Importance of white representation in fiction

[r16]

because the "enemy" is not the purist who insists his/her lifelong situation as a fan should not be dumped down the drain , like because there needs to be some new money making scheme , with old fans expected to show up in the movie theaters and buy every toy . Actually it is some still innocent kid , hearing how the Blacks , gays and feminists are stealing the hard won stuff of real man . Easy to defeat when the replaced / displaced stuff is watchable , far easier when the nuThing turns out to be a masterpiece . When the show fails and you have thousands of neutrals wondering why the thing had to be destroyed in such a pointless act , you will have believers . In bits and dribs . Who will then talk to their pals . Who will have to put down in a violent way ; not through you people picketing the White House or the Whitehall or White anything , shouting Down with Fascism .

there was utmost joy at the Force Awakens , the follow up was ruined directly by company trolls . Rey's greatness did not require her to be 1000 times better than the cowardly Luke . We fans have a lot of examples of the mysteries of the Force , we would never doubt Rey would be guided by the Force and move mountains as well as Luke . Instead we were to be shocked , like ... ı don't know , old fools who deserved it ? We were given heroism of a suicide by Admiral Party Dress in high heels , as if Womens' Fight for the Right to wear pants was yet to happen that faraway Galaxy so long ago . And this despite being against everything so far seen . If you can torpedo people with just below hyperspace speeds , there is utterly no reason for the sacrifice of those 30 Rebel pilots at Yavin , to make the case for Force being the ultimate arbiter of everything in that galaxy and how Good will triumph against Evil despite these "awesome" battlestations ... because that's the way it is there . This was presented as women can see beyond restrictions imposed by , ı don't know , man ? Creating a war of words so much that not a "good looking in movies type" actress was made up and made to fall and totally betrayed in the final movie with barely appearing , as if Rey's good looks had inevitably clinched the deal . You people remember the times we were to be astounded by a leading role going to a Black guy , no doubt getting the Princess , too ?

so , in a Crusade of doing things , Star Wars is to be re-shot . You are not getting Sir Alec Guiness out . In a situation of Howard Hughes and the [money laundering] Mob with Petrodollars also expected in shortly , a whole new Studio was not welcome . Which like happened anyhow despite the best wishes of George Lucas . Whose childish epic fit only for 5 year olds was not desirable for those who wanted mainstream industry embrace prn wholesale in any case you need some extra on the subject . It couldn't be filmed in the US , it could be filmed in the UK only because bankruptcy otherwise awaited the set owners and Guiness talked sense to people . AND NOBODY IS TOUCHING WILHUFF TARKIN EITHER , because the actor talked sense to those employed so that the movie could be finished . Not just because he liked his role within the Prequels as they were written at the time . Without these two , there would be no Star Wars franchise to inject females into .

 

[Gorbles]

because the "enemy" is not the purist who insists his/her lifelong situation as a fan should not be dumped down the drain

Purists don't have a monopoly on being lifelong fans of a particular setting or franchise.

For example, you evidently don't like The Last Jedi. I do. Am I the enemy? Are you? I don't think either of us are, much like I don't think TLJ was "ruined directly by company trolls". The problem here is trying to find some kind of objective reason for your subjective taste. Your taste is what it is. There's nothing wrong with disliking The Last Jedi. The problem is considering this some kind of evil machination from The Company to dump Star Wars "down the drain".

 

[MaryKB]

The only "enemy" are the people who think that nothing should exist unless it meets with their personal approval.

 

[r16]

am kind of the guy who thinks Crown Prince Mega Big Zit of UAE arranged local jihadists to patrol around so that the original Tunisian set could not be used . Star Wars is kinda big .

and yeah , that's the attitude . Once again , the Star Wars is so big that you can have any type of an hero or whatever without the slightest effort . When effort has to be spent on the Disney Formula , which once ı was amazed to see to really exist with a thirteen year old girl actually captaining a sailing ship , with much daring and utter skill , people should not be surprised to see there will be like opposition .

 

[lymond]

When I saw the nuBSG version of "Starbuck" my first reaction was "WTH?" and then off went the TV and it never went back on - at least not to that show..

It really a shame as nuBSG is not just one of the best scif-fi shows ever but one of the greatest TV shows of all time. And Kara Thrace was one of the best things about it. (Oh...and Richard Hatch has a role in the show playing a different character)

 

[Birdjaguar]

Many folks find change difficult and threatening. We all like our particular comfort zones. It is a harsh world out there and we all take refuge where we can.

