Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, this is Trevor, also TH from the I Think You Should podcast, the podcast that you're about to listen to. ah This actually started out as a solo project that I wanted to find people to partner with, but as you'll see from this first episode and the ongoing ones from this season, ah my friend B and I, as my co-host, it just was too perfect a combo. were having too much fun, so we decided to stick with it. and That's how you got the I Think You Should pod that you're about to hear.
Speaker: If you want to reach out to us with topics, offers to be on an episode to talk about something you're interested in or you think more people should know about, please email us at Ithinkyoushouldpod at gmail.com.
Speaker: Like I said earlier, this is a season, so we recorded a number of episodes that we'll be releasing over the next few weeks. It started in the fall of 2025, and you'll get a chance to hear our thoughts on a bunch of different things. So, thanks. Enjoy.
Speaker: All
Speaker: right. Hi, welcome to I Think You Should, the podcast about stuff you should watch, read, listen to, play, e etc. I'm one half of your host, Trevor, and the other half is...
Speaker: It's B. It's B. And we aren't one person with two heads. We are two different people. It's funny you mention that because we've been playing Out of the Abyss of my D&D group and the cult of people making two-headed creatures is a thing. So I was like, oh, but we could be one person with two heads. I mean, we could be.
Speaker: yeah But this week, we're bringing you something we think you should stop doing! um or at least some people should stop doing. But, Foist, Bea, you got anything fun you're playing, watched, listened to, read? am neck deep in Starsand Island right now.
Speaker: Okay, is this another Cozy Core moment? Sure is, bud. and it
Speaker: It's in early access and I was not going to buy it because I was playing something else. I just played Ever After Falls, which was fine, but then got real slow at a part that I was like, hey, this sucks. And so I was looking for something else to play and the Cozy community was going apeshit over Starsand Island. And I was like, say less. So I...
Speaker: uh bought it which i shouldn't have because money and then i was like oh i'm gonna win even though you can't win a cozy game mean can't you though can't you though yeah in your heart of hearts yeah let me see i'll i'll tell you usually how much i love a game is based on what my play time is versus how long i've owned the game Ah, yes, the math between those two.
Speaker: Let's steam tell on me right now. Okay. ah I played this game for the first time on
Speaker: ah February... 18th. That's 10 days ago, people. from february No, I'm lying to you. February 19th. February 19th. Less than 10 days ago. Okay, so February 19th, I played it for the first time, and I have 37 hours in this I'm sorry. That's a lot of hours. It's a lot of hours. And also I've already become an expert in like two out of the five professions because I don't, I don't come to play. Okay. Like listen, bitch. I'm going to win whatever. Break this game over my knee. yeah Yeah. Like, if you want me to play a cozy game, quote unquote, cozy. My version of playing a cozy game is not sleeping. So it's just I have tried to like, apparently speed run a cozy game, which is the opposite of cozy. But I recommend it.
Speaker: It is still an EA. I don't know what else they're going to do with it. I haven't read like the roadmap or anything like that because I like surprises. So yeah um I love it as it is. it is Japanese animation style. So it's very like JRPG. um The characters are cute. The animals are cute. The mechanics are cute. There is... combat that was very easy to cheese so if you're not like a combat girl perfect for you it's real easy to be like i'm just gonna stand just outside the the ring of death and just shoot arrows at you and then i'll kill you and you can't hit me it was great um
Speaker: So I have genuinely enjoyed it and I'm not bored with it after 37 hours. like I still have a ton of shit to do because there is yeah so much to do in this game. So ah yeah, I do recommend it. And you you had to make yourself rollerblades at one point so you don't have to walk anywhere, which is great. say Say less, Chief. I'm in. It's really fun. Like, so if like you're a cozy person that's looking for something that's not Stardew and it has like a different art style, but it still has a lot of the similar mechanics and like there's, there's cute animals, there's breeding and mechanics and you can make like pink bunnies and fucking blue sheep and it's, it's fun. You're having a good time.
Speaker: Sweet. um i I was trying to... Yeah, I'm going to go with... like I've been playing a smattering of different games. um So the one I'm going to wax more poetic on is Repo in a second. Yes. Yeah, because that game scares the shit out of me. Also, I'm bad at it. Also, I can't stop playing it. So um that's quite the combo. ah No, but i've I played a game, Hell is Us, which is...
Speaker: and There was some point where I was itching for a bit of a Souls-like experience because every once in a while I want a nice atmospheric Souls-like. ended up settling on Dymesia, which is very good, and I really like it. um But those are games that I often play, and then I i get tired of the oppressive difficulty and I step away.
Speaker: But Hellas Us had a really interesting concept and story behind it of like some kind of civil war taking place in a fictional country, but also monsters, but also maybe some time loopy shit.
Speaker: um And I started playing it and it's very, very good storytelling. It's a very interesting setup where you don't have a map. uh exactly or at least you don't have indicators of where to go you have to pay attention to clues in the game and and and figure out what your next steps are ah it's fun and it also does do souls combat but when you kill enemies they don't respawn if you die which i appreciate because it gives you more of the freedom of like go ahead and try stuff because it's not really consequence um heavy if you
Speaker: You know, if you if you if you fuck up, you can still go back and try again without having to wade through all the enemies, which was always the challenge with like Bloodborne is one of my favorite games. I've never finished it because again, I'm bad at those games and also the slog of going through all the enemies to get to that, you know, last point you died at sometimes becomes overbearing.
Speaker: um But yeah, i i was playing that. but I played some Remnant 2, which I really loved that first game. Buddy Zach and his wife got it. And so it's a three-person co-op. That's the max party size.
Speaker: Three people. That's quite a number. Yeah, it's an interesting idea. But it actually works really well. And in the second game, what I will say that is the best feature over the first one, which again is a game I quite like,
Speaker: The character classes and features are so much more diverse in terms of actually feeling like different characters' classes. ah I'm playing a very tanky character, which Kiana and Zach pointed out is outside of my comfort zone normally. But I got a real big sword, so it's cool. um And that that's an over-the-shoulder, again, kind of Souls-like shooter.
Speaker: And it's just, it's extremely well made in terms of the gameplay. It feels really fun to shoot and fight stuff in that game. um The bosses are very challenging, but they aren't...
Speaker: I would not describe them as like feeling like cheap bosses. Once you figure out what they're doing, you can kind of counter the patterns that they throw at you. Okay. And and because it's not doing the souls like thing of just like gigantic monstrosity bosses with like, you know, ah a bunch of different timing, the sort of like the the swing as they like wind up or whatever. This is much more of like, there was a boss we fought where,
Speaker: It sends these lasers out that spin in like a checkerboard pattern kind of where you can duck between them. And it you can hear through the audio when they're powering up so you know when to roll out of the way.
Speaker: And that was actually a really fun fight because it's like, yeah, I'm taking shots at this thing. And then I hear the you know sound effect coming and bam, you hit the dodge and you duck under it and you keep going. Right. Yeah, it was really cool. That was a very entertaining like boss fight. So that's been good. But the game that has consumed my friend and group is this fucking repo game, which you're aware of. I love repo.
Speaker: But for those who don't know, this game is batshit. So I first of all described it as this is like a Roblox game with some slight improvements. And I don't mean that to disparage Roblox or this game itself. I just, that's it felt like. no, no, we disparage Roblox. Okay, we'll disparage Roblox. But that's what it kind of felt like. It's like...
