of people may not have seen
Speaker 3: the litut Cage TV show or even know the character.
Speaker 3: He's definitely kind of on the lesser known side, but
Speaker 3: he's part of the street level heroes that Daredevil and
Speaker 3: all them were part of and he had a great
Speaker 3: show starring Mike Coulter in the Netflix MCU, And the
Speaker 3: character is a creation of the black exploitation days of
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies, when it was a lot of white,
Speaker 3: white creators primarily creating black characters that were like, in
Speaker 3: some ways it was like, yeah, we don't have any
Speaker 3: black characters. This is a good thing, but a lot
Speaker 3: of them were also playing into a lot of white
Speaker 3: stereotypes about black people in the seventies and that has
Speaker 3: continued to today. And the show is written and made
Speaker 3: almost entirely by black crew in terms of like writing, directing,
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and really focused in that community,
Speaker 3: in that world. And you haven't seen the show, have you.
Speaker 5: No, I have not seen any of the Netflix marvels.
Speaker 3: So he starts out as power Man in the comic
Speaker 3: cap and it's kind of a ridiculous costume. It's very
Speaker 3: tied into a lot of these ideas.
Speaker 5: The yellow Shirt's iconic.
Speaker 3: Forgive me spoilers for a show that's about ten years old,
Speaker 3: but this we'll have some slight spoilers. In the course
Speaker 3: of the show, he goes to visit like to find
Speaker 3: out the doctor who created him, who's a white man,
Speaker 3: and he's put in a situation where his clothing gets
Speaker 3: destroyed because showing my culture without a shirt off is
Speaker 3: something that lots of fans are really happy with, myself included.
Speaker 3: But as a result, he needs to put on something else,
Speaker 3: and so he finds the power man outfit that this
Speaker 3: guy had constructed for him, and he puts it on,
Speaker 3: and so we get to sort of check the box
Speaker 3: of We do get to see Mike Coulter in that
Speaker 3: original costume while he's acknowledging this isn't me. This is
Speaker 3: a creation of the white people who tried to make
Speaker 3: me what I am. And also it's kind of ridiculous
Speaker 3: and it was just to me. It was such a
Speaker 3: great balancing of acknowledging the problematic history and how much
Speaker 3: the show was kind of a reclaiming of like, no,
Speaker 3: Luke Cage can be a great character, but he's a
Speaker 3: black character should be told by black artists, and reclaiming
Speaker 3: that and reframing it in a way because especially like
Speaker 3: you know, the show came out not long after the
Speaker 3: show was made, not long after Trayvon Martin and the
Speaker 3: fact that he was wearing a hoodie and a bullet
Speaker 3: you know, pierced T shirt. For a lot of it
Speaker 3: was a very important look. And so to me, that's
Speaker 3: another great example of where like yeah, there should be loved,
Speaker 3: there should be passion. We also acknowledge that sometimes out
Speaker 3: of malfeasance, but often just like the benevolence of the time,
Speaker 3: that was not understanding a lot of things that should
Speaker 3: have been understood some of the you know, some of
Speaker 3: these things creations are fifty seventy one hundred years old
Speaker 3: and could be used to be modernized somewhat, and that
Speaker 3: can involve poking a little fun at their origins.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I like that a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and so that leads to another one of
Speaker 3: these historical questions. You talked about iron Man going from
Speaker 3: Vietnam to desert storm. I think this is another thing
Speaker 3: that becomes really important, is that, on the one hand,
Speaker 3: if a story is very historically bound, then sometimes I
Speaker 3: think it is very important to keep it in that
Speaker 3: time period. But that at the same time, some of
Speaker 3: the best adaptations, to my mind at least, have acknowledged
Speaker 3: that you need to make the story relevant for today
Speaker 3: and so for today's Yeah, at the time of Ironman
Speaker 3: coming out like if my parents had lived through Vietnam,
Speaker 3: but I certainly hadn't, and a lot of younger people hadn't,
Speaker 3: but we'd all lived through Desert Storm. And the two
Speaker 3: examples that I like to use as both positive and
Speaker 3: negative are V for Vendetta and Watchmen. And I mentioned
Speaker 3: those because V for Vendetta is very specifically set the
Speaker 3: book during Thatcher and during the particular ways that Margaret
Speaker 3: Thatcher was making the country more conservative, and in the story,
Speaker 3: the people who made the movie looked at that and said,
Speaker 3: this is now fifteen years after a Thatcher has fallen.