 

[MaryKB]

Many folks find change difficult and threatening. We all like our particular comfort zones. It is a harsh world out there and we all take refuge where we can.

This isn't about change. No one's changing the book or previous version. If that's what you find comfortable, then you will always have that. What we're so confused about is how vitriolic some people get about new adaptations being made for different audiences.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This isn't about change. No one's changing the book or previous version. If that's what you find comfortable, then you will always have that. What we're so confused about is how vitriolic some people get about new adaptations being made for different audiences.

New versions of old things is change. ios 15 is not ios10. Old ways of thinking and doing things can be comfortable like shoes and clothing. New ways of looking at old things and remaking them to fit different sensibilities and tech is real change. The changes Millennials bring to culture represent an undoing of the past. It makes many uneasy. Anyone can read LOTR and imagine the characters anyway they want. Once those stories move to movies, shows or games the graphic images get set. He/she "now" looks "this way". What is beautiful; what is acceptable; what is current is all changing. Folks can be unhappy that what they have held to as standard is no longer standard. Shakespeare now gets redone a hundred different ways and nobody complains unless the production is terrible. All media is undergoing that same transition. Change is now! And it never stops.

 

[r16]

the Cause is right . There has been suffering over imaginary superiorities and assumed deficiencies . It is in the mind , it is pervasive , it is hard to see unless you are looking for it . It must be fought , driven back , defeated . Except "skewing" it somewhat to make it a single purpose , single aim weakens the fight and increases the suspicion between people . Once again taking a cue from Star Wars , it would be a trick worthy of the Sith to convince the White Male to consider he will be diminished to the level of those he has oppressed over millennia , while making the long oppressed look like eager to make the white male taste his own medicine , but nothing else . Yeah , and then cover it with fancy words , so much that they will become mere lies in the eyes of all concerned . Supposedly the addition of a phrase like "based on a true story" adds something like 10 million dollars to the box office numbers of an Hollywood production , even if the most cursory wikipedia search will create an impression that nothing of the sort had ever happened . ı don't know why it fails to get across or something that arts are not limited to past ages and it is perfectly possible to create something new which still ticks all the boxes and follow what has come before . And people will see vitriolic when somewhat smarter fascists take over the US and stuff . The people who let hundreds of thousands of their own to die to score some political point are warmly imagining they are LETTING the unworthy classes to express themselves as a rope given out freely to get them hang themselves .

 

[Valka D'Ur]

These puns are gold

But yeah, this was also already done: they called them "Episodes VII–IX"

*ducks*

Thanks. They're what I might have used if I'd decided to do a fanfic parody.

Come to think of it, I might just do that. The ideas and mental images are already forming. *evilgrin*

I watched up to the point where Han is killed off. I haven't watched further, because that's it. My favorite character is gone and I don't like the others well enough to care what happens to them.

I'm with Valka on this one. I can usually read around your fat-finger typos, but this one is just... I have no idea what you intended to type here.

I'm trying to think what it could refer to in '70s SF, but I'm blanking.

Except they aren't pointless changes. Reaching a new audience is neccesary if they are to be successful. Diehard fans of the original are never going to be enough, just noisy and given a lot of attention by a news media that thrives on controversy.
Neither LotR or GoT suffered commercially because of changes from the source material. They were appreciated by a large new audience, many of whom went on to read the original works.

So what was the point of genderswapping Liet-Kynes? It's not because of an insufficient number of women in Dune, because there are plenty, and there's already a character who tends to get short shrift because directors omit that part of the novel (likely due to time constraints; the miniseries did make a bit of effort with the Bene Gesserit and Feyd, but in a different way; what should have been Margot, Lady Fenring's scenes were instead allocated to Princess Irulan and one of her servants, for a different reason than in the novel).

I mean, I'm not on those other sites you've mentioned, so barring what you've pasted into this thread, I have no context there. That said, you don't have to explain anything. I don't want to force you, or make you feel like you are.

I want to try and understand the seeming contradiction between "I don't have anything against Dune movies" and the immediate qualifier that they "need to be respectful of the source material". Why do they? Can't you simply accept that they're made for an audience that might not include you?