Speaker: You know, very simple assets, very simple settings, but like the basic concept is you and your buddies have to go into these extremely haunted fucking places and get as much loot as possible to pay the tax man so you can leave. it's a co-op horror extraction game um yeah lethal company yes asma phobia right without the uh phasmophobia is like the upscale right but it's like a triple a version of that if among us yes that's a good game co-op horror extraction game because you do look like the guys in a among us basically like you're just these little shell guys running around that make funny faces um right It's dumb.
Speaker: It's very simple. It's in pretty early access. Still, it's not even like it's at like the point three phase of like its development. And I cannot stop playing this goddamn game. And it's a physics game to select the objects you pick up.
Speaker: You can pull towards you and above you, but like their weight impacts how easily you move them. If you bump them into things, they break. Like the first time I played it, I grabbed a plate. I turned around, smacked into a wall and it shattered. And I go, oh, fuck. So. And then there's the monsters who are just so bizarre.
Speaker: There's the tricycle from the shining that follows you around and beeps at you. There's the gigantic floating head who scares the bejesus out of me. Every time he just pops up. um It's like, it's so weird and goofy.
Speaker: But if you're playing with friends, it's hysterically funny. Yeah. Because when things go wrong, everybody kind of loses their shit. And it's very funny to watch that at least in my group, because we've admitted not one of us is good at this game. There are four of us playing and nobody actually is good at the game. Well, if you're taking it seriously, then you've missed the premise of the game, in my opinion. Like if you're trying to like min max and be good at at repo, then it's like, yeah, that's kind of not the point. Yeah. When we first played it, I like went and looked up some threads about like the best items to get when and you know different strats for the monsters. And I just went, no, I'm good. i I'm just going to brute force this thing because it's funny as hell. um
Speaker: And it's led to some really hilarious reactions. ah Off mic, I mentioned to you before that I have one of two responses to when things go tits up in this game. ah And one of them is to sprint away from the problem blindly and usually end up on the far side of the map.
Speaker: where in some cases when you have to extract, you have to extract twice. And I'll often find the second extraction point, which I argue to my team means my panic is actually a benefit. However, the game only works with proximity chat.
Speaker: So it's not really because I'm on the other side of the map at the next destination and incapable of informing my teammates that I found it. So it isn't really helpful, but I try to justify it.
Speaker: ah The other way that I react is just to basically panic and run into circles around whatever you know evil thing is trying to destroy me, usually to no avail. so That's fair.
Speaker: It's a good game. It's really funny. It's definitely a party game. Like, play it with other people is is the entire premise of it. Yeah. And yeah, but we're not here to talk about those because B and I got into a deep conversation mere less than 20 minutes ago yeah and decided this has to be talked about, which is stop making bad movie adaptations of books, people.
Speaker: yeah My God. Please, please, please, please, please. We beg of you. Yeah, so the the thing that sparked this conversation is the Wuthering Heights film by what's her ridiculous name? what's this woman Emerald Fennel. Yeah, I hate everything that you just said. um i like emeralds and I like fennel, but I do not like them together and I do not like them as a filmmaker.
Speaker: No, yeah. So we're going to talk about... um We came up with five examples of relatively recent bad adaptations um that are just... should not have been made. ah We also came up with a couple examples of some good adaptations that are relatively recent.
Speaker: And then we did want to talk about good movies that are bad adaptations. So like... You based it in theory on an existing property or text, but your movie really isn't that at all.
Speaker: And yet it actually worked out, which is the rarest, I think, outcome with these situations. um So do you want to talk Wuthering Heights first? No, no, no.
Speaker: Okay. want you. Well, let's talk about Wuthering Heights, but I want you as the person who loves Bronte. Okay. Oh, to wax poetic about. Yeah. Yeah. You are the Bronte baby. I'm going to, I'm going to add my two cents in in, but you know, like where, where you are the person that loves yearning on the moors.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, okay. So this is the thing that nobody knows about Wuthering Heights apparently, which I find, um, frankly alarming and yet another piece of evidence, uh, that education has failed us, says the teacher. Um,
Speaker: Wuthering Heights is not a romance novel at all. Not even close. it is It is, I have argued many times it is a horror novel masquerading as a romance or using some of the romantic tropes or settings or tools in order to like, you know, sneak in kind of behind you with the horror elements, right?
Speaker: um And i I'm going to reference Chris Thompson's article from about a week ago that he titled Emerald Fennell now going more to more trying to shock people um in which he utterly like just destroys this movie, ah which I will say i have not seen and I have no intention of seeing it because I'm never going i I have known enough now about this. And again, heavy air quotes adaptation to know that there is nothing I want from this film.
Speaker: um And the reason for that, I'm going to try to highlight with some of the stuff that he says in here. But for first, my personal take on this is ah when I think you actually told me what Fennel said she wanted to make when she ah adapted it. She had like her interpretation. And the second I was told that. The way that she saw him in her head.
Speaker: Heathcliff. Yeah. The main, you know, so protagonist. Yeah. ah yeah Yeah. Spoilers for Wuthering Heights, a book that is over 150 years old. So yeah. Sorry guys. um Yeah. So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like, ah basically, if you if you haven't read Wuthering Heights, he's a very short synopsis of it. um Heathcliff, whose character is a person of color, ah is adopted, air quotes, by this family.
Speaker: ah He falls in love with their daughter. ah and But his his entire life is just a horrible system of of him being abused and treated poorly by this adoptive family and their servants, leading him to become...
Speaker: a even more monstrous version of the people who have abused him and to take his obsession with their daughter, Catherine, to the point of like just horror again like he becomes a monster that's the whole point and what is brilliant about it as far as my understanding of like the way bronte tells the story is that nothing about him being a person of color is used as a reason for what happens to him that's just a way of sort of identifying him as an outsider uh like he's not from their family but he's also not from their world which is why he is treated how he is and he becomes a grotesque version of his abusive adoptive father and the cycle continues it is a horror story plain and simple um and this film is not and i'm going to read to you from thompson's article what uh
Speaker: Charlotte Bronte ah said about Emily Bronte, her sister, and this story. ah This is her describing her like, love of the moors in particular for the people who don't hold on for the people who don't know the book was written by emily bronte right and charlotte bronte helped get it published think charlotte bronte you might know her name she wrote jane eyre another book that is often poorly adapted Yes, very true. But I want to say Emily Bronte died before its publication or maybe shortly after. I can't remember. Anyway. Continue. Sorry. Yeah, no, that's that's a good point. Charlotte wrote about her sister saying, the scenery of these hills is not grand. It's not romantic. It is scarcely striking. Long, low moors, dark with heath, shut in little valleys where a stream waters here and there, a fringe of stunted copes. Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these valleys. It is only higher up, deep amongst the ridges of the moors that imagination confined. Rest for the soul of her foot. And even if she finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove. If she demand beauty to inspire her, she must bring it inborn. These moors are too stern to yield any product so delicate. And I love that description because it is a very striking explanation of why the book is not a romance. Because she's very clearly outlining, there is nothing romantic about this place at all. It is a dark...
Speaker: utterly unromantic setting that's why emily bronte picked it and ah that entire like the moors are a character throughout the book now emerald fennel and i can't believe i had to say that name again ah academy award-winning emerald fennel i didn't i didn't need you to add that part that part she she directed and wrote saltburn Yeah, I know. Yeah, just, I just, i do i I just want to point out award winning and critically acclaimed actress, writer and director Emerald Fennel.
