I'm sick of seeing Georg be a depressed film critic. We saw it for season one, and it just keeps going on. I want to see the character get out of the house and smile genuinely for once.
Ha ha! Yes, absolutely agree, in the original source material Georg finds contentment as a Bolivian goat herder and artisanal cocaine maker. A truly heart warming and satisfying conclusion.
So basically... Handmaid's Tale suffered from the same problems that Westworld has... And Heroes... And a lot of other shows that struggled to find a point to their existence after the first season finale. When you finely craft a TV series around a first season with no promise of sequels. It may make for an awesome first season. But you set yourself up for problems if the sequel gets green lit. Because all the interesting narrative threads have already been explored. Even a finale cliffhanger will struggle to bring attention back if all the themes have already been mined for their rare minerals. That feeling of wasting time and treading water sets in as you wonder why we are still here. Stranger things have had some good moments since season one, but it has likewise struggled for a narrative drive ever since that first story got told. It does make me a bit sad when I think about how the show creators were initially going to do each new season as a completely new story with new characters and plots. But. Like Halloween. Those ideas were scrapped when the higher ups sensed franchise potential in that band of kids. But they never had their Halloween III Season of the Witch. They tried a backdoor pilot where Eleven were suppose to join a group of X-Men mutant kids (remember that forgotten storyline?). So I think the problem is more that the first season was too good, and the execs couldn't help but try to milk that cow well past her going dry.
Never watch TV hoping for art. Even the really great ones are nothing but a system to deliver a product, and the show isn't the product. You are. You are a mark to be milked for money.
I thought the problem with Westworld was that they changed the showrunner to someone who wanted to completely change the core themes of the show, a showrunner with no actual experience running a show.
Howl's Moving Castle movie is basically what you THINK the book is before you read it. Lol. I honestly prefer the movie, but that is because I am disgusted by the (SPOILER) Necromancy. Just gross you know.
@@MarsofAritia haha, both times it was adapted it felt either like a cashgrab or like a baby's first attempt at adaptation, yeah. Granted, not an easy series to adapt, but, uhm, yeah...
@@mariawhite7337 I also prefer the movie, mostly because I don't quite understand how characters in the book can even function in a relationship. They're not very nice :D And an actual spoiler: I don't like when in fantasy stories characters find our "real" world. A trip to Oxford felt weird and out of place even without me disliking such stuff.
@@GeanAmiraku Yeah that part of the book was just... wat? Honestly though If I hadn't read books like Talking to Dragons that sort of have this sort of thing, --the hundred league boots,-- I think I would have been lost. Then there is the demon, which feels just as out of place as well. Like you have this thing that feels like it is out of a dark science fiction novel and not something like before. It felt completely left field to me reading.
I genuinely think omitting the original end of the Handmaid's Tale from any adaptation lessens the effects of the story. The incompleteness of the story is so meaningful to the themes of perspective and how history is told.
I studied the Handmaids tale at school like a decade and a half ago now, can’t remember how it ends, I think the main character doesn’t escape in the end, her contact in the outside just disappears one day and when another handmaiden shows up in her stead she tries the secret code, May Day, and the woman just looks at her blankly. Is that about right? Creepy and uncertain. I remember being riveted with the book when we got given it to study and I’d go home everyday and read several chapters ahead just because I was enjoying it so much! Pleasure is an egg and all that lol!
@@thomasharris7881 I read it a few years ago so I don't remember exactly, but I think it was about she getting into a van from The Eyes (you know, the equivalent of the FBI) thinking she would be arrested and maybe executed, but there's like a hint those were really the good guys in disguise. The book leaves it uncertain, but there's an epilogue about a lecture in a futuristic univerity about people who got out of gilead, and they talk about a particular handmaid (which is presumed is the protagonist) who apparently got out, but then again, they weren't sure if those statements were true.
The author was definitely trying to make a point about the disconnect between the "objective" study of history and discussion of historical oppression in a classroom setting with detached neutrality vs. how such events are lived by the people experiencing them. Which I don't think is in the show (but I didn't watch the show past a few episodes).
An excellent movie that is a great example for this topic would be the movie Adaptation starring Nicolas Cage. The movie is an adaptation of a book as well as a commentary of the nature of adaptations themselves. I don't want to say too much about it at the risk of spoiling it. I think it is a must watch if you want a unique experience in regards to a book adaptation.
“It adds on… with a disappointing lack of creativity.” You summed up my exact thoughts about the Handmaid’s Tale TV show. I would have loved it SO much more if it had just been season 1. I loved the book and I thought the show would have been fine as a self contained story. Edit, because I somehow missed it the first time: YA GOATS MAYDE A MESS ON THE CAHHPET
I saw The Hobbit part 1 in the theater, and didnt know it was multipart... I was starting to fill will dread when i felt things wrapping up... Then i realized it was a multipart and openly groaned. I didnt see the other 2 in theaters...
I also saw part 1 in a theater. I've seen parts of part 2 by accident while others were watching it in the same room. I've hardly seen any of part 3. Probably only clips from trailers. As part 1 was wrapping up, I knew they needed to stretch the other half of the book into 2 movies, and wasn't terribly interrested.
@@daniellejoiner4929 no one said that in the 60's or 80's. Both decades were considered a silver screen renaissance, with the industry reinventing what movies were. In fairness though, the 60's got an assist by better/cheaper color film abilities. And the 80's got their assist from a new generation of special effects resources.
@@nickrustyson8124 I didn't hear anyone saying it in the 80s in my country, but that doesn't mean it wasn't said. I still rewatch a lot of 80s movies myself
The Youngs Ones was the best TV show ever made. After twelve episodes and after all the best ideas realised and the funniest jokes told, they killed all the charcters off in a horrific bus off a cliff accident with zero posibility that they would ever come back.
A proper ending is a requirement for a real story. That's why I appreciate Breaking Bad - Vince Gilligan understands that a plot must have a resolution. Series that keep stretching the premise and end up in a permanent second act are never going to achieve that, especially when the likelihood is that they will just be cancelled on a cliffhanger.
