On Wed, 23 Nov 2022 07:36:50 -0800 (PST), Jack Bohn
<
jack.bohn64@gmail.com> wrote:
Sunday I saw a commercial for a new Netflix movie, "Slumberland"[1] and the title font was vaguely reminiscent of the logo for the ancient comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland." So I looked it up. I guess you could call it truth in advertising: the
thing looks to vaguely recall the comic strip. Indeed, IMDb lists the cast of characters as including a child dreamer named Nemo, and a guide, protector, and basically the star of the show, Flip... played by Jason Momoa. In the comics, Flip is only
taller than Nemo by virtue of his top hat, in this movie, Flip is a non-top-hat-wearing manbeast the size of Jason Momoa.[2] Well, the structure of the comic strip is such that trying to make a long-form story from it is a fool's errand, like trying to
make a "The Far Side" movie. (There was a Far Side TV special, of an anthology nature.) Then there are the specifics of the strip that mean no one should try to make a direct adaptation of it.
Well, the comic is so obscure that I wonder if they aren't counting on familiarity with a '90s cartoon adaptation of it, "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland" but that in turn is so obscure that I wonder if it isn't better known from the Nintendo
videogame released in Japan to tie into the movie, but ported over to the US before the movie got its distribution deal here. I would like to think the makers were inspired to think along whatever lines their story is going by seeing some iteration of
Nemo, and adopted the names as a way of nodding to it. Or, more cynically, they adopted the guise of an older property in an attempt to avoid a lawsuit from some other property they are similar to, maybe "Where the Wild Things Are"? (This was a lesson
I learned in my youth, When 20th Cent. Fox sued Universal over their Battlestar Galactica trying to fool people into thinking it was "Star Wars" with the heroes in small, one-man fighters flying around gigantic starships; Universal then
went
on to adapting Buck Rogers, having our hero fly along in a small, one-man fighter over the gigantic starship of an empire, and adding comedy relief robot in a more central role.) Currently the IMDb entry has no credit for Winsor McCay as creator of the
Little Nemo strip. I'm not sure how credit from the Public Domain work: IMDB has a credit for Shakespeare as an uncredited source for Robert Wise's "West Side Story" but not (yet) for Stephen Spielberg's.
Anyway, I was thinking about adaptations of other works that make you wonder.
Last month I mentioned "The Day the Earth Stood Still." A saucer landing in Washington DC may be generic enough, but the occupant being shot and then brought to life is the main point bought and brought over, even if they ignore the central idea of "
Farewell to the Master," expressed in its title and last line. (Wait, that's not the center, those are the two edges!) "The Thing from Another World" translated even less from "Who Goes There?" When the Antarctic exploration became an Arctic early
warning base one wonders if an alien entering the mix would even be considered a singular idea. "Destination Moon" has so little resemblance to _Rocketship Galileo_ that one would think they had no respect for Robert A. Heinlein, except it was Heinlein
making the changes.
David Gerrold mentions that his Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" was found similar to an event in the Heinlein novel "The Rolling Stones," studio legal reached out to make a deal with Heinlein, but he said he had no complaint about
infringement with the script. Gerrold was chagrined to realize he'd not been as original as he'd thought. Ever since hearing that, I've wondered if "Arena" wasn't also retro-credited to Fredric Brown's short story. Even if they'd started from the
story rather than unintentionally treading on its territory, I can see the same changes being made: the alien needs to be easily acted by an actor, but still probably better not to be kept on constant display, a hide and chase contest is better for
television than a dome with a selectively permeable forcefield.
The James Bond movies, before they ran out of books, were famous for jacking up the title, tearing out the old machinery, and building an entirely new story inside it.
Some were very close to the book, others were (to varying degrees)
farther from the book, and (yes) a few arguably shared nothing with
the book except the title and (maybe) the name of the villain.
Also, to the extent that the books formed a series, the movies
destroyed that by using the books in the filmmaker's order.
Along the Star Wars lines, an anime "Lensman" was made to do galactic battle, among its changes was the highly trained agent Kimball Kinnison being a farmboy that had the Lens fall into his lap.
"The Walking Dead" readers have noted many plotlines and characters changed in the TV series. I think creator Robert Kirkman has offered the justification that it was tried one way in the comics, tried another way for TV.
"I, Robot" started off as some other project, bought the rights to the Asimov book, using the title to stomp on fan goodwill, and reassigning names, so as to give us a hot Susan Calvin.
So, any other stories you would rather not have seen, considering the changes made?
[1] It would have been on a CBS station or a FOX station, odds being CBS. This is odd, as CBS has its own streaming service. I would think eventually we will come to a closed loop of them having an outlet for only their productions, and producing only
for their services, where they would also only advertise themselves.
[2] As well as Flip, the comic has a Jungle Imp companion for Nemo. It occurred to me that these all being of a size would help the artist in framing each panel. Looking, I'm reminded that one of the main attractions of the comic was its large vistas
and architecture, so there are many panels with large amounts of headroom, and they occasionally interact with adult-sized persons (as opposed to "Peanuts," where Charles Shulz said a grown-up would have to bend over to fit into his panels), but there
are still many panels on the scale of Nemo. Terry Gilliam hired shorter actors to facilitate his filming "Time Bandits" with the camera at the level of his child actor; come to think of it, the structure and visuals of "Time Bandits" is very much what I'
d like a Little Nemo adaptation to be, much like I've said "Labrynth" captures the feeling of the Alice in Wonderland books better than any straight adaptation I've seen.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."
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