Speaker: A white woman so anyway from Oxford, England. Yeah, yeah. So listen, Saltburn also had like this huge, like, upswing of like, what a fucking like, whoa, this is some real like, this is some real naughty stuff.
Speaker: um I'm going to read again from Chris Thompson's article because I sent you these quotes before, but I think these encapsulate exactly what's wrong with Fennel's adaptation. ah There is a kind of essential puritanism hidden behind all of Fennell's choices, a refusal to face these characters and their circumstances and contend with their meaning, which Fennell then attempts to mask with the cinematic equivalent of a pubescent virgin boy drawing penises all over his Trapper Keeper.
Speaker: Which is incredible. Like, incredible. Thompson will go on to say, yes, sure, boners and heaving bosoms are exciting for an audience. Whips in wet shirts and babes masturbating on a hilltop. That was true in 1848 too. But Emily Bronte gave the world something that wasn't that.
Speaker: A complex and challenging thing worthy of close attention. You don't have to love Wuthering Heights. Plenty of people do not. The first time I read it, I thought it was the nastiest shit I'd ever encountered. I was also a freshman in high school. Now I am a grownup and I would very much love to see Wuthering Heights adaptation made for grownups.
Speaker: This one was made for people who will never read Wuthering Heights. And it was made by someone who evidently hated it. That's the conclusion of Thompson's um article, which is excellent again. And I, it's on the defector. I encourage people to go find and read it if you can. um But he, that encapsulates what Thompson is basically saying.
Speaker: summarizing here which is somebody read this story which is this dark and full of meaning complex world that's challenging to the reader because you really end up not liking any of these people uh in this story and yet you want to know what happens to them and decided no we'll just make it really horny right and that's basically all fennel did as far as i can tell is let us make this extremely horny That's a bad adaptation.
Speaker: So the way she describes it, because obviously she's she's caught a lot, a lot of flack for the casting, for the quote-unquote adaptation, for a lot of the things surrounding this. And...
Speaker: One, she was she's been criticized for casting Jacob Malorty, who is not a person of color. He's white. he is He is a white Australian and casting also Margot Robbie, who does not look young enough to play Kathy at all. white. isn't margot robbie like 37 or something now he's like 35 and jacob alorty is 28 now i'm not like listen uh we i came from the era of like fucking watching 40 year olds play teenagers so i'm not going to criticize but it's not the correct casting she doesn't look young enough and obviously the costumes also age her don't get me started um Yeah. ah Real quick, too.
Speaker: to be A good point from the book is that Catherine Earnshaw is also consistently portrayed as being kind of like weak, sickly and very like young. like None of which Margot Robbie looks in the film. i mean Exactly. I just wanted to point that part out. I mean, as bad as the Heathcliff not being a person of color, that's the most egregious by far.
Speaker: But there's like no attempt to make Robbie anywhere like her character in the film either. Or in the book either. not meek. She's not. Yeah. She's very much like romance on cover. No, she's super horny. Right? yeah Right? She's just real horny.
Speaker: Isn't that what they all were in that book? isn't that book just the horniest book? It's not. I wanted, this is a direct quote from Emerald Fennel. I wanted to make something that made me feel like ah like I felt when I first read it, which means that it's an emotional response to something. It's like primal sexual.
Speaker: yeah Direct quote. I have lots of questions for her bra because I don't think she read the book. I think she read a book called Wurdering Heights or something and and maybe thought it was this. i Yeah, i I don't know what to do with that. um I guess there was an illustration of Heathcliff on the first book, like the first version of Wuthering Heights that she read, where apparently Jacob Elordi was like the the embodiment of that. And um I say, did you stop at the cover
Speaker: And then just decide that you knew what it was about. Cause at no point is Heathcliff ever described as anything but a person of color. And also it's, it's again, it's not a heaving bosoms kind of a like it's deeply, it's a romantic as in romanticism, but it is not romantic as in romance. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, i'm I'm looking at some example covers here, and there are definitely... These are the wrong covers, guys. Like, one, Heathcliff's not a person of color in in the two that I found with them on the cover of it.
Speaker: And it is looking like it's a... I hate you, Jesus also isn't white, so I don't know if there's a whitewashing problem. Yeah, it's a person of color not, and it's a bodice ripper type cover. The best covers I've seen, oddly, are...
Speaker: um the I don't know which publisher this is, so I don't want to get it wrong here. But like they depict the Moors. They have like ah a really skeletal-looking tree and some birds and rolling kind of dark hills or a house in the distance on them in shadow. like Because that is the vibe of the actual book. If you pick up a copy of Wuthering Heights and you see like two people embracing on it, that is not what you're about to read.
Speaker: It's false advertising. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. And so I agree with you. It feels like Fennel picked up a cover, looked at it and went, ah, yes, sex. And then went and made this movie.
Speaker: And I'm, again, not going to see it. I've read enough about it now to know that it is just not an adaptation. It is... A complete reimagining from some batshit person. It's a fan fiction.
Speaker: Yeah, it's thank you. that You said that before off-bike, and that's the way to describe it. she She created a fanfic. It shouldn't be titled Wuthering Heights. A lot of people said that it should have been titled Heathcliff and Catherine, or like something to be like, hey, I took these characters from a much-beloved...
Speaker: classic novel and I've re-imagined it in such a way as like, this is how I would have wanted to tell the story inspired by, you know, not, not calling it Wuthering Heights. Yeah. That is actually exactly what she should have done because I, I nixed this from our list of things we were going go over, but I mentioned the last voyage of the Demeter when we were talking before, which is for those who don't know, referencing a single chapter in Dracula,
Speaker: in which the ship that Dracula is on as he goes to London, he kills the whole crew. So somebody made a film about this in which you just get that story.
Speaker: And it is not titled Dracula, Last Voyage of the Demeter. It's just titled Last Voyage of the Demeter, which is the name of the ship. And it's only about that. It is purely a reimagining, like, I'm going to tell this story that hasn't really been told, but hinted at and take some liberties to tell it the way I want to.
Speaker: And I will defend that film. I think it's quite good. ah I don't think this movie, I think this movie should have been called Heathcliff and Catherine, like you said, or something like that. Cause I don't think this is Wuthering Heights.
Speaker: like you know, love on the moors or something like you can make, you can allude to it. That is like, yes, these are the characters that are from much beloved Wuthering Heights, but it's not an adaptation of the novel.
Speaker: It's, it is a, it is a slice of the novel that she has then expanded upon to make it into this like dark brooding romance and not, and it doesn't qualify as a quote unquote romance because I'm going to assume just based on what I know about the book and also just how cinema has been currently going I'm going to assume the ending's not happy of the book no no no no no no um yeah i but yeah we we know how the book ends it's just ah I'm assuming that things don't go well in the movie either because I mean I saw salt burn so you know like
Speaker: hi yeah It's just not Emerald Fendel style. So, you know, don don't spoil it because I literally don't care. but you know, it's just...