@@frankiewest3214 yeah I was glad BCS stuck the landing. It felt like justice as well. Saul wasn't an out and out villain like Walter was by the end, but Howard's death really made me lose any sympathy for Jimmy and Kim, who treated everything like a game until sh*t got real.
That’s why I prefer the tendency that has cropped up in the last decade of planning how many seasons a series should run for and pacing the story accordingly. If it then turns out to be popular and there’s a demand for more, there’s always the option of making spin-offs using a similar structure of a predetermined number of series. This has a greater chance of producing a solid narrative while still allowing for expansion/elaboration of either the original story, the source material, or both. The slew of adaptations, sequels and reimaginings, especially in films, seems mainly to be a product of a risk averse industry whose financial backers fear risking money on “unknowns” and instead back whatever tries to ride the coattails of prior successes.
So true. I grew up with Star Wars, LOTR (read the books 10+ times) and Wheel of Time. I've now basically given up any enthusiasm for any adaptations of these works. They all try to "revise the source material for a modern audience" while fundamentally misunderstanding the source material. This is especially obvious within the genre of "Fantasy" as worldbuilding and setting up a universe with its own rules and internal logic is ESSENTIAL to a good fantasy story. It has to be fantastical while being grounded in a reality that most of us can recognize. For an example: GOT during the first seasons accurately portrayed its rules and internal logic by demonstrating that travelling from one place to another took time as shown with Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark travelling across Westeros. By the later seasons, people just showed up one place to the next with seemingly no regard to time. This removes an internal logic of that fantasy universe and everything just falls apart and you're starting to not believe in theat world anymore. That's why i have issues especially with ROTP and Wheel of Time. They changed the magic system, the demographics, the geography, the characters and so on to such an extent it really isnt either Tolkiens or Robert Jordans worlds anymore, so why bother watching it as an adaptation when it isnt anymore?
I don't care about changing the demographics of characters, but when they change the magic system and world (not to mention the driver of the central story) then at that point why not make an alternative story in a different age? The line that keeps harping on over and over through all books is the fact that this has basically all happened before and will happen again, and that the "ages" are predictable, so if you want to change things that much, just make the story set in a different "third age." Of course they might try to use that as an excuse to any complaints people make, but it's idiotic to keep all the same names for all the characters but change so many other things about them (like Perrin's rage or whatever.)
@@johnmiller2691 you should care about the demographics. it's just as essential to coherent worldbuilding and believability of a setting as geography, culture, religion, time period and interstate/intergroup relations. i feel as though people who can't bring themselves to say that demographic consistency is important only do so because they are afraid of being labled racist and harassed for it.
Never read the books but having the ethnicity of characters not matter at all in Wheel of Time was jarring. One time a character tells the main characters "you're obviously not from around here" but everyone just looks like a modern bunch of people from a coastal American city. A diverse cast is perfectly fine, it's fiction, but not acknowledging the prejudice inherent in humans is a strange choice. I think this is where Rings of Power got it wrong too, there's really no reason or consequence to characters looking the way they do, even though the setting clearly establishes that we're in a crumbling world that is increasingly isolated and distrustful. Hobbits are basically racist British country-folk who don't know any better because they know fuck all about the world and have no experiences outside the shire. I specifically recall the line "queer folk" from the movies, when some old guy talks about outsiders.
@@johnmiller2691 they already use that as an excuse. " What do you mean it's literally a completely different story then the book and nothing lines up but the names? It's just a different turning of the wheel" as if that excuses it
while i haven't seen the show, what i though made the handmaid's tale a great story was the definitive, but ambiguous ending. especially as it comes in the form of an epilogue, the story feels resolved but leaves you wondering and wanting more. you hit the nail on the head in that you don't need a terribly long story to be thought-provoking.
As someone who has read the book(s) I wondered what the added seasons of The Handmaid's Tale could have to say. Thanks for answering this mildly pressing question
I try to go into any story with a mind opened to whatever idea the author(s) wish to convey. Sometimes I get told something interesting. Often they just seem to be saying what they think I want to hear. Sometimes the idea is really stupid, or is said in a really stupid way. More often than not these days, though, I find out the idea is not actually an idea, but the promise of an idea that I can buy in pieces for the cost of five more movie tickets and eighteen months of streaming subscription fees.
What a perfect description -- from the new Star Wars films to streaming epics, they have all the promise and then fail to deliver. It really shows who has the power.
I am truly vexed by how Wheel of Time and Foundation got adapted. They could have created the next big trend, if they knew how to do anything other than chase after the last big trend.
When tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, producers don't like doing anything other that treading tested old ground. Financially it's better to make something mediocre that turns a modest profit than risk a failure.
@@random007nadir I guess, but they're not really saving money or anything by making it less original so it just strikes me as an almost cartoonish degree of cowardice to think this way.
Early Game of Thrones is a good example of how to adapt something well. Most of the changes benefited the format and pace of the show, and they had GRR's input, which made it feel more legitimate.
As they say, hindsight is 20/20 as with the knowledge I have currently, I would stop watching GOT when season 3 ended, I would stop watching Sandman when the 6th episode ended etc. Probably the best course of action will be better discipline to stop consuming in time and defeat FOMO for good. I have absolutely no issue when the source material is different, but it has to be able to stand on its own. IMHO, a good example in recent history is the Dune 1/2 - a lot of my friends really liked it as when you read the books, it holds more value to the watcher (their opinion). I read the books, but other than sound design and some visuals I find Dune extremely dissatisfying, poorly acted and inefficient in story telling.
Netflix's The Witcher would be another example of "Hey, we can do the books better than the books did!" And they didn't. They didn't understand the characters and what makes them interesting, relatable and sympathetic, what makes the stories work, where the emotional response comes from etc. Meh.