I don't have anything against Dune movies as long as they are respectful of the source material. What is so confusing about that?

If they're not going to be respectful of the source material, then they're just piggybacking on an established IP and should be called something else.

This doesn't invalidate the depth of your knowledge of, nor interest in, Dune. That exists separately of any adaptation's existence. So I'm at a loss of why adaptations need to do something.

I could ask why adaptations need to tick every PC box nowadays, just to tick them.

Let's say I somehow made some amount of $$$ in the gazillions and decided to remake The Ten Commandments. It's a classic movie from the 1950s, and a lot of people love it even now, when the dialogue seems hopelessly old-fashioned, the acting is over the top in many scenes, some of the characters seem to react in ways that modern people find unrealistic, the music is heavy and clobbers the audience over the head, and the special effects are definitely outdated. Yet my grandmother loved it, and I still watch it when it comes on TV (it used to be an annual event on Easter Sunday).

So if I remade it as I suggested, genderswapping characters all over the place, modernizing how they react, inserting dumb jokes, and not acknowledging it as a parody or satire (as Dudley Moore's Wholly Moses! did, or the other animated or parodies did), but marketed it as a Real Serious Faithful Adaptation... would people still like it? Or would I be criticized for disrespecting the source material?

Have you seen the original Star Wars movies? There's literally only one female character with more than 5 minutes of screentime.

There's no need to be condescending, Mary. Yes, I've seen the original movies. I've had the fan experience of being in a several-blocks-long lineup to get into the theatre (those happened in 1977 when the first one came out). I saw the first three in their first runs in the theatre, and I have the original VHS versions that were released before Lucas decided to rip out the seams and change stuff around.

I'll have to time exactly how many seconds Aunt Beru has on-screen. I didn't actually care about the lack of women, because it's not a setting where you'd find many women. But there are female characters besides Leia. It's just that most of them don't happen to be human.

Why would it have to be Luke or Han who are switched? That's not necessary. But there's no reason Wedge Antilles needs to be male. You could bring in Mon Mothma to be leading the Rebels on Yavin (which was fixed in Rogue One) Red Leader or Gold Leader could be a woman. Remember those two Imperial commanders arguing and Vader chokes one? One of them could be a woman. Heck, even Governor Tarkin or Obi-Wan could be turned into female roles. I think Obi-Wan would actually work a lot better as a woman. Point is, if they remade the original Star Wars there's absolutely no way that Leia and Aunt Beru would be the only female characters, they'd absolutely make some changes.

You specified strong women before. So if it's not necessary to have "strong" female roles, then fine - make the entire army of Storm Troopers female. Who cares, since nobody ever sees their faces anyway? I don't even remember who Mon Mothma was. But if you want strong females in the main or secondary roles, you're going to have to either genderswap them or create additional characters. So that's why I suggested genderswapping all three main roles.

And they fixed this problem with the sequel trilogy. You have Rey, Leia, Maz, Rose, Admiral Holdo, etc. Women in important roles that have major impacts on the story.

I only recognize two of those names. I've only seen the first movie in the sequel trilogy and have no wish to see the others. If there are enough women in those movies to please you, great.

Just please try to remember the original context of the Star Wars movies. Lucas stated that he made the kind of movie he'd have wanted to see when he was a kid - the sort of Saturday adventure serials with strong heroes who get out of every certain-death situation by the skin of their teeth (or extraordinarily good luck). Women in those serials existed to be one of three things: the assistant, the enemy, or the damsel who needs rescuing. They weren't usually the hero who did the rescuing. Acknowledging this is what tells me the mindspace I need to be in to enjoy the first trilogy, much like there's a different mindspace necessary to enjoy other works of SF/F (it took a long time to get there to enjoy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for example, since I found Douglas Adams' brand of humor too bizarre at first).

You must absolutely loathe the Captain Proton episodes of Star Trek Voyager.

But anyway, I'm with @Gorbles that I also just don't understand why this stuff is treated so religiously. It's just a book, written a long time ago in a less-woke era, and a modern adaptation made some minor changes. It's not like Arakis was changed to a jungle planet, or Baron Harkonnen is the hero or something. A minor character's gender was updated to improve diversity because Herbert's original work was flawed.

Herbert's work depicted a culture 20,000 years in the future that was based on the feudal system on a planetary and galactic scale. That is a creative choice, not a "flaw."