Speaker: Yeah, and i to to to to give Emerald Fennell credit, I did love Fall Burn. i thought so I thought it was fucking weird as shit, and I loved it. I like i loved it because it felt just like kind of nuts in a dark way. like It was like if Wes Anderson all of a sudden turned into like a horror movie maker. Oh, that's a good way to put it, yeah. Because, like, it's very quirky, but in a super dark way. It's really unsettling. It's very unsettling. Unsettling is the perfect word for it. Yeah. I was unsettled the entire ah your time. which Which is what makes this so much more frustrating, because it's like, you made really unsettling, great movie. made Promising Young Woman, which is ah arguably a great film, you know? Right. why do you have to take something that's a pre-existing property to make these really interesting movies? Because I also have heard from people who have seen this, who are maybe not as upset by the literary, you know, just dumping on that's happening of just throwing out the actual intent of the book who are just like, it's not really a good movie either. Like it's not really doing any of the stuff.
Speaker: Like it's very childish, I guess. And in it's like attempts to unsettle or like shock you. Um, but we should talk about the fact that there's actually a couple other movies we need to lambaste. And it's another one is what started, you know, Wuthering Heights obviously started this and they're like, what else do we hate?
Speaker: Yeah. We started thinking about like, what what are some other examples of these? And there's actually another recent one from this year, which is the new Frankenstein, which once again, i have not, and will not see because of the drastic changes made to the actual plot of the book, which has a very,
Speaker: very intentional message to it that Mary Shelley was trying to express extremely clearly. And that message is that Victor Frankenstein is the villain.
Speaker: That's it. He's the villain. And the way that this adaptation changes the story, it creates a different villain from a completely un, not from the book at all character.
Speaker: who wants to be, wants Victor to do his experiments so that he can create this reanimatable body so this guy can put his brain into it because he's dying of syphilis.
Speaker: I can't make this up. Like, it's just so fucking funny. It really is. Because, like, it it establishes this idea that, like, Victor is really into these experiments and trying to solve this problem, which is true of Victor in the book.
Speaker: But then that, like, the real evil is that this syphilitic lunatic wants to do it so he can live forever in ah another body. And it's like, no, the whole point of the book is that Victor...
Speaker: doesn't give a shit about the consequences of his actions. He's just so high on his own ego and his abilities that he wants to prove he can do a thing, which by the way, would be a really great message to send right now, given the current state of our fucking world and the people ruining it.
Speaker: And yet they walk away from that idea. Um, And what's more upsetting, which is something we're going to get further into later here, is that there have already been good versions of the creature and Victor done in media.
Speaker: And I mentioned the series Penny Dreadville, which you saw that too, right? I did. Yeah. That is the best version of the creature I've seen depicted Frankenstein. I'm sorry. Young Frankenstein is the best adaptation of the creature. Listen, that is Peter Boyle is unassailable. That's Putting on the Ritz. Okay.
Speaker: um but like if we're talking because both of these are basically gothic fiction right they are yeah gothic fiction penny dreadful did gothic fiction so well and it did it without really being an adaptation it was also a reimagining hence why they call it penny dreadful and not gothic fiction stories brought to life or something like that right right yeah and And that's how these things should go. You can't call it Frankenstein and make William the child victim of the creature into Victor's younger brother who's already engaged to his love interest.
Speaker: What are we doing? What are we actually doing and why? I need answers. ah Sorry, I crashed out for minute there. No, you're allowed to crash out because it's worth crashing out over.
Speaker: Yeah, like, again, listeners by this point, this is a later episode into this season we're doing, will know that I teach English language arts. So, like, I have had these crash outs with my fellow English teachers already. And, like, my friend Sarah, who likes to watch bad adaptations to lambaste them, went and did the legwork for me on this one.
Speaker: And she actually came away saying it was so much worse than she thought it was going to be. So I was just I'm glad I missed it because I don't think I could handle it. I don't like seeing great works destroyed. And I believe at the beginning or at the end of the movie, there is a quote up on screen not <unk> credited to the author, Mary Shelley, but I believe credited to Lord Byron.
Speaker: Oh boy. Okay. I think I don't, don't quote me on that, but I do remember seeing some, seeing some discourse on the tick tocks about a quote coming up on screen and it not being credited to the fact that Mary fucking Shelley, 20 year old Mary Shelley wrote this book.
Speaker: Yeah, it's funny and that we are we are talking about two adaptations, both written by women in an era where women were not taken seriously as authors and Jacob Elordi's in both of them.
Speaker: Common thread? i don't know. You tell me.
Speaker: Oh, the monster is heard reading lines from the poem Ozymandias, which was written by Percy Shelley. her husband there it is um but i don't know that that's at the beginning i'm not seeing the exact reference to it there was there was something with like a quote on the screen maybe it was edited out and but yeah yeah i guess yeah and for those who don't know um lord byron is not someone you should be referencing when you're taking away the agency of a woman Or a young boy, given his pedophilic history. um He's a real bad guy, Lord Byron. I'm just going to leave it at that.
Speaker: Probably just don't quote him at all. ah but But moving on to more bad adaptations, we had three others that we came up with. um The Hobbit. You want to explain this one? This one's pretty simple.
Speaker: This hurts us a lot. it As as two two big, big Tolkien fans, like big, you know, like we we have taken an oath and it is based on Tolkien to say that the Hobbit movies plural that's the right there is an understatement because if you haven't read the hobbit it will take you an afternoon because it is a children's book yep literally written for the author's children yes written for and it is the perfect introduction to the behemoth that is the lord of the rings yep
Speaker: But ah at at no point, even given what other materials that are in the Tolkien library, does The Hobbit turn into three films?
Speaker: Right. Three full length feature films over two hours a piece, I believe. Oh, yeah, they are. Let me walk you through my experience with this when it happened. Please do. So I hear they're going to make The Hobbit.
Speaker: And I'm like, Okay, live action Hobbit, success of Lord of the Rings, this makes sense. And then I hear Peter Jackson's doing it. Or actually, originally, I think it was Guillermo del Toro, who, by the way, is the guy who just made the Frankenstein adaptation that i have serious issues with. Right.
Speaker: We're going come back to both of these people after we talk about The Hobbit briefly, because there's a pattern that I heard about on another podcast called Blank Check that I think is really illustrative of the problem with these adaptations. But anyway...
Speaker: I hear that's being made. I hear it's del Toro. I hear that Jackson's involved. I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm feeling all right about this. Then I hear like, well, going break it into two films. And I'm like, don't feel like it needs to be, but I guess if you wanted to split it, you know, between when Bilbo meets Gollum and gets the ring and then after I could see that, that makes sense. Those are kind of, you know, the two halves of the book. Sure.
Speaker: Uh, And I believe the first one came out before they announced they were doing a third one. I can't recall how it worked out, but by the time the first one comes out, I'm worried because I'm hearing about all these things from the Silmarillion now being brought in and all these other references. And I am one of the people that will stand here and defend to my dying breath, not having Tom Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings films.
Speaker: He was not necessary. We did not need him. I don't need him there. Thank you very much. No. um I agree. What a great decision. Again, and and yeah we will get to good adaptations. Excellent choice. Yeah. Lord of the Rings is one of the best adaptations ever made. and Correct. And it did mit change things. That was one of them, and it was the right call. Yes. so Here's my my experience with the first film was I love the dwarves showing up at the Bilbo's house and the singing scene and the cleaning up. And it's like, oh, this feels like a kid's movie. This feels fun. The dwarves are quirky and fun and silly. This feels like the vibe of the book.