Alexei Sayle is needed back on mainstream media now more than ever. This UK sh1t show is going to end in civil disobedience and poll tax riots. For poll tax read “energy riots”. JUST 11% of our gas comes via Putin. So what’s going wrong ? It’s a natural monopoly with one ch/executive just awarding himself a 35% pay increase… spread that far. And wide. We’ll be reading about *THE PRICE CAP RIOTS* in 2035 which brought about the richest people being stopped, targeted as they survive untainted by inflation. Either that, or we’ll social media ourselves into crisis silently, heads down in our phones.
"Let's take this massively popular IP and change it entirely as we adapt it. Surely the original plot, aesthetics and tone didn't really matter much in its success, right?"
You beautifully demonstrate and underscore that the problem with the world today really does boil down to greed at any cost. Thank you for dispensing bitter truth with just enough humour and snark to make it worth swallowing.
I've read WoT several times and have a few friends who have as well. This video is as much of the TV show as I've ever seen. I guess there are people who love the books and also love the the show, but I've never met any. It seems like the show makers hate the books and their mission is to correct Jordans writing, but they don't understand what they correcting.
Absolutely agree about The Handmaid's Tale. Season 1, is probably my favourite season of television ever. After that, it's just monotonous and the plot armor that June & Janine start getting becomes ridiculous. I still enjoy the later seasons but I can't say that they have that same spark. I thought it was interesting to see what the rebel territories were like, and personally I enjoy how difficult it is to actually figure out how June feels about Nick in S3 + S4 (IMO, she's manipulating him for her own ends, but this isn't a common read). Most everything else was just rehashing the same ideas over and over. What I feel would have been a much more interesting show, was to change the main character every season to someone else in Gilead, show us different aspects of the society and the lives of women in it, then the stakes could actually stay high.
@@cyryc I'll check out Deadwood. Seen Better Call Saul. I've seen overall a fuckton of TV. Just because I value THT S1 higher than most things, doesn't mean I haven't seen much TV. Theres things I like more overall, like Utopia (UK), You're the Worst and Love/Hate.
Changing the focus to different characters would have been better. It felt like they jumped the shark with season 2. I didn't want to keep watching after that.
With the Wheel of TIme I am quite sure the writers paid an intern to read the books quickly in a weekend and write up a summary of key plot points with a paragraph description for each character, maybe less, followed by a 4 minute ppt presentation on "world concepts". There they decided to go with infodumps in the show, and hoped readers of the books would be in the room to explain to their friends what it all means. It truly is bizarre.
This seems to the norm now. More of a high school project approach instead of the professional work you might expect of a hundreds of millions of dollar (arbitrary Hollywood/Streaming Service lunacy number) venture.
@@Fedorevsky Maybe we are kidding ourselves, they probably kept their 3 hour work day by simply looking at wikipedia and a few "top 10 characters of the wheel of time" websites and started the script the same day they got the job. What I can't believe is that with all that money they couldn't be bothered to get some professional help from someone, like Brandon Sanderson who had to come in and finish the books years ago. If I held the rights to that franchise of books I'd be looking to sue for damages; it looked like bargain bin garbage fantasy on the screen, who would read the books after watching it?
It's so bizarre to take this approach with a TV show made for streaming. For a movie you have very limited time so you may need to omit things or abbreviate. But in a show like this with such a massive budget, you can afford to take time. Why bother, if you're going to change things in a non-sensical way, even making it? Some of the novels are even soooo stretched out anyway you can take more time early and then compress things a bit down the line to keep good pacing. It really does feel like they either missed the point of what people liked about it or what it may have meant. By making it a mystery who the dragon reborn "might be" it's like they're trying to reinforce the idea that only that person is important, whereas in the book the fact that Rand knows he is from nearly the beginning is central to his personal struggle, thinking he needs to carry the world all on his own, eventually realizing that he doesn't have to do it alone. It's strange to undermine the story of one of the main characters so early.
Fight Club is an example of a great/original concept being distilled down into a tighter/cohesive movie that stays true to the themes of the book (often directly quotes lines) and also elevates it for the visual medium film.
Still glad that Balde Runner didn't follow the source material to slavishly. The book "do androids dream of electric sheep?" tells a different and sometimes weird story.
Something my grandmother used to say a lot when it came to movies based on books was, "either read the book or watch the movie, but not both." As someone who was never one to follow free advice, I can honestly say, she was right. I've read a lot of books that I loved and then went to go see a movie that was usually terrible in comparison. Not always, but often. Likewise, I've watched a movie and then read the book(s) it was based on and was disappointed, either with the book or the movie.
Yes, it's usually the movie that disappoints in such comparisons no matter which you see/read first. But there are some exceptions to this rule. None that I can think of off the top of my head but I know I have encountered a few over the years.
@@zogwort1522 Can't always tell something is good or bad until you read or watch it. Sometimes, people say something is bad and I think it's good or they say something is good and I think it stinks out loud. Also, that mindset you expressed is the same one that caused a certain European nation in the 1930s to burn books.
Interesting you should bring that up - in the case of _JoJo Rabbit_ - by all means see it and the source novel _Chasing Skies_ since they are completely different beasts with the same story.
I thought the TV series The Expanse was a good adaptation of the novels, it changed around many of the events but kept most of the same story beats and even expanded on some of the characters ( Ashford for example ) and ultimately I found the TV series more satisfying than the original novels.
Yeah that's the trick. Understanding why a story works and hitting the same beats (unless your Verhoven and you want to subvert the original entirely), that's the secret sauce. Helps that the Expanse team worked hand in hand with the writers.
I know some people still had petty complaints about it. (Like when one character is suddenly shot and another character reacts with a mixture of silent shock and offense, whereas I'm told in the novel they apparently had no/a very stern reaction.
@@J_Stronsky yes! 100% George R.R. Martin was too lazy ass to stay involved with GoT. The HBO GoT is almost a different piece of work. Like Weird Al Yankovic was merely adapting faithfully as he could a bunch of pop songs. Whereas "James S A Covey" stayed as consultants throughout _The Expanse_ adaptation.