As I've mentioned, if Villeneuve really wanted to use a strong female character, he could have cast this actress as Margot Fenring, even though she's the physical opposite of how that character is described in the novel. It would have made more sense to me, since Margot is a part of the story and showing that part would have helped flesh it out and add nuance. But nooOOOooo, Villeneuve took the lazy way out and made disingenuous excuses for it.

The number of shows that are beloved by fans but are cancelled seems to be evidence against your hypothesis. Reality is more complicated than "please the old fans, and you will succeed because they'll rave about it."

I also take issue with the notion that gender or race-swapping tends to piss off old fans. You mean it pisses off some vocal fans and fans who scream "woke" at every little thing? It's not a given that old fans will be pissed off by a gender or race swap, as the general reaction to Villeneuve's Dune shows.

Also, I find it really strange that people are still talking as if big studios can still produce things like it's the 1990s. Having an all-white cast is simply impractical in much of the West, in more ways than one. So if you're against 'woke' changes, then what you're really saying is that you'd rather see no new adaptations of older works unless it's done by people in an all-white country.

You seem determined to categorize those objecting to the genderswap as racists. I honestly don't give a damn what this actress' skin color is. I care that she's a woman playing a character who is supposed to be male. I would have the same objection if her skin was white, black, brown, red, yellow, green, purple, pink, orange, blue, paisley, plaid, polka-dot, checkerboard, tie-dye, or whatever.

In all these cases the author or their estates gave permission for the adaptions or the remakes to be made and they have far more moral right to the works than "fans".
In the case of Pippi Longstocking when changes were made to remove language now considered racially offensive fans objected even though Astrid Lindgren's heirs approved.

The HLP is not Frank Herbert. As for "moral right"... you are referring to the people who have been lying for over 20 years about the "notes." Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert's only "morals" can be summed up as "How much $$$$$$$$$ can we milk this for?"

Yes, I know the original Pippi Longstocking books wouldn't fly today. Neither would a lot of other children's books. I was horrified when I re-read some of the books I read as a child, and those books are now in the landfill. I could have sold them or given them away, but felt that new generations don't need that garbage.

Did the changes make Pippi and Annika male, and Tommy female? Did Pippi's mother become the ruler of some island, or the captain of the ship? How about Mr. Nilsson? Switched to female?

Heck, fans were pissed at George Lucas for "ruining" his own creation when he made the prequel trilogy for Star Wars.

Well, he did. He couldn't have created more boring characters if he'd tried. To this day I haven't been able to make it through even one of those movies.

BTW, it's a fact that Lucas ripped off enough elements from Dune that Frank Herbert considered suing.

The only "enemy" are the people who think that nothing should exist unless it meets with their personal approval.

Wow.

Backatcha, then. Only Villeneuve's version of Dune pleases you. The actual creator's version is "flawed," according to you. You know better than a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author whose literary masterpiece has never been out of print since its first publication in 1965.

Honestly, "enemy" is taking this to unwarranted extremes.

My criticisms have been leveled at people like KJA/BH, Villeneuve, Lynch, the production team that did the miniseries, and so on. I have NOT used labels like "enemy" or "woke" or "SJW" at any of the fans.

BTW, have you seen the miniseries? If not, I highly recommend them. There are more female characters, and the established ones are used more... and that was achieved without pointless genderswapping.

It really a shame as nuBSG is not just one of the best scif-fi shows ever but one of the greatest TV shows of all time. And Kara Thrace was one of the best things about it. (Oh...and Richard Hatch has a role in the show playing a different character)

That was Hatch's choice. He's always been a huge fan of the series, as well as one of the stars of the original version. He loved science fiction in general, and if the Star Trek Axanar fan film had gone ahead (ie. if the producer had been honest rather than embezzling the crowdfunding money and attempting to steal CBS' IP), we'd have seen Hatch play a Klingon in a Star Trek fan film about the Battle of Axanar. Sadly he's dead now, and we won't see him in anything else.

Why wasn't Kara Thrace simply allowed to be Kara Thrace, if she was that good? Why stick an additional label on her to lure in the fans of the original series, only to result in a "Gotcha!" reveal? It's like the second of those lamentable nuTrek movies - the one that shamelessly ripped off The Wrath of Khan. I wouldn't loathe that movie quite so much if John Harrison had remained John Harrison, one of Khan's followers who got left behind rather than ending up on the Botany Bay, and not Khan himself.