Speaker: And. Radagast showing up I was like oh he's quirky and fun he's always kind of an eccentric character I like him actually being included this is good this is okay I think maybe we've got the tone down we figured out what we're doing I'm not so worried and then get to the introduction of the necromancer who's obviously Sauron or whatever and I'm like oh oh shit we're trying to make an epic out of this when it's very much not like it's a story about
Speaker: becoming a different person through bravery and taking chances. Bilbo has this beautiful arc where he steps outside his comfort zone and discovers everything he is capable of.
Speaker: And because of that, he helps, uh, Thor and Oak and Shields and many of the other dwarves come to realize that it's not the wealth of the mountain that they care about, but their family and their, you know, their relationships to others and stuff. Like it's a, it's an amazing story. None of that's in these goddamn movies.
Speaker: Uh, No. It's awful. It's just, and it just keeps getting worse in a way that I like, it was like watching a train wreck in such slow motion that like it lasted however many goddamn hours these stupid things were. And I i will say, I never watched the third one. I was out. i I hung around to see if Benedict Cumberbatch's Smaug was going to be interesting. And hey, spoiler alert, he wasn't.
Speaker: Like, yeah sorry. How you make a dragon it uninteresting? and especially like Benedict Cumberbatch has a great voice and he has ah actually way more range with that and humor that he can do like I'm not a huge Marvel fan but his Doctor Strange is really good at balancing this super powerful intelligent figure with very funny and like you know charming and none of that came through with Smout at all yeah I mean like this man is Sherlock like yeah he's amazing go on give me nothing nothing yeah
Speaker: Yeah, i The Hobbit was such a goddamn disaster of a fantasy. And what they did is theyre like, oh, it's called The Hobbit. And it's like, okay, then you're going to make a movie that's based on the book, right? And they're like, kind of, but really what we're going to do is take the appendices the appendices from Lord of the Rings, which has already been made, and make three movies out of that. And i'm like, okay, so not The Hobbit. that i'm just seeing I'm just seeing you doing the Padme and Anakin meme. Like, so you're going to just adapt the Hobbit, right? Right? Like, that's what that was. Like, that's what that's what you're going to. I'm doing the fucking Gru pointing to the board meme. I'm like, this is the Hobbit. This is. And like, I'm pointing at like the original cover, the blue cover with the mountains on it. Like this one. The one that has the animated movie that we all fucking love. That that movie. That one. You're going to do The Hobbit. yeah Great.
Speaker: ah Hey, I saw Lord of the Rings in the theaters. All of them. And then I saw them again when the extended editions came out. I have nothing but faith. Oh, wait. Okay, so you're The Hobbit. 310 pages. It's The Hobbit. But what you're going to is to flesh it out more. You're going to take stuff from other books, so not The Hobbit, and put that into...
Speaker: The Hobbit. Which is not... which is not the And then we're going to call it The Hobbit. Because it's going to trick you into thinking that you know what's going to happen. And then we're going to add hot dwarves with ugly dwarves. And then what we're going to do is we're going to put fucking Legolas back in it. And then we're going put his dad in it. And he's going to be so hot that you're not going to care if it's at all... close to what the book The Hobbit is and and you're going to love it and secretly no we're not going to love it because it's going to fucking suck it's going to be really bad not even secretly like just that rant if you had played that for any executive I would like to believe they would have gone
Speaker: Oh, right. Yeah. But obviously that didn't happen. But hey, you know, you've we've got two more to talk about that are your personal vices, which is Golden Compass and Les Mis. You want to talk about those? Yeah. Now that you're fired up.
Speaker: Okay. So here here's the thing. I'm going to talk about Les Mis first because i i'm so i'm fired i'm I'm on the crest of the fired up, right? Okay. So Les Mis, obviously a book. Okay.
Speaker: Oh, ah actually, you know what? Maybe it isn't obviously a book. Hey, guys, I just want to let you know that Les Miserables, not only a musical, it was a it was a book first. And it's it's a sad book, but it's also a really sad. Shocked Pikachu face over here. it's It's also a really sad musical. Now, I am a perma defender of the musical Les Miserables.
Speaker: love it so much and I will die screaming about how much I love it. I've seen so many iterations of it. And when they announced that they were making a film adaptation of the musical, uh, for,
Speaker: for, you know, people to enjoy, you know, who like don't go to the theater or love Les Mis and want to be able to see it all the time. See also fucking the rent adaptation, but it's okay. Um,
Speaker: Now, there are... Les Mis has been made, the book has been made into film. And it's it's a very depressing film, just the way that it is a very depressing book. And it's fine, but like...
Speaker: the book's not great. What makes the musical great is, i don't know, the music, you know, it's fantastic. And what they did is um they took ah Hollywood actors who can't sing and made them all of the leads and then took musical actors who can sing and made them the secondary characters, which was mistake. Wait, you're trying to tell me that Russell Crowe is not one of the most gifted vocalists of our time?
Speaker: The best part about Russell Crowe's performance in Les Mis is when he dies. Spoilers, by the way.
Speaker: He dies the book, in the show. He throws throws himself off a bridge, and it is the funniest thing. I saw it on Christmas Day, which was opening day when it came out, and I laughed out loud in the theater when it happened. um After crying for several hours, trying to listen to fucking frog voice...
Speaker: what's his face who I can't ever, Eddie Redmayne who can't sing. And i I'm sorry. He was great by the way in Cabaret, tangent, side side quest for a second. He played the MC in the new Cabaret that they put um up in London and then took it to New York. He was fantastic in that, but like he's supposed to be a clown who like kind of can't sing. ah he had no fucking business playing Marius on on film. And also Hugh Jackman, I just want to talk for a second. um
Speaker: You also can't sing. And I want you to stop trying to ah do it, do that because it, Jean Valjean is one of the greatest tenor roles of all time. And for you to fucking just fart all over the camera, it was just so bad. But like, why did this musical need to be made into a movie musical? Yeah.
Speaker: It's already a book, it's already a musical, and it's already a movie based on a book. You didn't then need to make the film version of the musical and then make it bad.
Speaker: The only way I think that it should ever happen is if you just go film the stage production. That is exactly. Trevor, you are. Yes. Yep. Yes. That is what I want to hear. I want filmed versions of of shows. That's what I want. If you you want accessible theater, that's what you need to be doing. You don't need to be making huge budget films out of musicals because what you're going to get is subpar shit. Unless you're going cast people who are legitimately good at singing.
Speaker: Right. I mean, English teacher hat on again here. Like when I do Shakespeare plays and we do, I, I, we don't read the play. watch it. Oh yeah. Everybody just heard that. My son just discovered he has a dragon upstairs. There may be a pause in this episode.
Speaker: um Yeah. ah But like when you do adaptations, you, as a teacher, you show a stage play version. Now I'll show certain scenes and,
Speaker: that are from different film adaptations to get comparisons of how, you know, how adaptable, especially Shakespeare is, but like, you don't need to make the film. You're not showing the film versions of these, like, and you may show, you know, like excerpts excerpts from films she're like oh this was done particularly well or oh I like the way that this was done like when you show like Clueless because it's a take on Emma when you show 10 Things I Hate About You because it's the take on Taming of the Shrew like like you know I mean Emma which is Jane Austen not Shakespeare I know that don't come for me in the comments but like right the problem I have when you make musicals into movie musicals is you are not doing them any justice and you're not making people want to go see the show Well, and the other thing is that you just pointed out is the distinction in those examples is they're not titled the thing that they're adapting.
Speaker: Right. Ten Things I Hate About You is not called Taming of the Shrew, but High School. It's right Ten Things I Hate About You. And and that's on um one of my favorite movies ever. Like I is. Oh, same.