@@hyperx72 that's a lie. The novel has all appropriate reaction and opprobrium to sudden "executions". The main one being Antony Dresden. The novels however do lack a high brow literary style, and are more grunge scifi, so they do not dwell at laborious length like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky on the condemning of Miller's actions. But they never lack a sense of decent morality. My only criticisms of _The Expanse_ TV would be the spaceship interiors for the Inners were a bit too slick/plastic in feel, but that's an aesthetic (and studio set budget issue), and could be justified (cost of fancy interior design in 2300 is gonna be marginal). The grungy Belter spaceships had the right contrast however. The only criticism of the novels is that the UBI dystopia is hilarious. It (like most scifi dystopias) has to assume human beings cannot advance spiritually and be creative about employing everyone for public purpose (q.v. the superior future macroeconomics in Kim S Robinson's _Science in the Capital _ series.) But y'know, sometimes a dystopia is easier to write than generating human conflict from a peaceful interplanetary civilization. _The Expanse_ works in this regard as a cautionary tail.
The Starship Troopers novel is good though. I also like the film but the novel gets military life down to a T feels like a documentary set in a dystopia of its own making.
The movie is just bad parody of the book IMO. Not sure why people like it so much. It treats it's own social commentary like a joke, so I don't think that's the reason. NPH, shower tits, and battle gore go a long way I guess.
@@Hudson316 That's what people say. In reality it's fascist credential are lacking. It's a world with no racial or sexual prejudice. The only thing remotely fascist is that you have to join the military and serve your country to vote or hold office. Gosh, I can practically smell the ovens firing up, lol. If everything is fascism, nothing is fascism. The movie is a parody of American militarism, which it paints up to resemble fascism at the aesthetic level, while positing that actually the bugs are the good guys. . . which is then played as a joke, thus destroying the supposed message. "IT'S AFRAID!!!"
@@derrickmiles5240 You seem to be conflating fascism and Nazism and to miss which parallels are actually being criticised, which is not generally about the racial/genocidal aspects of Nazism. The militaristic aspect of “only (ex-)soldiers should be able to govern” is actually quite directly taken from both Italian fascism and German Nazism, both of which idolised the vision of a “trenchocracy” and where both Hitler and Mussolini explicitly portrayed themselves as “the man from the trenches”. It is thus not an example of simply “playing the fascism card” to highlight the fascistic aspects of the slogan “service guarantees citizenship”, when this is quite clearly presented as only (ex-)soldiers being allowed a say in the running of society. It is instead highlighting a direct parallel to ideas and rhetoric in historical fascism (and Nazism). Also, the totally alien, utterly antagonistic and one-dimensional bugs also fit well into the kind of existential, cosmological foreign threat that were key to fascist and Nazi propaganda with their emphasis on violent struggle as the key aspect of politics and society, as well as a siege mentality. A militaristic society that completely revolves around and defines itself in terms of war is thus also very much in line with fascist and Nazi thoughts on that topic. This conceptualisation of politics and society as “war by other means” has been tied by numerous historians to the total mobilisation of society for war during WWI, not least in the latter years in the German Empire with the Hindenburg Programme, but also with parallels drawn to Soviet “war communism” (the latter continuing under the Russian Civil War),
@@DebatingWombat You're wrong actually. Hitler hated war. His opinion was that mostly cowards survive in a war, thus dragging society down. His ideal society did not revolve around war, rather it was centered mostly on the philosophy of Romanticism. Every faction in WW1 and WW2 were militaristic and authoritarian, because war necessitates both. What made Germany different was it's focus on the natural order, social hierarchy, protecting established indigenous German culture, protecting German people from the slavery of communism, and expanding and solidifying it's borders. Hitler would never have instituted anything like what is depicted in the Starship Troopers book. No idea contained within resembles anything within the fascist ideology. The supposed critique is literally just militarism and authoritarianism = fascism. Militarism and authoritarianism have been extremely common traits of at war nations since the dawn of time. The movie is not that smart, so I wouldn't expect any more from it. But the people uncritically accepting it as a critique of the fascist ideology, when it is clearly just a parody of American militarism, given a fascist paint job? They have no excuse.
Lord of The Rings: The rings of power just came out and I thought this video was going to be about that. I know Georg couldn't possibly have had the time to do a proper video on it, but I would still like to hear his opinions about it on a later date.
I only watched the first episode so far last night but was fairly impressed and it far exceeded my expectations, that were very low, granted - but I haven't read the Silmarillion and I don't know anything about the lore so I'm just hoping the tell a good and compelling story because so far the production value, writing and acting have been rather good. Fanboys might have a vastly different take on it though, but thankfully that does not matter to me in the slightest, nor should it impact the vast majority of the viewers.
One of my favorite times a film diverged from the source material is the Wild at Heart movie that added a huge Wizard of Oz theme that I thought was both awkward and excellent.
@@redman9493 Abso-fucking-lutely. I was shocked when I first saw it that it's not more of a 'cult classic'. I would have thought the young people today would love it for it's aesthetic alone.
Wild at Heart is underrated? I didn't know that. That's interesting. I first saw it when it premiered at Cannes and I've always enjoyed it and anecdotally everyone I knew loved it too at the time when it hit cinemas in my home country later on. That includes even my parents and uncle. It must be said that most people I know liked or loved David Lynch because of Twin Peaks on TV back then. It was a major thing over here. Everyone got the LP of the OST and it was played at parties everywhere. The show everyone including your parents, co-workers and neighbors watched on TV weekly and discussed at the water fountain at school and watercooler at work. We still only had a couple of TV channels at the time unless you had expensive satellite which was considered something only the well off had access to. Anything and everything David Lynch was shown in our cinemas for some time after that. They even re-released Blue Velvet to cinemas at one point for a short second run. Anyway enough of my rambling! It's very interesting to hear that Wild at Heart is kind of underrated elsewhere and it's not really a thing anymore with the young crowd. Sad.