Many folks find change difficult and threatening. We all like our particular comfort zones. It is a harsh world out there and we all take refuge where we can.

Uh-huh. Han shot first. I don't care how Lucas changed it.

What's next - remaking the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns with a genderswapped main character? "The Outlaw Josie Wales"? (or whatever feminine name beginning with the letter 'J'?)

It's really not a sin to use male characters in cultural settings where it's more appropriate for historical or in-universe reasons that the character be male.

This isn't about change. No one's changing the book or previous version. If that's what you find comfortable, then you will always have that. What we're so confused about is how vitriolic some people get about new adaptations being made for different audiences.

I don't see why it's "confusing." You just bit my head off for suggesting genderswapping the three main Star Wars characters and got condescending over whether I'd even seen the first three movies. You've categorized me as an "enemy."

Thanks a lot.

 

[Sommerswerd]

There's no need to be condescending, Mary. Yes, I've seen the original movies. I've had the fan experience of being in a several-blocks-long lineup to get into the theatre (those happened in 1977 when the first one came out). I saw the first three in their first runs in the theatre, and I have the original VHS versions that were released before Lucas decided to rip out the seams and change stuff around.

To be fair to @MaryKB, Valka... you've just only a couple days ago revealed that you haven't watched or read LoTR, and are not really super familiar with it. That literally blew my mind. And I wasn't the only one here who was really surprised by that. I didn't give you a hard time about it or make a big deal about it when you said it, but I mean, honestly, I am still a little bewildered by that revelation.. to analogize, it was kind of like your High School English/Literature teacher telling you that they've never read Hamlet. Lots of people haven't read Hamlet... whatever, no big deal, but you would just expect that the English/Literature teacher would have.

I mean... I was speechless... that was a crazy reveal Valka, like almost beyond belief crazy. If someone had offered me a bet that Valka didn't read or watch LoTR, I would have lost all my money. I would have bet literally any sum that you were a LoTR, expert. Seriously. My point is that, after a reveal like that, I don't think its out of bounds at all to question whether you've seen Star Wars. Maybe you hadn't seen it... no big deal... you haven't seen LoTR, so...

Fun fact - According to my Mom, may she rest in peace... she was 9 months pregnant with me when she and my Dad finally decided to go see the film. They went to the theatre, but the line was... as lines for Star Wars tended to be in those days... wrapped around the theatre, and there was no way she could stand in that long of a line in her condition. So they went home, deciding that they would watch the first game of World Series the next day as a consolation prize. But she went into labor that night, so they ended up watching it in the hospital. As it happens I like both Star Wars and Baseball very much .

 

[r16]

as the person who introduced the phrase , ı should perhaps remind everybody that phrase "enemy" is in quotation marks and refers to still innocent kids who will be targets for people aiming to corrupt them to their extremist ideologies and the like .


and speaking of LotR , of course my mental image of them definitely come from the movies , despite having also read the book once . Not an expert as well . But ı wasn't surprised to see that Peter Jackson was heavily criticized in the echo chamber ı read for the news . Sauron as the eye is such a powerful image but said to be not in the book . And while it is obvious Gandalf is conducting a coup / regime change all over the map , from Rohan to Gondor , Tolkien's Aragorn released the Dead from their oath because Honour and yet Jackson's Aragorn decapitated some Mordor emissary because of his lies about Frodo . Wouldn't fit with the book or something ?

 

[Zardnaar]

Purists don't have a monopoly on being lifelong fans of a particular setting or franchise.

For example, you evidently don't like The Last Jedi. I do. Am I the enemy? Are you? I don't think either of us are, much like I don't think TLJ was "ruined directly by company trolls". The problem here is trying to find some kind of objective reason for your subjective taste. Your taste is what it is. There's nothing wrong with disliking The Last Jedi. The problem is considering this some kind of evil machination from The Company to dump Star Wars "down the drain".

I thought TLJ was crap because it didn't set up pt 3 well.
Still better than RoS though.

No cohesive plan was the big problem though. 3 films with very little cohesive plot just the same actors doing stuff.