Speaker: I mean, I know that he was the best Joker we're ever going to get, but also Heath Ledger is unbelievable. in An actor of a generation. Yeah, I mean, genuinely. And Justin Long also was like one of the first really great signs that you're like, oh, this guy is going to be good. Like, you know, yeah um wait, is it Justin Long or am I getting that mixed up somebody else? For who? Oh, it's ah it's what's his name? It's Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Sorry, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, not Justin Long. Yeah, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, where you can see like, oh, my God, this guy is going to be a really good actor, even though he's like.
Speaker: I don't even know if he's 20 in that movie. He looks like he's teenager. Yeah. yeah um Yeah. i Again. It's not a good adaptation. Please, please stop. You're like, there's no reason for it. There's already a movie. Like it's already a book. It's already a movie. It's already a musical. You don't need to then make another fourth thing.
Speaker: So let's talk Golden Compass because this is one where i had not read the books. I know there's a TV series that I guess people thought was better. it was better. um I told you that I saw the movie because I'm a sucker for fantasy stuff, obviously. And I was like, oh, cool. A giant polar bear that talks. I'm down. um And I remember all I remember of it is that and like the first half hour of it being like, OK, this is kind of interesting. And then I literally could not tell you what else happens in the rest of the movie. I have no recollection of any of it.
Speaker: um It's a terrible adaptation. It's very disappointing. The casting is fine, but like not fantastic. And the the criteria we have with ah adaptations, and we read on online about like where things fall short. And with yeah yeah it with Golden Compass, is they cut out way too much.
Speaker: And then... made like dumbed down a lot of it now like gold the golden compass series is great if you want to read a series that's like why a fantasy yeah and like the world is really fun and it's very well done but it's also like one it's extremely political it's an extremely political book series And, like, youre you are fighting basically, i mean, you're basically fighting, like, white nationalism, Christianity, evangelicalism. Like, you're fighting people trying to, like, cleanse the world of, like, magic, essentially. And it's like, and, like, take over it and control it
Speaker: and they made the movie to be like, oh, isn't it cute? Like, all these kids have, like, little pets. And, like, oh, oh you know, like, and this this girl's dad is Daniel Craig. i like, oh, is it really her dad? You don't know. And it's just very, like, they they made it try, they tried to make it, like, fantastical, which obviously the book is, but they stripped it of all of its character. It's watered down.
Speaker: It's very watered down. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Oh, we may have a guest coming in. we have a guest. we get there. Oh, hey, buddy. so excited. Did you get- just getting angry down here. Okay. My son is currently retrieving his other dragon.
Speaker: ah so um Not his live dragon. oh no No, not the live fear the dragon that we do have. Because he just got a gigantic dragon, right, buddy? Yeah! can can sit it.
Speaker: Amazing. Do you mind close the door when you get up there? What? you close the door? Okay. Thanks. um Okay, I think we've hit the bad adaptations. Let's talk about some good ones.
Speaker: Yeah. we We listed four that we came up with. We don't just shit on stuff here. We also know you good stuff to watch instead. I want to talk about why these ones are good versus the other ones. So the the ones we have here are the Martian, Dune, Lord of the Rings, and Emma, the 2020 version. yeah think real quick lord of the rings is pretty unassailable i mean it won all the awards it's perfectly cast it's brilliantly acted top to bottom every choice they make is just incredible uh and what the reason i to start with that i don't really want to talk about the movie but peter jackson obviously made that and then peter jackson goes and makes the hobbit um or at least his heavy hand in it along with del toro who also made frankenstein He wrote it and then he took over as direct. He he directed it when Del Toro dropped out. Right. yeah And so here this is the interesting thing that um it was brought up on. Like I said, the blank check podcast. Like for those who don't know, Peter Jackson started making some really like.
Speaker: Indie, underground, you know very skin thin budget movies in New Zealand where he's from. And then um you know obviously he gets Lord of the Rings in what's kind of a shocking decision to let him do it based on what he had made before that. ah And similarly, Guillermo del Toro makes a lot of like smaller films largely based around his ability to make really amazing visuals and costumes. And then he gets to make Pan's Labyrinth, which is an unassailably great movie. ah So the idea behind Blank Check as a pod is that they talk about how you know filmmakers make these you know relatively you know small films and then suddenly they get the Blank Check to make something they really want.
Speaker: So Jackson makes Lord of the Rings and does an amazing job. And then The Hobbit comes around and it's like, he doesn't know how to do that within the studio system that's demanding what it's demanding, like putting Orlando Bloom back in and all and all this other crap.
Speaker: um And then he and Del Toro seem like they've tried to go back to making... you know, they're more grounded, smaller budget, tighter movies.
Speaker: And what was interesting that the hosts were saying on the podcast for blank check was like, some of these guys can't go back. Like we may have gotten the best thing we're going to get out of Jackson with Lord the Rings. I mean, I think that's actually probably almost certainly true.
Speaker: Like it's one of the greatest films, children's series, whatever you want to call it of all time. So like, they you might they might not be able to hit that same tone and stride again. Similarly with Del Toro, I think Pan's Labyrinth is his best movie. movie I also think his Hellboy films are excellent. The original two with Ron Perlman.
Speaker: Sometimes directors, when they get super successful, can't really make something on that caliber and struggle to return to what they were good at before because now they have bigger budgets, bigger names, and they're always going to have...
Speaker: a demand to do something larger because of who they are. Right. You can't retreat back into being, um, an indie director in the same way. John Carpenter kind of had the same thing happen post Halloween becoming huge, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Um, in the case of the other three adaptations in there, uh dune if people have not seen the new one i know a lot of people really ride for the old um one where is it sting that is featured as one of the characters he plays yeah he plays one of the hard code yeah i think it's sting um that movie's quirky and weird ah it's fine the new one that they have done with is it chalamet is the main lead i think oh yeah it's chalamet basically himself playing basically himself and Zendaya is amazing.
Speaker: They're, they're phenomenal. They, and, and if you haven't read the books, they are basically a precise adaptation of the books in every way. And Dune, the first book is a great science fiction book. The rest of them get real weird and real not great after that.
Speaker: But the first book, which they broke into two films in a case where that made sense, by the way, because it's like a thousand pages is the third film. The next book is, I want to say... There is a third one coming want to say the third one is actually a prequel. Okay. Let me look it real quick. don't... And there's also a series, right? So, like, I don't... Yeah. Dune Part 3.
Speaker: No, it is going to be the sequel, Dune Messiah. Okay. ah Which is... Not bad. um There are six Dune novels that my god Frank Herbert made. I doubt they will make all of those in two films because like I said, they really get freaking weird. ah Spoiler alert, Paul Atreides, the main character, basically becomes a a worm by the end of it, like a worm god. It's it's really out there. Yeah. i would It would be fun to see Timothee Chalamet pull that off. would love that. I would love that.
Speaker: um but yeah like dune was adapted brilliantly because they did the one one of the things that you can do sometimes which is we'll just stick right to the source material as much as possible uh lord of the rings does that and then excises the stuff like tom bombadil that you don't need to make the story as compelling and powerful like I love J.R.R. Tolkien, but the man was a linguist first and a writer second, and he gets overly verbose in those books. Like, it he spends a lot of time talking about trees, and it's like, my guy, we get it
Speaker: You know lots of different words for different trees. um But the story you're telling actually, shockingly, is quite good, and I'd like you to get back to it. Thank you. It like picked a through line, right? Like the Lord of the Rings films picked, it it didn't like bounce around and pick and choose the plot. It picked the through plot yeah and then like slightly went off the plot when it was important to the plot.