Speaker 3: That's not the concern anymore. But now we're in this
Speaker 3: post nine to eleven world of all of these horrible
Speaker 3: fears about Arabs and about non Christians and about you know,
Speaker 3: people from you know, brown people in general, and things
Speaker 3: like that. And so they updated the story to be
Speaker 3: a fascist government that was about those fears instead of
Speaker 3: the kind of things that Thatcher it and make it
Speaker 3: worry about classism had been. Watchmen, on the other hand,
Speaker 3: is written during the Cold War, when a lot of
Speaker 3: people think it's entirely possible that we're gonna nuke each other.
Speaker 3: But by the time the movie came out, that wasn't
Speaker 3: a concern anymore. We knew the Cold War ended, and I,
Speaker 3: at least I have always felt that as a failing of
Speaker 3: the Watchmen movie that they don't update that, that they
Speaker 3: try to say, remember how scary it was when we
Speaker 3: thought that Ozzy Mandias might be justified or probably not,
Speaker 3: but might be for taking this horrible step to end
Speaker 3: the Cold War threat when all of usknew it it
Speaker 3: ended already, you know, and if it had been a
Speaker 3: different kind of threat, at what might have worked better.
Speaker 3: I'll get off my stopbox and pretend that I asked
Speaker 3: a question there so that you can kind of respond
Speaker 3: to that or tell me how wrong I am or
Speaker 3: anything like that.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know if you're wrong. I do think
Speaker 5: like some stories and some characters do get tied to
Speaker 5: a specific period in history, and it's up to the
Speaker 5: new storytellers to decide what to do about that. And
Speaker 5: kind of like, to me, like one of the best
Speaker 5: workarounds has been Captain America, right, Like his origin is
Speaker 5: tied to World War two, yep, because you know, like
Speaker 5: Hydra is a sub organization in Nazi Germany and just
Speaker 5: like putting him on ice and him waking up like
Speaker 5: whenever the now is is like the perfect workaround that's
Speaker 5: kind of always going to work. Yeah, same time period,
Speaker 5: Magneto being a Jewish child in Carson in a concentration
Speaker 5: camp and then escaping because as mutant power awakens, starting
Speaker 5: to be difficult to weave that into modern stories. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: and we saw it X Men ninety seven. They got
Speaker 5: around it by just like leaving the story being told
Speaker 5: in nineteen ninety seven? Is that the title says, But like,
Speaker 5: I don't I'm not sure what's going on in like
Speaker 5: modern X Men stories, Like some I think are just
Speaker 5: kind of like, yeah, he's old whatever, like maybe his
Speaker 5: mute powers making him age less type of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I know that the Magneto one is a
Speaker 3: very debated topic, and ever since this idea of the
Speaker 3: new X Men reboot has been it's been one that's
Speaker 3: come up a lot, and I think there's legitimate arguments
Speaker 3: on both sides. I think, on the one hand, there
Speaker 3: is an extent to which the Holocaust is a unique
Speaker 3: moment in history, that that having characters that are tied
Speaker 3: directly to it, particularly Jewish characters, is an important thing
Speaker 3: and something it shouldn't be.
Speaker 5: Lost, and it's important to his character very much because
Speaker 5: like he's like I lived through this, like you all
Speaker 5: don't see, like this is the same thing that's happening.
Speaker 3: On the flip side. Though, I think that the idea
Speaker 3: that it was this completely unique thing that has never
Speaker 3: happened before and will never happen again isn't actually accurate.
Speaker 3: And there have been a lot of situations that are
Speaker 3: similar enough that a character could draw very similar lines.
Speaker 3: And so the idea has been, you know, things like
Speaker 3: could you set it in South Africa, or could that
Speaker 3: he you know, was under apartheid or in you know,
Speaker 3: Southeast Asia under you know, Paul Pott or something like that,
Speaker 3: or could you put him in just the American South
Speaker 3: and having gone through civil rights or anything like that.
Speaker 3: And I it's one that I think there's almost no
Speaker 3: way to do without offending a lot of people. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: like a while ago, I would have said, make him
Speaker 3: a Palestinian or you know, and give him still some Jewish.
Speaker 3: Like I've always liked the idea that Magneto is a
Speaker 3: title that can get passed down and so for example,
Speaker 3: like the Magneto of a holocaust, has a grandchild who
Speaker 3: now goes through the other horrible experience, and that that
Speaker 3: kind of he's the one who takes up the mantle.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of sensitivities about it, and they've
Speaker 3: gotten certainly a lot worse in the last two years
Speaker 3: because of the war and the horrible treatment of the
Speaker 3: people in Gaza. And and yes, I feel like that's
Speaker 3: one that I think has to be handled incredibly carefully.