@@Fedorevsky I'd say that pretty much everything David Lynch has done is somehow remembered for sure. Twin Peaks especially (and obviously for good reason). I'd even argue that most young people are familiar with Eraserhead; even if it's just the poster. But Wild at Heart feels really ignored. Maybe its because I'm in the UK or because when I saw it at the cinema around 4 years ago (it was shown as a huge Lynch marathon) I fell deeply in love with the movie. The film has so many wonderful shifts in tone and such a feeling of 'youthful rebellion' that I am just surprised it's not become popular with the young people of today. Best way to judge how popular a film is with millennials is to watch animated TV shows and see how many references there are to something. Big Lewboski and Twin Peaks get referenced all the time; even now. Maybe one day I will see a character talk about their snakeskin jacket and be proved wrong haha. Thanks for the great comment; I am a lover of long yt comments
The original Planet of the Apes movie was very different from the book but the movie was vastly better than the book and the ending is now a scifi iconic scene.
I prefer the tv series where they work out it's future earth in the first 15 minutes and not have to look at the plant life, horses throughout, apes etc, let alone a ruined statue of liberty.
One problem that many who adapt something forget or ignore is the way society changed from the moment the original story was published. Yes some tales maintain a timeless quality but many indirectly reflect the time period. Adapting something while ignoring that can result in something that feels weirdly out of place. Or something that misses the point of the original if you decide to superficially 'modernise' it. If you're gonna adapt something the best thing to do is get a history book(and not the theme park version) and read up on the era see what subtext that was obvious at the time might get lost today. If you want to update something you gotta do it in a way that doesn't miss the point.
My problem with The Handmaid's Tale was that few events in it are more realistic than the barrel escape scene from The Hobbit, yet they lack all the enjoyable slapstick antics of the funny looking dwarves.
I skipped the series because the concept seemed too unbelievable. Only a few years later it feels totally believable, but I still won't watch because Elizabeth Moss's eyes terrify me.
Sadly, the book is based on events that have happened in North America and elsewhere. The women of Iran and Afghanistan, for example, were probably not disappointed with its lack of realism.
They surprised me with "The Mist" even though the CGI was subpar. I was impressed with their ending, especially Thomas Jane's acting. Nobody else agrees with me that "The Exorcist" book was better than the movie tho.
@@Imgema you mean when they thought they had the choice between a quick death and being tortured, eaten, dismembered or used as an egg sac? Are you high?
I prefer The Exorcist novel, and that's not to take anything away from the movie its still one of the greatest ever made IMO. Very few people agree with me that Exorcist III is also one of the best movies ever made though (but it is).
One of the funniest examples is Thirteen Reasons Why. The book only extends as far as the first series, in a show that arguably shouldn't have been made in the first place. Then you get 3 more seasons based upon nothing, in a show that digs itself deeper into trouble, with Netflix being unable to admit that it should be cancelled
The adaptation of Foundation was especially bad about this. *Spoilers* The book took place over centuries. Characters change because they die and the entire point of the story is that the fall of the Empire is inevitable so let’s have a way to rebuild when it happens. The TV series says “fuck all that, let’s do a story about revolution and a magical girl that is the key to everything!”
There's a great postscript to the Shining page to screen conundrum: King hated the changes Kubrick made to the Shining and was not involved in the production but was more closely involved in the movie adaptation of it's sequel, Doctor Sleep. Mike Flanagan's adaptation is very faithful to the King novel up until the end which manages to be true to the spirit of the book whilst weaving King's original ending to the Shining into the story. The end result is a critically acclaimed first film that King hated and a critically acclaimed sequel that King loved, neither of which are completely faithful tellings of the stories King originally wrote.
10:58 What I've heard is that Kubrick was working off the US and not the UK version of the novel, so he didn't use that ending because the American publisher thought the original ending was too unrealistic. Supposedly Kubrick read that last chapter and stayed the course.
The funny thing is that as much as the show tries to be like the book, it goes for much more shock value that makes no sense. Yeah, let's torture pregnant handmaids that could lead them to miscarriage! They also kept some lines from the book that make no sense in context of the show. June sees her daughter and the matriarch of the family that adopted her claims the kid has "her mother's eyes". Yeah, that black girl totally looks like Elizabeth Moss! Worth mentioning is that Margaret Atwood herself wrote a sequel in which Aunt Lydia becomes a sort-of undercover feminist so now we have two different canons where one is actually a subversive genius and the other handcuffs a woman's hand to a lit stove.
One of the great things about the book was how it used methods of oppression that had been used before. You couldn't dismiss it, saying "well that'll never happen", because it has happened (if not all at once). By playing for shock value, the show cheapened the concept. Dystopias work if you're taking existing things to their natural conclusion. If you just go off the rails and do things that are shocking but make no sense, you lose the impending dread for the audience of this world being possible.
@@knavishimp6630 Not to mention, the book does address some interesting ideas that the show glosses over. Aunt Lydia compares herself to the the sex negative feminists of the 70's-80's and how their goals to an extent align perfectly. It also deals with how they also fought with the church since even Gilead's ideals were way too radical for them and even other religious sub-sects. To me the show in many ways is representative of American culture in that it plays to extremes. Just look at discourse regarding abortion, politicians will argue in favor of making it a crime, comparing it to murder and forcing rape victims to carry their abuser's offspring or very late term abortions are considered okay and even as a form of contraception. In reality? People have far more nuanced views than those and playing to any of those two extremes is never a good thing. The book wasn't tame but even with how illogical it could be, it was engaging and it felt fairly grounded. The show tries way too hard to be disturbing and unpleasant but it feels so forced. As despised as the film adaptation from the 90's was, it actually follows the novel far more accurately and its religious, idyllic Stepford Wive-ish dystopian atmosphere makes it far more disturbing to me than the show.