Speaker: Yep. That's what happened. Yep. And similarly, like Dune, The Martian, which is ah Andy Weir's novel, ah you know, made into a film. And he's got another one coming out very soon, which is Project Hail Mary that we were talking about before off mic.
Speaker: Andy Weir is a brilliant sci-fi writer. As far as I know, the Martian book and film are basically the same. I think there's a few more things that happen in the book just because it's it's longer. It's got more detail to it. Yeah, you have to truncate a little bit, but the plot is essentially identical. And um the thing that works really well with his writing is he's very funny. And so The Martian is actually quite an entertaining, fun movie just because the performances are good and there's a good there's a good deal of comedy in it.
Speaker: um You know, again, like Dune, they just took the book and adapted it as straightforwardly as possible, making the cuts in reasonable ways that, you know, don't bog you down. Like you said, there's a through line, you know, the through line in Lord of the Rings is all about the characters and how their journeys are changing them.
Speaker: ah The through line in The Martian is all about. the logistical hell of trying to save a guy stuck on Mars. Like, how would you do that? And all the elements that would come into play. um The through line with Dune is the idea of like having your entire like family destroyed. And what do you do to, to bring it back and to, you know, reclaim your rights, but also to like, maybe not be the bad guys anymore. Cause you know, spoiler alert, the Atreides family is not necessarily the good guys and the Harkonnens, the bad guys. It's a little prayer. Yeah. Yeah. But then, you know, to get back to where we started with these original kind of gothic or stories or at least, you know, more classic stories, you you cited Emma 2020 as like a great adaptation. It's a gold standard. Yeah. So why does that one work where like Wuthering Heights or Frankenstein falls so short?
Speaker: ah Because they actually stuck to the source material and didn't try to make it a film that it wasn't. Emma if is... i Okay, this is my opinion. This is my opinion.
Speaker: Emma is arguably, apparently, one of the worst Jane Austen books. I hate Emma. Oh, interesting. i thought you were going to go the other way. no no no No, no, no. It's my least favorite Jane Austen book because Emma is a busy-bodied bitch. Okay?
Speaker: And I cannot stand her. And there was an adaptation done. ah why There's been multiple adaptations because it's Jane Austen. And all they do is just make Jane new j Austen movies every like 10 years. Of course. so there's been other adaptations of Emma.
Speaker: The one that was the most famous before 2020 was obviously the Gwyneth Paltrow one. And it's bad. It's bad. Yeah. I can't believe Goop would fail us like that. I know. Poor Goop. But like, it's just not good. And, you know, because Gwyneth Paltrow is not a good actress. And yes, I will. No, she is not.
Speaker: If people are like, oh, she's great. No, she's not great. She did not deserve an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. As I say, here's my here's my challenge to you Name one good performance. Thank you. nope I can't I can't because I hate her yeah but like the what happened with Emma 2020 is uh first of all the casting is 100 out of 10 it is perfect it's Anya Taylor-Joy and it's Mia Goth and it's Bill Nighy it is uh Josh what's his face from The Crown who I absolutely love with the big ears and I'm just he's just the cutest and it's just it's perfectly cast but what it what happened with this adaptation that
Speaker: usually is where like especially like regency era stuff fails yes they kept to the source material so the the script was was faithful to the work it was visually so perfect you said the costuming is like exceptional costuming is an absolute gold standard for historic re for historic film right because like as anybody who loves historic film knows uh costume is usually where where they fail and the costumers and the wardrobe team did
Speaker: So amazingly well with Emma, it is all as accurate as it possibly can be because, you know, historical accuracy is kind of a myth because obviously it was hundreds of years ago and we don't know everything. We only have what we have from extant garments, which are, you know, degrading and whatever. Yeah. But, like, they used actual techniques. They used appropriate fabrics. They used the correct hairstyles. The women were in hats, which is a huge problem in a lot of adaptations. They don't want them wearing hats. yeah they They don't want them wearing hats. They don't want them wearing the crazy 1800s hairstyles because they were insane and it's not going to make them look as pretty. They weren't wearing a lot of makeup because, obviously, they wouldn't have worn a ton of makeup then. Yeah.
Speaker: they didn't glamorize it, which is what, from my perspective, one of the big failings of Wuthering Heights, of course, um was like yeah the costuming. One of the successes, I would say, of the Frankenstein adaptation was the costuming because Mia Goth in Frankenstein is wearing a lot of like kind of period accurate or at least period inspired clothing, even if the fabriking wasn't correct. Anyway, But, like, with the Emma adaptation, they kept faithful to the book, and it it was a
Speaker: not ah Obviously not a word for word retelling, but it was as close as it possibly could have been while keeping it in the appropriate amount of time because Emma's frankly boring. And the the look of it, the and like not even just the costuming, but and the scenery of it, where it was shot, how it was shot.
Speaker: it was so expertly done that it made any other historical film or tv adaptation look like a high school play frankly it was it was just so so good and i'm gonna add in i'm gonna throw in uh another faithful adaptation from book to screen because it needs to be mentioned heated robbery oh yes our favorite our lord and savior
Speaker: Our Lord and Savior Heated Rivalry was a faithful adaptation from book to screen. Minimal changes made. And the changes that were made made sense to tell the story in six episodes. And what they the changes that they made and the cuts that they made were appropriate so that you were still telling the story and still getting the gist but not losing any of the plot. So that I had to throw that one in there. No, I think that's a good mention. I think we want to wrap up talking about what we thought was the funniest example of how these things can weirdly go right. Yeah, i guess. sure So like, you know, we said Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, Hobbit, Les Mis, Golden Compass, all bad adaptations and also bad films, I would argue. Like, yeah I mean, again, like you said, if you just want to call it something that's not harkening back to the source material,
Speaker: it would be a lot easier to look at it and, and have a sense of whether or not I think this is actually good or interesting. But when you choose to name it after the source material, you are deliberately asking your audience to associate with that. And if you don't want to do that, don't title it that it's that easy. We said with the, the examples we gave of the good ones that,
Speaker: In every case, they stuck really closely to the source material and made changes where they made sense for what the story was trying to accomplish. Right. They didn't make sweeping changes just to make changes or try to put a spin on something.
Speaker: Right. they They were trying to tell the story as effectively as possible. Right. And so if you're doing that, that's that's a good adaptation. But weirdly, we both agreed there's like one bad adaptation that turned out to be a argue I would argue great film.
Speaker: which is Bram Stoker's Dracula, yeah which is such a bad adaptation of that book. um And it's not because Keanu can't do an English accent though. Poor Keanu, he can't. Um,
Speaker: but because it really does... He is very pretty. it It does take so many liberties with the story, and yet, almost on the force of Gary Oldman alone, it is such a fucking good movie. Oh, yeah. It so many... brilliant I mean, you also... I think that was also when you highlighted the costuming for that one is also quite good. The costuming is iconic. it Again, it's not super faithful to the time period, but... It is inspired by and adjacent to. So you didn't feel you're like, i it wasn't Bridgerton. It wasn't like, oh, yes, they would definitely be wearing sequins in LeMay. It was very much like this is the time period and where we are giving it a subtle like kind of like tip of the hat.