Speaker 3: But I will say the fact that a lot of
Speaker 3: the related characters, like the fact that, you know, characters
Speaker 3: who are in the in the comics often tied directly
Speaker 3: to him, like Wanda Maximov and her brother. You know,
Speaker 3: those characters are often betrayed as either Jewish or Romani
Speaker 3: or both do their connection to Magneto and to their mother.
Speaker 3: Neither one has been honored. And yeah, I think it's
Speaker 3: a really it's a really interesting question of what do
Speaker 3: we do when characters are not only bounds to historical events,
Speaker 3: but are bound to one about which the historicity has
Speaker 3: changed a lot, you know, and or just the the
Speaker 3: historical understanding has changed somewhat. I think that would be
Speaker 3: part of even of the Vietnam thing. Is that just
Speaker 3: you know, popular opinion about Vietnam is radically different today
Speaker 3: than it was at the time that the first Iron
Speaker 3: Man came out. And I don't think there's an easy answer,
Speaker 3: but I think it's I think there's a real importance
Speaker 3: to really be very thoughtful about what message are you sending,
Speaker 3: both in who you include and what you change and
Speaker 3: what you take out, and how is that important and
Speaker 3: how is that honoring the original spirit versus you know,
Speaker 3: recognizing what has changed in the world around you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and sometimes it takes time. I think I don't
Speaker 5: think now is the right time to write a story
Speaker 5: or an adaptation about Palestinians, because we're still in the
Speaker 5: think of it and things are happening and there's a
Speaker 5: lot of emotion, and I think same thing, like even
Speaker 5: with nine to eleven, right like now, I think we
Speaker 5: are starting to see more nuanced stories being told about
Speaker 5: nine to eleven or like following those events rather than
Speaker 5: like immediately after it was probably just like all like
Speaker 5: hyper patriotic stuff. Now it's like, let's examine like all
Speaker 5: sides of this, right, And you just I think history,
Speaker 5: like when you're living through history, it's hard not to
Speaker 5: be emotional about it, and it does take some time,
Speaker 5: like to tell a still like look at Shindler's List,
Speaker 5: Like what was that like forty years say after the Holocaust?
Speaker 3: It came out when I was in high school, so
Speaker 3: that would have been like early nineties, So yeah, like
Speaker 3: thirty five forty years there.
Speaker 5: And that movie was as much about like, let's remember
Speaker 5: this thing that perhaps like several were several generations removed
Speaker 5: some of you might not know these stories right, and
Speaker 5: the need to retell something and make sure that history
Speaker 5: is not forgotten is equally important.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like we talked about when we
Speaker 3: did an episode on God's Zilla Minus on about how
Speaker 3: it was kind of a retelling of the Godzilla story
Speaker 3: at a time the Gojira and told by Japanese, you
Speaker 3: know Japan in nineteen fifty three. Telling a story that's
Speaker 3: very much about, you know, the nuclear bombing and World
Speaker 3: War Two is a fundamentally different historical understanding than that movie,
Speaker 3: which is really kind of a reckoning with Imperial Japan
Speaker 3: and Kamakazi and all those kind of things in a
Speaker 3: way that wouldn't have made any sense to tell in
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties or even sixties, seventies, eighties. M. Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Could go listen to that episode. Yeah, a lot of feelings.
Speaker 3: I think there's so much we talked about in an
Speaker 3: episode that comes up here. This gets us into an
Speaker 3: issue that there's a lot of controversy about, and so
Speaker 3: I want us to at least touch on. But I
Speaker 3: feel like you and I are pretty solidly in agreement
Speaker 3: and have made our points pretty clear in many episodes
Speaker 3: before race swapping of characters, gender swapping of characters, any USA.
Speaker 3: Beyond getting upset about it's dumb, me, let me make
Speaker 3: a slightly more nuanced comment down at least I think
Speaker 3: that to the extent to which it is important part
Speaker 3: of the character, it is worth examining and thinking about.