I didn't get that from The Testaments. I felt like Aunt Lydia saw the writing on the wall, knew Gilead would fall and wanted to position herself in a way that would benefit her. The same way she positioned herself in Gilead. Her actions within Gilead as told in THT and her story of her own role in it are contradictory. (Not saying your perspective is wrong. Atwood said that Aunt Lydia was written in an intentionally grey manner so judgement of her would be left to the reader)
The thing don't like about the book, and I like the book a lot, it that we don't really know too much about what happens to the middle and low class of that society. You know, 90% of the country's population. Those who are not politicians (commanders) or men so rich they are treated like if they were (praised doctors, dentists, etc). From what I recall, it's the classic "the man go to work, their wife stays at home and do all the housework" which isn't really that dystopic given that was the reality just a few decades ago. It's only the rich that got insanely twisted and sadist towards women.
It's good to see you back, Georg. Hope things are getting better. It's good to see you talking about movies again. Hearkens back to your older stuff, which got me into your content in the first place. I would not mind seeing more of it again, especially if you'd like a less heavy subject to work with.
Now the gumby film is more firmly in the collective unconscious of those who would find it the most depressing. This, of course, increases the chance that it will indeed be made.
Just pretend The Handmaiden's Tale is a mini series. Season 1 has the perfect ending and the other seasons go off the rails so fast it's giving GOT a run for its money.
The Leftovers is an example of a series in which the first season is based on a book, and the second and third are completely original expansions. In that case, however, I felt that the series got better and better until the last scene was so incredibly poignant and effective.
Anyone ever see that video of Peter Jackson just sitting in the back of a Hobbit set with a thousand yard stare while several extras do voice overs talking about how nobody had a shooting schedule for days or weeks so they just came up wirh fight scenes to fill time with? Yeah, the Hobbit trilogy was a bit of a stretch. Didn't care for it much, myself. And I'm a Tolkien FIEND. Here, let me demonstrate my Tolkien fiendishness by walking you through my entire collection.... heh heh j/k j/k! 😉 I would NEVER do that to my friends here...... For MONEY! I'll do it for FREE! OK, ok... So... Starting from the top left....... 🤪 😉
Good video. I like you're take on starship Troopers, even if I disagree with your take on the book. I find it interesting that it's rumoured (I say this as accounts on this vary) that the very reason Robert A Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land was because he was put on a pedestal by right wing militarists for his depiction of the military in Starship Troopers. It is said that he wanted to make a point that the stories a autor writes are not a one to one correlation to what a writer believes. Though I think this should be amended to he felt the need to finish and get Stranger in a Strange Land released next as he writing it before he conceived of the idea of Starship Troopers which was the seed of an idea born from the flak he got from other science fiction authors for the stance he took against others wanting a unilateral ban on US nuclear testing. And reading the book from this stance you can see that he is writing about the upside of the military and how it safeguards the people, rather than being an all out pro facist peice of writing like many people depict it as. That he is more using it is a counter argument to zeitgeist of science fiction authors of the time who were popularising the sort of idea that violence and war is nothing but bad and an endemic of a culture that is truly divisive and prejudicial in it's views and that to truly reach a place of utopian harmony we need to disavow ourselves completely from this part of our nature. It's not Pro facist, it's just critquing the worst aspect of entitlement that might come when people believe they're totally right in their beleifs just because they have the right to express them and the fear that people will forget that there's no such a free lunch and in fact the best things in life are in fact the lunchs you needed to pay for. He does this by exploring the idea of a Meritocracy/meritocratic democracy. It's funny because I think the exact sort of perversion of democratic ideals he was showing the emergence of this new as reaction too might not be too far off both the extreme views held and capaigned for by both the left and right of today. It should also be noted that the majority of civil services for a civilian to earn the title of citizen are not militartic in his universe, it's just that to show the true benefits of a meritocracy that's based on how much you put on the line to prove yourself, that there's nothing that trumps putting your actual life on the line. Whether you completely agree with the views he expresses in this book it doesn't matter really, but I think people miss the depth there on a surface read. I think as well if this was written later in his career it would be even better as I think the fact that this is considered the last of his "Juvenile Novels" that it tows the line the line between being very accessible to a younger demographic with it's setting and conflict while also being a worthwhile read for adults with thought provoking themes. I think Paul Verhoven missed this point as well, but thank god for that as Starship troopers was just a fun satirical romp at the time and got me into the book and made me appreciate the different approaches each artist took to the ideas. That being said, I do hope a director tries in earnest to represent the themes and ideas Heinlein explores or maybe even expands on it's pros and cons for the modern day. I do enjoy Stranger in a Strange Land more as a book but both hold weight with their ideas. I also find it funny that needing to bring out stranger in a Strange Land next caused him to be put on a pedestal by the hippy generation to the point where he wanted to make his address unlisted as he was constantly getting tracked down by crazed fans who viewed him as some sort of prophet. I vaguely remember the foreward of Stranger in a Strange Land where it is written that he was approached by a fan on his property and he had a chuckle remembering this incident wondering if this person who idolised him so much for writing this book could ever conceive or would ever find out that he wrote a piece of fiction like Starship Troopers as well.
Paul Verhoeven didn't even finish the book just read some of the opening before deciding it was awful fascist trash and decided to go the route he did. The ideas in the book that he managed to read are probably very alien to him considering his upbringing in the Netherlands with relatives who had experienced being under nazi control during the war. Also him being a very European style leftist in his views and somewhat of a hot head of sorts. He would not surprisingly be prone to overreaction to the material. To see a more mature approach to war and conflict his European WW2 films are much better balanced takes on the topic. His Hollywood films and the ones made in Europe are in many aspects like like night and day in general. Other people on the production had of course read the whole book as evidenced by the film containing at least traces of the whole story within its running time. I'd too love to see a proper earnest adaptation to film of the book by someone who likes the source material. Or at the very least read the whole thing
While I enjoyed the flim for what it was I do wish they changed the title. It feels underhanded to make a satire of a work with the same name as your target, it poisons the well for all future attempts at that book to to be made into a flim
@@roryscott2941 It wasn't Verhoeven's choice to use the name. I think the studio noticed some similarities to the book, so they bought the rights to the name to prevent a lawsuit. Verhoeven only read the book (and only some of it) after making the movie.