 

[Samson]

Let's say I somehow made some amount of $$$ in the gazillions and decided to remake The Ten Commandments. It's a classic movie from the 1950s, and a lot of people love it even now, when the dialogue seems hopelessly old-fashioned, the acting is over the top in many scenes, some of the characters seem to react in ways that modern people find unrealistic, the music is heavy and clobbers the audience over the head, and the special effects are definitely outdated. Yet my grandmother loved it, and I still watch it when it comes on TV (it used to be an annual event on Easter Sunday).

So if I remade it as I suggested, genderswapping characters all over the place, modernizing how they react, inserting dumb jokes, and not acknowledging it as a parody or satire (as Dudley Moore's Wholly Moses! did, or the other animated or parodies did), but marketed it as a Real Serious Faithful Adaptation... would people still like it? Or would I be criticized for disrespecting the source material?

But what is the source materiel there? Would that not be like complaining the Villeneuve Dune is not faithful to the Lynch Dune?

 

[PhroX]

I wonder what people what be saying had Jodorowsky's Dune ever gotten made. On the one hand, it was to have a huge amount of original content that wasn't present in the novel (enough that the original stuff ended up getting turned into a story of it's own). On the other hand, it had Frank Herbert's approval, and he even collaborated in the early stages of the project.

 

[Gorbles]

I don't have anything against Dune movies as long as they are respectful of the source material. What is so confusing about that?

If they're not going to be respectful of the source material, then they're just piggybacking on an established IP and should be called something else.

Right, so logically you do have something against Dune movies (or any adaptation) which diverges from the source material. That's what I'm trying to explore.

My argument is that every adaptation changes something, however minor. Every single one. Therefore, my argument continued is that any person's preference for respect for the source material is ultimately arguable. It's not set in stone. There is no one definition of "respect for the source material", because that will vary depending on who you ask. Are any depictions of Romeo and Juliet piggybacking on Shakespeare's work because they don't feature actors and actresses from Verona? I have a feeling that would be called a ridiculous argument.

So I'm trying to work out why some changes from the source material are okay, but others are not. And it tends to come down to intensely subjective things, which also align often along cultural or political lines. Such as your belief in ticking "PC boxes", below. But this line, this "respect for the source material", is treated as an absolute. "they should be called something else" is your argument here. Why? Because they don't meet your personal standards for respecting the source material? I'm sure there are other Dune fans, who are just as invested in Dune as you, that don't share your opinion. Changing Villeneuve's Dune to be not-Dune isn't going to please other fans that don't share your specific opinions.

And obviously, this ties into censorship of art, and the like.

I could ask why adaptations need to tick every PC box nowadays, just to tick them.

They don't. I mean, sure, some try to, but they don't need to. This isn't an accurate view of modern adaptations.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

To be fair to @MaryKB, Valka... you've just only a couple days ago revealed that you haven't watched or read LoTR, and are not really super familiar with it. That literally blew my mind. And I wasn't the only one here who was really surprised by that. I didn't give you a hard time about it or make a big deal about it when you said it, but I mean, honestly, I am still a little bewildered by that revelation.. to analogize, it was kind of like your High School English/Literature teacher telling you that they've never read Hamlet. Lots of people haven't read Hamlet... whatever, no big deal, but you would just expect that the English/Literature teacher would have.

Lord of the Rings has nothing whatsoever to do with what I found condescending about her post.

She asked me if I'd ever seen STAR WARS.

I've already explained several times that I didn't get into fantasy until 10 years after becoming a Trekker, and the first three Star Wars movies happened during that decade.

You want to talk fair? If my math is correct, Mary wasn't even born when Star Wars came out (no doxxing here; she's mentioned enough autobiographical information to allow me to make this deduction). I started high school the year it came out. I don't think there's a science fiction fan in North America who hasn't seen or at least heard of Star Wars enough to know the basic plot, the major characters, and the phrase "May the Force be with you."

As for fantasy... up until 1985, my experience with fantasy literature was limited to stuff like fairy tales and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Then I started testing the waters of Dungeons & Dragons (yes, I'm aware that much of D&D is based on LoTR, but you don't need to have read Tolkien to enjoy D&D). I got into Dragonlance in 1985, when a friend loaned me her copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I was hooked less than a dozen pages in, and must have re-read that book at least 3 times in a single month before returning it. I quickly bought my own copy, and began collecting the other Dragonlance books. That was over 35 years and a medium-size bookshelf (plus half another shelf for the modules, manuals, and sourcebooks) ago. Some of the modules have sheet music in them (since there's a fair bit of poetry and music in the first trilogy). I transcribed the ones I liked so I could play them on the organ, and they are gorgeous.