Speaker 3: And for me, the punching up versus punching down theory
Speaker 3: becomes very very important of I making more characters non white,
Speaker 3: more characters non male, more characters non straight or CIS
Speaker 3: or disabled, like, further diversifying because I fundamentally believe diversity
Speaker 3: is good. I learned that from Star Trek is always
Speaker 3: something I'm gonna be in favor of. I think that
Speaker 3: there needs to be some understanding of the dimensions of
Speaker 3: it and what it means, especially in how that character
Speaker 3: relates to other groups and things like that. But I
Speaker 3: I think in general it is very unfortunate and very
Speaker 3: disingenuous that a lot of the kind of like larger
Speaker 3: cultural conversations have become these fights over like, oh, why
Speaker 3: don't we have enough white superheroes anymore? And you know,
Speaker 3: I think just the less set about it, Like obviously
Speaker 3: I've brought it up, but just to kind of say,
Speaker 3: for me, at least, I don't think there's much question.
Speaker 3: I think there's nothing wrong with adding more diversity to characters.
Speaker 3: I think if a character's race or you know, something
Speaker 3: like that is important, then probably keep that and tell
Speaker 3: other versions of the story. But the idea that we
Speaker 3: have to protect white male characters to protect white men
Speaker 3: is just something I have no time for.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I guess I agree with that in
Speaker 5: general principle. I'm just like kind of think of examples
Speaker 5: of that and like why it's good or why it
Speaker 5: might not be might not be good.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Like the first thing that came to mind when you
Speaker 5: said that is, like, people make this absurd argument argument
Speaker 5: about like well, what if they made black Panther a
Speaker 5: white man, how would you feel about that? And it's
Speaker 5: just like that that just doesn't make sense. Like it's like,
Speaker 5: look at this character and who he is and what
Speaker 5: he is, right, And yeah, I don't know, make better arguments,
Speaker 5: I guess, is what I would say to people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think because most of all, for me, what
Speaker 3: most of those arguments come down to is that there's
Speaker 3: sort of an idea that the default is white, male, sis, straight, abled,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And so there has to be a reason
Speaker 3: to make someone not the default. And anytime we question
Speaker 3: that and say this is a character for whom their
Speaker 3: race is irrelevant, for whom their gender is irrelevant, I
Speaker 3: mean it's always it's always relevant, but for whom it's
Speaker 3: not a key part of the character. And yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: always gonna be okay with switching things around and trying
Speaker 3: things out in new ways. In a character like Black Panther,
Speaker 3: like Cage, like Shang Chi, like any of those characters
Speaker 3: where it is an important part of who they are,
Speaker 3: then yeah, I think it should be kept. But you know,
Speaker 3: if you know, now Black Panther is a woman in
Speaker 3: his sister god what's her name? Sure, sure, thank you like,
Speaker 3: I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's
Speaker 3: interesting to see how it is explored.
Speaker 5: Well specifically, like that example, like she has inherited the
Speaker 5: mantle and the powers of Black Panther, right, right, It's
Speaker 5: not like they took Black Panther. It's not like they
Speaker 5: took T'Challa and then made him. I don't even know
Speaker 5: just what the female version of T'Challa would be, but
Speaker 5: like Mad made that character a woman she is, she
Speaker 5: is her own character, and she went through her own
Speaker 5: arc of feeling not worthy of this and then rising
Speaker 5: to the challenge, and like that that was a good
Speaker 5: arc for her, for her character, and she rightfully inherited
Speaker 5: the mantle of Black Panther.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think like if you take an existing character and
Speaker 5: story and then just like change it, you just you
Speaker 5: have to ask yourself the right questions, yeah, like why
Speaker 5: you're doing this and how important are these characteristics for
Speaker 5: that character? And I think you just have to take
Speaker 5: it on a case by case basis, Yeah, and make
Speaker 5: sure you're doing it for the right reasons.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a really good point. And
Speaker 3: so let me and me as we're goin to start
Speaker 3: to wrap up. We've been an hour. We will have
Speaker 3: some bonus content for members of course five dollars a month.
Speaker 3: If you five dollars a year, help us keep the
Speaker 3: lights on, get all sorts of free content. One of
Speaker 3: the examples that was brought up by our friend Jacob,
Speaker 3: former judge, former co host of this podcast, Jacob leech
Speaker 3: each that I remember, actually we talked about a bit
Speaker 3: and I want to get your thoughts on was situations
Speaker 3: where there's a comment being made about a character but
Speaker 3: in ways that don't really fit anymore or are now
Speaker 3: seen as kind of problematic, and and is it better
Speaker 3: to just get rid of it or to adopt it?