The novel of A Clockwork Orange presumes the philosophy that some people are just born evil, whereas Kubrick heavily implies Alex was abused, and that is why he's become evil.
As you say, dealing with source material is tricky. When making an adaptation you have to get at least the essence of the book to get what made the story so good. No film or films is going to have everything established as in a novel, but at least make it believable within the context. You are so right with The Handmaids Tale. The novel was written decades ago, but the first season follows it quite well. The dystopian world shown through the handmaid is very good and the visuals do enhance the feelings of despair. I watched the second season and felt like you that the story wasn't moving forward. I watched a quick summary of the next two seasons and decided I was finished with the show. I also agree with you on Jaws. I wasn't really interested in the movie when it came out because of my ambivalent feelings about the book. I really liked the movie when I did see it. I think it was a blessing for Spielberg that the mechanical shark wouldn't work all the time. He had to focus on the characters and how they felt about what was happening, and how the dynamics of the town and the shark hunters reacted. I think I'll check out the third movie since you liked that one.
Just a heads-up: Georg is moving to another place, so he could move again, closer to Cirencester, where the nightlife is cracking and reminds him of chasing the pony.
Georg, you're kind of an intellectual. If you get time, compare the end of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock" novel of 1938 with the rewritten ending by Terrence Rattigan of the 1947 movie adaptation. It's one of those occasions where the new ending was widely regarded as a brilliant reinvention but it was otherwise hated by the actual author.
The neat thing about The Hobbit films is that the original story is tucked within them, there are some excellent edits of the material in to a single far better film. (The 'Tolkein edit' that I have really is the only way Ill ever watch them/it again outside of my finding another similar though better edit.) It has made me kind of long for Jackson himself to have a crack at it, perhaps he wouldnt be able to top the already existing attempts, but on the other hand he may pull off a definitive version, especially if any such attempt was backed by the studio and of course the original source material. A bit of a pipe dream Im sure, but if you think about it, why not? Its practically free for the studio to make it unless they wanted to make some plumbing scenes to better glue things together, Im sure the natural buzz would drop the marketing costs required, and itd be capable of generating enormous additional profits. (Though Ive no idea about the rights situation and other complicating factors.)
TBH, I like the Rankin-Bass animated version from the 1970s. It's more faithful to the simple story of the book and has a charm that the movies are completely lacking. It was a children's book; it shouldn't be an epic three-part PG-13 film series.
@@MrWhipple42 I see my position as the most ardent defender of the trilogy hasn’t changed. I cherish them, bought them in UHD 4K, and any attempts to cut them or “improve them” fail miserably IMO. What is this lack of charm? I didn’t see that at all. Then again, I also like them BECAUSE of their lack epic scale and grittiness.
I'm told that there are actually elements of the book that the movies remove, or alter in an irrevocable way. One cited example being the part with the talking wolves. I have not seen the movies though, and hopefully I never will.
To be honest about the Wheel of Time book series- it's just as produced and padded as any modern TV series. It starts off as a young adult epic fantasy, it's a bit of a pastiche of Lord of the Rings and Dune. Jordan had a lot of experience as a jobbing writer doing serialised fantasy as a contract writer doing Conan stories, he simply took his experience and made his own successful thing. The first few books are well done, but after about number 4 it becomes repetitive and padded to an obvious extent. From what I saw of the Amazon series though you're right, it's terrible and nothing to do with the source material. It would have been child's play to turn the first book into a fun epic fantasy film. The fact they didn't do that speaks to their ineptitude.
it's not really child play though, is it? The book has a very episodic structure, jumping from event to event (oh we're attacked! oh a haunted city! how, the party's split up! oh were no longer going to tar valon, let's take a magical path to Mordor!) it needed to be tightened up a great deal - not even speaking of setting up future seasons, it wouldn't really work as a prestige TV series, nor frankly would it hold up that well as a fantasy epic, if it were not for the dune style criticism of chosen one narratives and the breadth of the worldbuilding. I won't argue that the adaptation was done poorly, and failed at setting up future events, adding considerable confusion on top. But a faithful adaptation would have been absolutely laughable as well.
So, it ended a lot of its episodes like GoT did. Many of its episodes ended with Khaleesi giving a big grand speech and then her never really doing much later on. Thankfully they took her where she was always headed, crazy town.
what's funny is that it is pretty realistic. In real life there are a ton of filler episodes and problems often loop for years with no opportunity to change your circumstances without extreme risk.
I remember when Handmaid's tale was announced, I already read the book before watching it, and the first season was surprisingly accurate, somethings were even better than the source material, so I has some pretty high expectations for the other seasons, since they had a great deal of creative license to do whatever they want about how Gilead was toppled down, and I ended up having a compilation of torture and execution p*rn, it was so trashy bad that I gave up after the third season, it went from the best adaptation to the worst so fast...
As always, a pleasure to see your work. The Wheel of Time did allegedly fire the writer from the show to make room for someone a little more up to date with modern society. Ironically this lead to the original writer being hired by HBO to do House of the Dragon. Kind of makes me chuckle.
