Ch-ch-ch-Changes (For No Damn Reason)

When you take a property, such as a book, comic, video game or what have you, and turn it into a movie, you have to expect some changes.

Now there are many reasons for these changes.  To begin, some ideas don’t translate as well to screen visually, such as spandex costumes on comic book characters.  In other cases, story ideas are tweaked to be more understandable or palatable to the general public, like portraying Thorin & Company as much more brave and competent.  

Sometimes ideas that were fine when they were first created years ago, seem quaint or scientifically outdated due to what we know today, which is why from now on, Spiderman will be bitten by a genetically modified spider, rather than a radioactive one.

Other changes are simply a stylistic one, where the director simply prefers to tell the story to his or her preferences, rather than trying to adhere to the original source with slavish adherence.  Compare the first two Harry Potter films, directed by Chris Columbus, who did his best to convert the stories into movies, with the later films, directed by guys who wanted to make good movies based on the books.

And it may be hard for us to accept changes sometimes, because the films don’t match the versions we have in our heads.  But if the film is well made, we (the non-rabid fanboys,) overlook these changes.

But some writers and directors be cray, yo.

Sometimes, creators make creative choices, creative changes that just baffle.  Changes that are mind-boggling, in that they do nothing to improve the story.  Viewers scratch their heads as to why, of all the changes one could make, you would do that.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself.  The prime example for me was the 1990 film of Captain America.  Now, to be fair, it was awful in general, but there was one particular point of the film that to this day, breaks my brain as to the possible reason for the choice.

The film showed the standard Captain America origin: Steve Rogers participates in an experiment to create a super soldier, he fights the Nazis, gets frozen and wakes up in the modern day.  And his enemy is naturally the Red Skull.

Who is Italian.

Fucking.  Italian.  The Red Skull.  ITALIAN.

This is the Red Skull, the living embodiment of Nazi evil.  He exists as the foil of Captain America, who represents American values.  Why the hell would you make him Italian?  It’s such a minor thing, but is so crucial to the story, why would you mess with it?

In the bootleg-only Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie, they changed Victor Von Doom’s name to Vincent.  Why?  What could possibly be the motivation for such a pointless change?

These are the things that really rankle fans.  If you want to make Percy Jackson older to appeal to a more profitable demographic for your movie, I can grok that.  It's a big change, but there is a clear motivation for doing so.  But why would you massively increase the body count of Bilbo’s companions at the battle of five armies, as they did in the Rankin & Bass animated movie?  Especially when it was supposed to be for kids, anyways.  What does that improve?

I mean, no matter how many whiny fans had a problem with Arwen replacing Glorfindel in the Fellowship of the Ring film, it made sense.  They took an important event in the story that featured a minor, unimportant character, and replaced him with another character that didn’t get a lot of screen time in the book.  Arwen is important in the story, but doesn’t get to do much at all.  And since Hollywood likes to give women important roles (and there are NO women who do anything in the first book,) they swapped Glorfin-nobody with the hot chick.  No big mystery there, I say more power to them.

But elves at Helm’s Deep?  Why?  At that point, you are saying that the story as written is not good enough as it is.  And the elves themselves (hey that rhymes!) don’t actually help at all.  You could have just thrown them in with the Riders of Rohan & Gandalf and have them come to their rescue then, it would have accomplished the same goals.  Baffling.

No doubt you all have your own examples of this phenomenon, where a change just makes no sense to you.  Sometimes, it’s the small changes that rankle more, because these are often the ones that seem to have no real purpose

So what I urge is this:  If any of you are ever in charge of a film adaptation, bear in mind the following questions whenever you are considering making a change: 

1.  Is this necessary to get the story told as a movie?

2.     Does this change improve the story in some way?

3.     Do I have any freaking reason to change this at all?

And if the answer is no, then consider perhaps that the original book, comic, slashfic became popular enough for someone to pay you to turn it into a movie.  Consider that perhaps that fact means the original creators had some pretty good ideas.

Try using those.