Speaker 3: And the example he brought up was in Avatar the
Speaker 3: Last Airbender, the misogyny and sexism of the character of
Speaker 3: Sokka in the first season because in the show, the
Speaker 3: character is a very pronounced you know, and let me
Speaker 3: say that again, in the character in the first season
Speaker 3: of the animated show Avatar the Last Airbender, Socca is
Speaker 3: a complete sexist, and not in kind of ways that
Speaker 3: come off as like malevolent, like he's a villain, but
Speaker 3: in ways that are almost kind of laughable in the show,
Speaker 3: because you know, things like where he like meets the
Speaker 3: warriors of not Yoshi of Kyoshi, thank you, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're girls, you can't fight, and quite laughably, like they
Speaker 3: completely whip his ass. And it's a part of his
Speaker 3: character growth. And at first he's very like he has
Speaker 3: to protect all the women around him, even though he's
Speaker 3: not a bender and his sister is. And it's played
Speaker 3: for laughs, but also it's a major character lesson for
Speaker 3: him that he learns by the end of the first season,
Speaker 3: like this does not make any sense, and he is
Speaker 3: a different character in that regard by season two and three,
Speaker 3: the live action show that we liked a lot of
Speaker 3: and also had some critiques of, took that part of
Speaker 3: his character out entirely. And Jacob's point was like, this
Speaker 3: isn't great, because you know, characters should have arcs and
Speaker 3: like it's important to learn, like to let go of
Speaker 3: some of these sexist beliefs and stuff like that. I
Speaker 3: think I understand why they took it out because I
Speaker 3: think there was a time in Hollywood where it felt
Speaker 3: like it was still okay to be sexist as long
Speaker 3: as the other characters were laughing at them. And he
Speaker 3: still had a lot of very misogynistic humor. Barry Ston's
Speaker 3: in the character in Our Simpson in the character of
Speaker 3: It Bear up, Wow, you got totally wrong. Barney. The
Speaker 3: character in How I Met Your Mother to Me is
Speaker 3: a great example of this, where there's an awful lot
Speaker 3: of very misogynistic humor, but it's like it's okay for
Speaker 3: us to laugh at it because we the audience are
Speaker 3: supposed to know that he's ridiculous and stupid and terrible
Speaker 3: for this. I feel like, though, there's a middle ground
Speaker 3: where you could update the way that his misogyny is
Speaker 3: shown without making it the laugh that it is. And
Speaker 3: they're kind of like sneaking in misogynistic humor, but still
Speaker 3: have it been like, you know, just because sexism expressed
Speaker 3: in very different ways now than it was, you know,
Speaker 3: thirty years ago when that show came out in animation,
Speaker 3: twenty years ago, whatever it is, and so I feel
Speaker 3: like you could have kept that in the character but
Speaker 3: just portrayed it in a different way. What's your thoughts
Speaker 3: on this?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been thinking about this because, like right now,
Speaker 5: I'm fine with what they have done with Sakka's character
Speaker 5: the update because yeah, like just I guess how I
Speaker 5: would put it is that the show not having that
Speaker 5: in itself is progress. I think, like you said, like
Speaker 5: not not having that be a part of his character
Speaker 5: means in some ways, like it's not a part of
Speaker 5: society like that obviously, like not true, but that we
Speaker 5: are like moving forward in a way that like this character,
Speaker 5: Like at one point, yes, like we laughed at this
Speaker 5: character and pointed out how ridiculous he is. Now like
Speaker 5: we would say, like he's not even that would not
Speaker 5: even be a realistic character. I guess right in a sense,
Speaker 5: I was thinking about a similar thing in Cobra Kai
Speaker 5: that the character of Johnny is racist and misogynistic, and
Speaker 5: we laugh we laughed at it, like oh gosh, like
Speaker 5: how can you say these things? Or like think of
Speaker 5: these things? And in that show, he learns some lessons
Speaker 5: and comes in contact with people like particularly Miguel and
Speaker 5: his mother and grows right right, and it's like that's
Speaker 5: that's nice. It's nice to see. It's heartwarming, Like here's
Speaker 5: this man who has changed, and then every season he
Speaker 5: resets and makes some bad joke. It's like, oh my,
Speaker 5: like face palm, and I just got so tired of that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that he wasn't growing, Yeah, and they were resetting him.