But that's Dragonlance. That and Fighting Fantasy have been a staple of my fantasy reading (and writing) for decades. I've written fanfic for both of them (my first NaNoWriMo win, in 2016, was a 60,000+-word adaptation of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Caverns of the Snow Witch).

In the late '90s I got into gothic fantasy, which is a whole other thing. I'm not referring to stuff like Buffy, Angel, or vampires. I'm referring to The Crow. It's really grim stuff, but the TV series happened along at exactly the right time for the headspace I was in back then. I've got binders full of Crow fanfic, and a shelf of graphic novels, prose novels and short stories, and DVDs of the TV series and first two movies.

So it's not that I'm not into fantasy. It's just that Tolkien never appealed to me. There was a hilarious exchange in an argument about this some years ago over on TrekBBS, when I mentioned not being familiar with this, and someone thought he'd scored a huge "GOTCHA!" when I mentioned that the SCA group I was active in was The Shire of Bitter End. Apparently that person thought that Tolkien invented shires, when the fact is that they were a political reality in medieval England.

I mean... I was speechless... that was a crazy reveal Valka, like almost beyond belief crazy. If someone had offered me a bet that Valka didn't read or watch LoTR, I would have lost all my money. I would have bet literally any sum that you were a LoTR, expert. Seriously. My point is that, after a reveal like that, I don't think its out of bounds at all to question whether you've seen Star Wars. Maybe you hadn't seen it... no big deal... you haven't seen LoTR, so...

While I've come to think of Star Wars as fantasy with spaceships (due to the lack of any sensible science in the movies; it takes a pretty basic astronomy-illiterate person to use parsecs as a unit of time, rather than distance), it's categorized as being in the space opera subgenre, which technically makes it science fiction (it just lacks any credible science).

Comparing this to an English teacher who isn't familiar with Hamlet is a little mind-blowing to me, as it implies that I could teach a course in SF/F. While that's something I'd love to do, the fact is that I wouldn't even try to BS my way through something unfamiliar. Dune? Sure. I first read Dune approximately 38 years ago, and spent several years heavily immersed in discussions and debates on several online forums - two of which I co-admin'd. I've kept my copy of the Dune Encyclopedia at hand throughout this thread and it's come in handy for discussions on other sites as well. And it might benefit more people to read Ed Naha's book about the making of the Lynch movie. It's fascinating, and a very honest account of what they intended and tried but couldn't make it happen, and there's a plethora of interview material with the cast, crew, and Frank Herbert. I'd happily teach Dune.

There are teachers with mindcrogglingly wrong ideas about Shakespeare. A few years ago I happened to be surfing YouTube and an interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson popped up in my recommendations. So I figured why not watch it... the interview took place in the auditorium of a private school, and the stage was cluttered with bits of unfinished set pieces. The headmaster of the school apologized for the mess, saying the students were getting ready to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet, "an American literary classic."

Ex-cuse me? Romeo and Juliet? One of William Shakespeare's most well-known works? An AMERICAN literary classic?

That's a pretty neat trick, given that this play is dated as being written in the vicinity of 1595 and published a couple of years later... which is considerably before 1776. Add to that the fact that Shakespeare never even left England, and... yikes.

Fun fact - According to my Mom, may she rest in peace... she was 9 months pregnant with me when she and my Dad finally decided to go see the film. They went to the theatre, but the line was... as lines for Star Wars tended to be in those days... wrapped around the theatre, and there was no way she could stand in that long of a line in her condition. So they went home, deciding that they would watch the first game of World Series the next day as a consolation prize. But she went into labor that night, so they ended up watching it in the hospital. As it happens I like both Star Wars and Baseball very much .

You could have been born in the theatre!

That would have been quite a Star Wars story.

But what is the source materiel there? Would that not be like complaining the Villeneuve Dune is not faithful to the Lynch Dune?

The source material for The Ten Commandments was the Book of Exodus, of course (plus other resources mentioned in the opening credits). But Dudley Moore's movie is a parody and includes references to some other parts of the Old Testament, including Sodom and Gomorrah). Wholly Moses! is not intended to be taken remotely seriously, unless you subscribe to the idea that God has a sense of humor.

