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