Speaker 5: And that's why, Like, even though it's a it's a
Speaker 5: different show, like live action Avatar versus animated Avatar, I'm
Speaker 5: kind of like, Okay, like Socca is not that person anymore,
Speaker 5: and that's probably better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's fair, And i'd push back a
Speaker 3: bit on the like it's not believable anymore because like
Speaker 3: I somewhat agree with you that the way his sexism
Speaker 3: was expressed isn't but we certainly are seeing a huge
Speaker 3: resurgence in that very misogynistic like women should be in
Speaker 3: the military, women shouldn't vote, being like a legitimate political
Speaker 3: position that some people think. Some people think it is
Speaker 3: a legitimate position even though laughingly should not. I guess
Speaker 3: for me, it's one of those things where, yeah, I
Speaker 3: would want to see it modernized. I like the idea
Speaker 3: that in this completely made up world of Avatar, that
Speaker 3: thinking just doesn't exist. I have no problem with that,
Speaker 3: but I would wish that either they gave him some
Speaker 3: level of that thinking, just in a very different way,
Speaker 3: or they gave him some other thing to overcome, because
Speaker 3: it does mean that his character doesn't really have any growth,
Speaker 3: and I think that that can be sometimes a you
Speaker 3: look at characters from the past, if you're going to
Speaker 3: take away a problematic flaw, I do think it's important
Speaker 3: to give him something else to overcome, you know, because
Speaker 3: if if a part of their growth was it like
Speaker 3: because I think I don't like what he grows out of,
Speaker 3: but his growth is such an important part of his character.
Speaker 3: I want to see something like that.
Speaker 5: So I when I say like it doesn't exist, like
Speaker 5: it it does exist. Because we saw in the Northern
Speaker 5: Water Tribe the the water Bender, there was like I
Speaker 5: don't I I women can't be warriors. Was like the
Speaker 5: attitude right right, or the rule or whatever, so it it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but I think like that that being the character who
Speaker 5: expresses that being like a very old man, like of
Speaker 5: the older generation, it's like no, like old man, like
Speaker 5: you're wrong, and the new generations like we the women
Speaker 5: can fight, it's cool. And then like even the older
Speaker 5: women were like, yeah, just let us fight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah that makes sense. And love do so much
Speaker 3: to talk about I I I had thrown one. Uh no,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna sure that obviously, so much to talk about.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say a word or two about Daredevil in
Speaker 3: closing uh and then Rinki anything to say.
Speaker 5: I'm curious. I need to hear more about this.
Speaker 3: Sure. So for me, there's two things and this is
Speaker 3: going to be major spoilers for events that happened in
Speaker 3: the first five to ten minutes of Daredevil that I've
Speaker 3: been talking about on a line a lot, but still spoilers.
Speaker 3: For me, there's two main things that I care about
Speaker 3: when you offer me a remake or a reboot of something,
Speaker 3: and I'm willing to go pretty far in terms of
Speaker 3: things being very different. One is I want to know
Speaker 3: that you honor and respect the thing that you are
Speaker 3: starting from, even if you're going in a very different direction.
Speaker 3: And two, I want to know that you're trying to
Speaker 3: keep the essence of the character basically the same. The
Speaker 3: first five minutes of the of the first episode of Daredevil,
Speaker 3: and I'm projecting here. I don't think this is actually
Speaker 3: what happened, but I think this is what it felt
Speaker 3: like to me. It felt like the writer had wanted
Speaker 3: to write his own Daredevil story and it had gotten
Speaker 3: a lot of pushback, especially from fans being like, no, no, look, look,
Speaker 3: we loved Netflix MCU, please keep that, And so they
Speaker 3: made a point to tell the Netflix MCU people fans, hey,
Speaker 3: don't worry, I'm gonna honor what you like, and then
Speaker 3: very intentionally said fuck you. In the first few minutes,
Speaker 3: they killed off a major character that didn't have to
Speaker 3: come back at all, but gave us all this hope
Speaker 3: this character would be back just to kill him off.
Speaker 3: They did a whole other things that felt incredibly like
Speaker 3: this is sa and including giving He also gives some
Speaker 3: interviews like there was some preparation for it, but where
Speaker 3: he was like, yeah, people just sat around and talked
Speaker 3: too much in the first show, and I don't want that,
Speaker 3: and that was one of the best things about the
Speaker 3: first show. But then, like the utter essential part of
Speaker 3: Matt Murnoch's character, as we've talked about, was that he
Speaker 3: doesn't kill and that he wrestles with that and he
Speaker 3: thinks about it, and he kills someone in the first
Speaker 3: five minutes of the show. As it turns out the
Speaker 3: person has superhuman powers and thus he doesn't actually die.