Great video Georg. I thought you might have mentioned how Atwood's sequel, The Testaments, impacted the (already commenced) Handmaid's Tale adaptation. But I feel like you've saved me some watching effort anyway. I know you thought the first season was well done but I find even knowing second-class greed-motivated elaborations can detract from a good first season/movie. And yes. The endlessly rehashed "theme park" adaptations are usually too grating to enjoy. It's great to just be able to watch something and enjoy it sometimes - especially when the source material was so good. If it has to be shorter, even blander in some ways, so be it. Sometimes we just want a movie that's what it says on the tin. Beginning. Middle. End. Put simply, if you're going to radically depart from source you'd better be Stanley Kubrick. I'm tired of movies that either have fifty versions (well... one of them might not be shit?) or, if they do contain gems, are so overall drowning in their own bloat they look like appeals to viewers to help edit them. I still have a love-hate relationship with The Hobbit movies and can barely stand stand them despite there being so much good in them. Even vomit might contain a morsel of good food. That doesn't mean we should be expectedly to eat it. So to writers and directors I'd say, throw in some spice but not the whole bottle. Throw in a pre LOTR standoff with Sauron. Okay... A blatant but at least entertaining filler barrel ride sequence. If you must. Add Radagast... riiight. Okay. So much straining going on. And on and on the departures went. But... there needed to be a limit. Not every story needs Mills and Boon subplots with star-crossed lovers. Elfio and Juliet was unnecessary and just added to a wealth of already unnecessary distraction. Tacky Hollywood garbage. At what point is the Hobbit just not the Hobbit anymore? They really should make another matrix film. Or starwars. Just one wasn't enough. (Hey... Denial can work...)
I think I grew disenchanted with drawn out TV-series as early as my late teens/early 20s with the X-Files. Oh I see, this is going nowhere. When Duchovny bowed out I had already stopped watching. I did give one of the recently made seasons a try just for the hell of it, but Gillian Anderson being hot as shit in her 50s isn't really enough to keep watching. It's still going nowhere.
I had the opposite reaction, I felt it was made pretty clear early on that Mulder was stumbling around in dark, barely scratching the surface and even if he got answers he wouldn't believe them anyway, hence "I want to believe". And I was OK with that.
@Dan Nguyen Yes, I do get that but again I was OK with it because if we as an audience where privy to that information, Mulder stubbing in the dark would be less entertaining/endearing and more frustrating. I saw it less that the antagonists lacked direction and more that we simply did not know what their ultimate goals where, just like Mulder. I always felt that it was more than hinted at that the antagonists we get to see Mulder and Scully interact with were pretty low down the pecking order themselves and basically being played of off one another, each believing the other knew something they didn't.
@Dan Nguyen But In the case of the X-files to me it felt intentional, its not like Lost where they wrote themselves into a corner down a rabbit hole, Carter could have easily steered the show and plot lines to some conclusions but it was like he/they chose not too. If this was done to keep the show running for as long as possible for maximum profit, or was a creative decision is up for debate I suppose. But I personally think it was the latter Or maybe its just that "I want to believe" 😉
Yes, even though I was relatively young when the show started airing I noticed rather quickly that the show went nowhere and also rather quickly started hating any episode which was not Outer Limits styled AKA Monster of the week. I stopped watching it all together rather fast as I just lost interest completely in waiting for the good episodes. It just wasn't worth it sitting at home waiting for a possibly good episode. So I quit it probably towards the end of season 2. I later (much later) lent a box set from a friend who was more into it than me and found a list of all the Outer Limits style episodes and just watched all of those. Some of those are really good.
Starship Troopers the book isn’t social Darwinist at all. There’s a scene where the recruiter tells Rico that if a quadriplegic wants to do federal service then the recruiter has to find the quadriplegic a job.
I think The Terror would have benefitted from them removing the supernatural elements, the true story was horrific enough and the supernatural stuff only served to diminish this.
@@absinthe4breakfast299 That’s from the book, the producers could have easily made more seasons about Crozier and the rescue parties facing the unknown
@@T.S.Birkby I yeah I know it's from the book, I just feel like it's a bit of a missed opportunity, the Frankiln expidition is something that has interested me for a long time and I would have loved to see a proper dramatisation of this ill fated mission.
@@absinthe4breakfast299 Just watch the series The North Water (2021) with Colin Farrell. It is pretty much just what you described. Or as close as we're ever going to get I suppose. If you haven't seen it already.
IRT ClockWork Orange, there were two versions of the book: The version published in the US omitted the final chapter. That was the version Kubrick read and got inspired to make the film from. I believe he only learned of the "final chapter" after his concept of the film had already developed.
You joke about it, but I would actually LOVE to direct The Gumby Movie. I was a huge Gumby fan as a kid, the 80's was the height of claymation and Gumby was king. I could do something really great with a half decent script. Imagine Roger Rabbit but for claymation, something blended that well. Or we can stay in clayland, however the studio wants it, I can work in their box and turn out something of value to old fans and new alike. And I'm not even a great writer, just a pretty good one. Gumby ruled, man, check out some clips sometime, compare it to what else was around then.
regarding the wheel of time, It has to be said that the plot of the books is incredibly messy, and thus an adaptation would have to tighten it up considerably to make it viable on screen, even for a longform, decade long TV show. "Betraying" the source material was inevitable, it's just that in this case it's been done rather poorly, and its compounded by lackluster directing.
Yeah the books are 18 carat crap when you get down to it. You're not being paid by the word, but fantasy fans will read anything as long as you can beat goats to death with the hardcover edition. The best adaptation of TWoT might actually be a little known first person shooter of the same name. I'm not joking.
Yes wot was really tricky thing to try to adapt even the fanbase is divided on the overall quality of the books. The showrunners had no confidence in the story and tried to spice things up to make it more in line with modern YA and it failed.
@@fallingintime the biggest structural change to the plot was the implication of the tower which honestly isn't that YA. I just feel like they didn't know what story they wanted to tell and what modifications they came up with didn't come into a cohesive whole.
We can. But not all the time apparently. There a plenty of miniseries. They will call it season 1 on streaming for some reason. But in reality it really is just a mini series and was planned that way too. I wish they make more of those. Or at least properly planned series of no more than 2 or 3 seasons at most. Longer than that is usually too much for most stories. Too much filler.
Hollywood seems to have forgotten the old saying "always leave them wanting more." They've done this in the pursuit of profits at the sake of story. Milk people's interest or nostalgia. As you say: greed wins, story loses.