Speaker: And that's what it was. Yeah, and I mean, it has, you know... it also has, some like, really good costuming in it, yeah. Good costuming, and it has some good acting, too. Like, you've got Winona Ryder at about peak of her powers. You've got Anthony Hopkins doing a great Von Helsing.
Speaker: um You know, like... The king of all character actors, Gary Oldman. The king of all character actors, Gary Oldman, being asked to be just a sadistic, you know, but somewhat sympathetic Dracula figure and and wearing an absolutely absurd hairstyle. um True.
Speaker: Like, but... And obviously Francis Ford Coppola is directing it before he kind of gets too old to sort of effectively tell stories and and shoot films well. So you get all of those things coming together.
Speaker: And if it if it wasn't titled Dracula, it would still have been good. And yet, weirdly, despite it's not adapting the book itself. it still works.
Speaker: Like, it works really, really well. And I would compare it to Nosferatu, the recent version, which I am a huge fan of and think is a phenomenal movie.
Speaker: I didn't see it because I don't like to be scared. Yeah, it's... That one is more unsettling than it is scary, quite frankly. And that was actually the thing that I think carries that movie so well is again, like Coppola, the visuals in that are amazing. So like Dracula completely works based on the way it looks and the performances of, of of the main actors that are really like taking it over. And similarly, if you see Nosferatu, which obviously is a vampire film as well, ah it does the same thing. The visuals are amazing. It's done in like largely like black and white or dark. And the performances from top to bottom are all just spectacular. It's it's maybe my favorite Willem Dafoe performance, frankly.
Speaker: um So like, again, that is arguably, you could make the case that that's a bad adaptation given that it's adapting the original Nosferatu and there's substantial changes made by the director Eggers in terms of the way um the characters look. Most notably, he gives Orlok a mustache that would have been era appropriate if he was really like a Transylvanian count.
Speaker: Right. okay And in the original ah film from the, you know, what is it like the thirty s The 20s. Obviously, Orlok is depicted as just this very, nice like what we now call a Nosferatu vampire. Very thin, long nails, big teeth, bald, right? Batty.
Speaker: Yeah, it's an iconic look, right? um And yet... in this, if you're if you're calling the new Nosferatu an adaptation of the old, it's a bad adaptation in that it doesn't try to adhere to those looks and it's still a brilliant film.
Speaker: And I think that's what happens with Bram Stoker's Dracula too. It's not a good adaptation of Dracula, but it's really well done. And the other example that you had brought up was, Baz Luhrmann is the king of bad adaptations because nothing he makes based on an original document or book or anything.
Speaker: Is anything like what he is adapting from. Correct. But Romeo and Juliet is a atrocious adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with a, that's a good movie.
Speaker: It's a great movie. yeah Yeah. I would, I would, argue it's one, it is, i would say it is one of the, one of the poster children of the millennial genera, of like the Gen X millennial generation. Right. So it's like, it is, ah it's vibrant and it's like rock and roll and it's got modern music and it's got a killer cast and they put, they set it in like, I think not in Italy and as it said in Mexico or like Southern California. I want to say Southern California, but i can't remember. So like, like it's Hawaiian shirts and it's like Madonna, you know, like not Madonna, the singer, Madonna, the religious figure. It's yeah very, it's very poppy and, but it's done with the Shakespearean language, which I thought was beautiful.
Speaker: phenomenal and a great way to kind of like introduce people to shakespeare but like arguably obviously not faithful at all to the source material and also the source material sucks so like yeah unless you're presenting it as what it is which is like a cautionary tale cautionary tale about the what you bad parents yes because romeo and juliet is not a romance nor is it romantic kids right It is not, it's not cool. These kids were teenagers. Right. And, and the thing with Lerman is like, he does visuals really well. So like that often overpowers what people see, you know, in terms of the quality of this the the film or whatever. Like if he had simply done, like, I'm gonna do a modern setting version of Romeo and Juliet and just, you know, have modern costuming or whatever. you could have also called it something else. Yeah, but he went so far in terms of what kind of story he's telling, you know, that it can't, you shouldn't call it Romeo and Juliet, like you said. You should retitle that into something else, you know. ah i don't know what it would be it was something, but like,
Speaker: i mean, he was Romeo plus Juliet and not Romeo and Juliet, technically. Yeah, it was a math problem, I suppose. Yeah, so, yeah. and i mean Romeo plus Juliet equals no! No!
Speaker: that's what that was the ah under that was that the byline that was the theme um but i think the you know to wrap up what we're saying here because it seems like we're getting more of these i don't know if it's because a lot of stuff has entered public domain now you know probably that are like classics that people still have some residual knowledge of whether it's from school or you know whatever um People love a costume drama, too.
Speaker: getting a lot of that stuff. We love sweeping skirts and heaving bosoms and ripped bodices and those fucking corset scenes where that actually didn't happen. But, you know, that's fine. Yeah, I mean, it has, like, the success of things like Bridgerton and stuff has kind of, like, created that push, you know?
Speaker: um Yeah. I just... I want to see more things like Last Voyage of the Demeter or something like that, where you're taking a source material and saying, let me spin off a story from this that is not this. And I'm not even going to title it Frankenstein or whatever, but I'm going to do something...
Speaker: different because I have a cool idea. i could use some really neat costumes. I could borrow some of the themes or some recognizable features from an existing property, but tell something original, stop taking something original and then trying to like,
Speaker: shove it into a box that's the wrong shape for it like that's not gonna work and and it doesn't doesn't make for an enjoyable experience to like sit through something like that because i'm sorry if you're titling at frankenstein or you're titling at weathering heights i have expectations and those are you're setting an expectation yeah Yeah, you've set an expectation by choosing that title, and I feel that I am justified in having those expectations. And so you have to either reset those expectations by giving it a different title, or you need to recognize that you have to do your homework to meet those expectations. I'm not going to listen to an Emerald Fennell tell me her version of what the story is because she's wrong. Sorry. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: There's some things you can say are open for interpretation in Wuthering Heights, but what she took from it is nothing like what anybody with a reasonable sense of critical thinking would come away from that story with. And that's what I want us to not get.
Speaker: I don't want that anymore. I want you to make sure if you're going to put the title on there, you've got to do the work. That's all I'm asking. Right. So I think we got a sowed. ah People can find me on Blue Sky and my website, TrevorHPaul.com, where I do my writing stuff and occasionally blog about it.
Speaker: You can also email B or I at the I think you should leave pod at gmail.com. If you have suggestions, ideas, probably after this episode, going to yell at us a bunch about our opinions. And that's fine. You're still wrong.
Speaker: um B, can people find you? Do you want people to find you? How does people can try to find me? Good luck. No. I'm ah mx b e a EA MCB on Instagram threads and tick tock I think and probably blue sky I don't know I have the same find me go ahead follow me yeah I talk nonsense a lot.
Speaker: It's going to be all heated rivalry content. Just so everybody is aware. It is not going to be all heated. rough And just to add to that, if you are my wife and have found something about heated rivalry that you think is super funny and cool and want to send it to be, she's already seen it and probably watched it several times. Don't even bother. It's too late for you.
Speaker: I'll watch it again because I love you. I love you, Molly. All right. I love you too, Molly, because you're my wife and I have to say that. Okay. I'm going to get off here before I get in more trouble. Bye everybody.