Speaker 3: But Matt Murdoch one hundred pcent believes he killed this
Speaker 3: person and I'm like, Okay, well that's not a character
Speaker 3: I have any interest in. And I've heard, since there's
Speaker 3: some interesting questions that the show explores, and so I
Speaker 3: might kind of treat it like I did you know
Speaker 3: the movie First Night, which is an interesting story about
Speaker 3: a knight and a king and a queen and a
Speaker 3: knight is in love with a queen. It just doesn't
Speaker 3: bear any connection whatsoever to King Arthur and Lancelot. And
Speaker 3: if I just think of this as a story about
Speaker 3: Michael Murdoch and you know, Dare Demon or something like that,
Speaker 3: then maybe I'll enjoy the show if I try again.
Speaker 3: But the things that I here's the most charitable way
Speaker 3: I can put it. But if you want to hear
Speaker 3: me be angry about it, go back and listen to
Speaker 3: my episode about Daredevil Jessica Plumber, because she's even more
Speaker 3: pissed about it than I was, or we were pretty equal.
Speaker 3: I'd say the things that I loved about the character
Speaker 3: of Daredevil and the world of Daredevil clearly are not
Speaker 3: important to the person remaking it, And so for me,
Speaker 3: I would say purely subjectively that I don't feel like
Speaker 3: it's a good adaptation. But from an ejective standpoint, I
Speaker 3: would just say it is not the version of the
Speaker 3: character that I love and care about, and I have
Speaker 3: thus no interest in watching more of it.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's my little rant. What about for you?
Speaker 3: What are any last comics you want to make on
Speaker 3: this topic before we break? The bonus content will be
Speaker 3: us ranking some of our favorite and least favorite adaptations.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I guess what I would ask in
Speaker 5: terms of Daredevil Born Again, right because I think you're
Speaker 5: comparing it to the Daredevil Netflix show rightfully, so, because
Speaker 5: it's the same actor.
Speaker 3: Yes, but also through Jessica, I'm also comparing it very
Speaker 3: much to the comics. Yes, it's a huge, huge comics fan.
Speaker 3: And she also felt like this new show has no
Speaker 3: connection to the comic.
Speaker 5: Books, and that that would be that was going to
Speaker 5: be my follow up question is like, how does it
Speaker 5: compare to the comics, which I have no experience with?
Speaker 5: So that's good. That's good that she was able to
Speaker 5: provide that, because, you know, to sum up all of this, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's okay for new people to
Speaker 5: tell new stories with existing characters within existing franchises, and
Speaker 5: sometimes they don't always make a lot of sense in
Speaker 5: terms of the connections, but there is the essence where
Speaker 5: you want some you want some through line to be
Speaker 5: true about these people, And that doesn't mean you can't
Speaker 5: change them. But I do think like, if you do
Speaker 5: change them, it needs to be important. It needs to
Speaker 5: be for a reason, right, and the exploration of that
Speaker 5: is important. I was reading about Spider Man that this
Speaker 5: might get a little long, but I was reading about
Speaker 5: Spider Man and how fans are still pissed that he's
Speaker 5: not married to MJ in the comics, because that was
Speaker 5: a big thing. Mephisto happened and the marriage was dissolved,
Speaker 5: like with Magic, and fans keep saying, get him back
Speaker 5: with MJ, get him back with MJ. And the creators
Speaker 5: are like, no, Like that story was told for thirty
Speaker 5: years or whatever, and we're trying to tell different stories.
Speaker 3: Now, Yeah, that's fair. That also leads to it is
Speaker 3: there's one further complicating thing about the Daredevil thing I
Speaker 3: should say that I think leads to a general point,
Speaker 3: which is that one thing Jessica to make clear is
Speaker 3: that while we only have kind of one other definitive
Speaker 3: I mean, pick it up, is that with a lot
Speaker 3: of these things, when we say it's not true to
Speaker 3: the original, often what we mean is the version of
Speaker 3: the original that we already have decided is our true one,
Speaker 3: you know, because in the comics there are like two
Speaker 3: different runs of Daredevil. The majority of them are the
Speaker 3: kind that Jessica's talking about, but there have been some
Speaker 3: that are pretty wacky and that maybe are closer to
Speaker 3: what I don't think this is directly connected to any
Speaker 3: of those, but like there is some level of that.
Speaker 3: And I think there's often a danger of saying that
Speaker 3: your one version of it is the one and true one,
Speaker 3: and therefore should always be the one that's compared to.