There are parts of Villeneuve's movie that are a copy of Lynch's movie. I've mentioned this before, multiple times. The stillsuits, in particular. But the point we're arguing about that Lynch got exactly right and Villeneuve got exactly wrong is that Liet-Kynes is Chani's FATHER.

I wonder what people what be saying had Jodorowsky's Dune ever gotten made. On the one hand, it was to have a huge amount of original content that wasn't present in the novel (enough that the original stuff ended up getting turned into a story of it's own). On the other hand, it had Frank Herbert's approval, and he even collaborated in the early stages of the project.

I'm glad that didn't get made. The concept art is stomach-turning, and there was incest between Paul and Jessica. That's disgusting. I doubt FH would have approved if the movie had actually gone there, since he made a point of emphasizing that the Bene Gesserit idea to breed Leto and Ghanima was met with utter revulsion by Stilgar (the Fremen definitely do not approve of incest). It's odd that the BG would support incest, yet be revolted when Paul offered to allow Irulan to be artificially inseminated so the BG could have the child they wanted (but who would never be accepted as a legitimate Atreides heir).

Right, so logically you do have something against Dune movies (or any adaptation) which diverges from the source material. That's what I'm trying to explore.

Why do I need to say things 10 times before you get the drift, only to profess further confusion?

There are some people in this argument who don't have any problem understanding me, so why these nitpicky "gotcha" attempts?

My argument is that every adaptation changes something, however minor. Every single one. Therefore, my argument continued is that any person's preference for respect for the source material is ultimately arguable. It's not set in stone. There is no one definition of "respect for the source material", because that will vary depending on who you ask. Are any depictions of Romeo and Juliet piggybacking on Shakespeare's work because they don't feature actors and actresses from Verona? I have a feeling that would be called a ridiculous argument.

Yeah, completely, that's right. The Zeffirelli movie of Romeo and Juliet is crap because Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey and Michael York and everyone else in a major role are from the UK, not Italy.

So I'm trying to work out why some changes from the source material are okay, but others are not. And it tends to come down to intensely subjective things, which also align often along cultural or political lines. Such as your belief in ticking "PC boxes", below. But this line, this "respect for the source material", is treated as an absolute. "they should be called something else" is your argument here. Why? Because they don't meet your personal standards for respecting the source material? I'm sure there are other Dune fans, who are just as invested in Dune as you, that don't share your opinion. Changing Villeneuve's Dune to be not-Dune isn't going to please other fans that don't share your specific opinions.

Stop conflating my words about nuBSG with Villeneuve's Dune movie. There were many, many more issues with nuBSG than with Dune. I will very likely watch the Dune movie on TV at some point. NuBSG is something I've already seen enough of to know I don't like it.

You'll note that I'm not tossing out insults and disingenuous "confusion" toward people who like that series, so I'd appreciate the same courtesy in return. My criticisms are toward the production teams, not the fans. In the case of nuDune, my criticisms are definitely leveled at Kevin J. Ander$on and Brian Herbert, neither of whom actually understand the books they're pretending to respect.

And obviously, this ties into censorship of art, and the like.

You're gonna have to explain to me how expressing a preference is censorship. I'm not in any position to make laws about what can and cannot be included in adaptations, remakes, parodies, or anything else of that nature.

 

[aelf]

You seem determined to categorize those objecting to the genderswap as racists. I honestly don't give a damn what this actress' skin color is. I care that she's a woman playing a character who is supposed to be male. I would have the same objection if her skin was white, black, brown, red, yellow, green, purple, pink, orange, blue, paisley, plaid, polka-dot, checkerboard, tie-dye, or whatever.

I don't know where you're getting that from. What a rubbish take.

Some of them are racist, yes (even if they try to hide it). It's quite clear that's what I was saying.

 

[bernie14]

My mom was a writer, many original works and some of her works have been "adapted" multiple times. Honestly, she didn't like it when they changed even one line of the monolog. But what really miffed her was when they would change an origin story (character's background) that would change the psychology of the character, since it would affect the tension of a scene, interactions with other characters. So, i see Valka's point

 

[bernie14]

I don't know where you're getting that from. What a rubbish take.

Some of them are racist, yes (even if they try to hide it). It's quite clear that's what I was saying.

You and your ilk are like "new age inquisitors"! maybe you can start a chan group or something