Speaker 3: And so for example, I will say I have tried
Speaker 3: to change my language a lot on Batman as an example,
Speaker 3: because I think a lot of people hate the Joel
Speaker 3: Schumacher Batman movies, and that's the Val Kilmer and then
Speaker 3: the George Clooney Batman's and I think if your origins
Speaker 3: for Batman are a lot of the darker comics and
Speaker 3: the kind of Michael Keaton movie or the Batman the
Speaker 3: animated series, that makes a lot of sense. But the
Speaker 3: Joel Schumacher Batman's actually feel very authentic. If you grew
Speaker 3: up with Adam West and Batman sixty six and coupaw
Speaker 3: on screen and a very cheesy, campy version of the character.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I kind of think that, especially with some
Speaker 3: of these characters who that I have had so many different versions.
Speaker 3: Like That's why a lot of times I won't say
Speaker 3: that the Snyder Batman is wrong. I'll say it's not
Speaker 3: my Batman. And that's where I think I try to
Speaker 3: come down the most on this version of Daredevil. Is
Speaker 3: it the Netflix Daredevil established a version of Daredevil that
Speaker 3: is very deared a lot of people, And this is
Speaker 3: very much not that Daredevil. And do I think Netflix
Speaker 3: Daredevil should be the a pimitive Daredevil. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 3: also a Ben Affleck version out there, Like you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of other other things that are out there,
Speaker 3: and like I think in Star Wars this comes up
Speaker 3: a lot because you know, I think that the character
Speaker 3: of Luke Skywalker in Last Jedi quite easily matches up
Speaker 3: with the Luke Skywalker of the original movies. What he
Speaker 3: doesn't match up with is the Luke Skywalker of the
Speaker 3: Extended Universe novels, and I don't particularly like the direction
Speaker 3: he goes in those, and he becomes I think, kind
Speaker 3: of a demigod I don't think that's a good character,
Speaker 3: but I do want to acknowledge that it is legitimate
Speaker 3: to a fall in love with that version of the
Speaker 3: character and to have very much not seen that In
Speaker 3: the last Jedi, I think he doesn't justify the amount
Speaker 3: of vitriol if people have at that. But I, you know,
Speaker 3: I'll can see that that that there is some legitimacy
Speaker 3: there too, like feeling that. But I think that's where
Speaker 3: we're also important to recognize, Like what am I thinking
Speaker 3: of as did one true source that we should be
Speaker 3: you know, paying attention to and is that always the
Speaker 3: one true source? You know?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean that phrase itself, I think is problematic.
Speaker 5: I think these characters have existed for so long, so
Speaker 5: many versions, so many writers. Yeah that, Yes, I think
Speaker 5: we can have our favorites and say I want I
Speaker 5: want this material to be adapted or I want this
Speaker 5: writer to be writing it. But that's that's not the
Speaker 5: world we live in. And yeah, I think it's okay
Speaker 5: to personally dismiss something and say I don't want to
Speaker 5: watch this new Daredevil, Yeah right, Daredevil Born Again because
Speaker 5: I don't I don't like the way that this character
Speaker 5: is going and that's fine, Like, that's your personal opinion,
Speaker 5: but I don't think as fans we should be like,
Speaker 5: this isn't the real Daredevil, you know, like I use
Speaker 5: that phrase regarding Resident Evil, but it's they're just different things.
Speaker 5: They're different continuities.
Speaker 3: So to see, right, there's one quote from our listeners
Speaker 3: that I want to find here. Let me just see
Speaker 3: if I can find it. Give me one second. No,
Speaker 3: I think that is so true, and closing, I can't
Speaker 3: find it the moment, so I apologize. But in one
Speaker 3: of the discords where I posted this question, someone wrote
Speaker 3: that for them, the key thing is that if they
Speaker 3: find an adaptation of something they don't like, it doesn't
Speaker 3: actually change their version of the character that they like,
Speaker 3: and they can always go back and reread the comic
Speaker 3: book or play the video game or do whatever. And
Speaker 3: I think, if I have any kind of like moral
Speaker 3: point about all this, to me, that's the central one.
Speaker 3: Is I get being upset about it. I was real
Speaker 3: mad about the Daredevil thing, but then I just turned
Speaker 3: on Netflix and watched the original Daredevil, and guess what,
Speaker 3: I'm still just as good as he is.
Speaker 5: And exactly that's what I was gonna say. It's just
Speaker 5: like enjoy the thing you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, well, thank you so much everybody. This
Speaker 3: has been real fun to talk about. Please let us
Speaker 3: know your thoughts in your comments. I'm half myself and Rinki.
Speaker 3: We have had a great time talking about this with you.
Speaker 3: We want to hear your thoughts. Live long, and process