Does somebody actually give a ****? Really? (Thor)

[Guest]

as for refudiate;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/201 ... e-new-word

Oh, silly me! I must have just made up a word that doesn't exist. [/Mr Burns]

[Jack Cade]

It's like saying I shouldn't be a bit miffed if SMG got ditched for a Buffy movie because I never complained about the fact Kristie Swanson got ditched for the TV show, despite the fact I never watched the original movie before watching the TV show which I really liked and was hoping the movie would be based off which given its prevalence in the Buffy canon (much like Marvel Thor's prevalence in... Marvel Thor canon) the wouldn't be an unreasonable expectation.

Buffy is Joss Whedon's story. He didn't half-inch it from someone else. If he had, and now someone else was taking the reins and casting different actors, Buffy fans aren't very well placed to say, "You can't do that!" - or at least not on the basis of some principle.

The hypocrisy lies in the basis for the objection. It's perfectly reasonable for a Marvel fan to say, "This doesn't resemble the comic book closely enough for me to be interested in it." That's fine. The studio execs have taken a risk by altering their source material, and as a result, they've lost some of their audience, who don't want to see something that's sufficiently different to what they're used to.

The hypocrisy comes in where fans act as if movie execs somehow have no right, or are messing with something that doesn't 'belong' to them. Marvel's adaptation of Norse Legend into comic form (there are too many similarities for it to be called anything other than an adaptation) took considerable liberties with its source material, many of which could be considered deeply disrespectful. The movie is an adaptation from one medium to another in exactly the same way, and the people in charge of the project can't possibly overstep any boundary that Marvel hasn't already overstepped.

To put it another way, there's nothing special about 'Marvel's' Thor. There's the Thor of Norse legend, there's the comic book that uses it as source material, and now there's the film that uses the comic as source material.

[Guest]

The hypocrisy comes in where fans act as if movie execs somehow have no right, or are messing with something that doesn't 'belong' to them.

Don't all the Michael Bay* haters feel silly now?

*feel free to replace 'Michael Bay' with whatever company/individuals presented their own interpretation of The Transformers** which you liked least.

**feel free to replace 'The Transformers' with anything that has ever had an interpretation you disliked.

[Best First]

The hypocrisy comes in where fans act as if movie execs somehow have no right, or are messing with something that doesn't 'belong' to them. Marvel's adaptation of Norse Legend into comic form (there are too many similarities for it to be called anything other than an adaptation) took considerable liberties with its source material, many of which could be considered deeply disrespectful. The movie is an adaptation from one medium to another in exactly the same way, and the people in charge of the project can't possibly overstep any boundary that Marvel hasn't already overstepped.

Sorry, that just reads like 2 + 2 = 5 to me.

[bumblemusprime]

The hypocrisy comes in where fans act as if movie execs somehow have no right, or are messing with something that doesn't 'belong' to them.

Don't all the Michael Bay* haters feel silly now?

*feel free to replace 'Michael Bay' with whatever company/individuals presented their own interpretation of The Transformers** which you liked least.

**feel free to replace 'The Transformers' with anything that has ever had an interpretation you disliked.

The difference being that Michael Bay made a crappy, crappy, crappy couple of movies? It's a terrible change when it doesn't work--as opposed to the way Ledger pulled off a completely non-comic-accurate Joker and reinvented the character.

Okay, I'm going to go all politically correct white guy here.

It's one thing when lots of cosmetic changes are made, possibly for bad aesthetic reasons, a la turning the TFs into a bunch of scrap metal cobbled together by Bay.

It's another thing when the director/producers make a deliberate choice to change the racial dynamic. Which is what this is.

Shakespeare's Othello. I think that Othello is at its best when the title character is played by a black guy surrounded by white guys--the play is about racism at a lot of levels, and that's the purest transference. When Othello is played by a white guy in blackface, it's just ridiculous because it is always just an excuse to give Olivier or some other old-guard top billing.

However, when people monkey with the racial dynamic of the play, like making Patrick Stewart Othello and the rest of the cast black, or the South African production that kept Desdemona white but made Iago and all the soldiers black, it is done, at some level, to try and show the universality of Shakespeare's themes. And it works.

So here's the thing: Norse Gods and one of them is black and it's obviously a singular decision by a producer/director. Did Branagh know what he was doing? Probably. Is it just a chance to put a black guy in a company of gods? Possibly. Could Branagh pull it off? If anyone can, he can.

Maybe the actors/producers/directors know that lots of kids, some of them black, will see this movie and know nothing about Norse Gods. The only thing they will know is that there are a bunch of heroic characters and they are all white. Add to that the fact that this is based on a notoriously inaccurate comic book depiction, and it's even less of a stretch to say, "okay, find a way to put a black guy in there."

[Jack Cade]

Sorry, that just reads like 2 + 2 = 5 to me.

I don't really understand where/how you're disagreeing. Marvel completely screwed with an already existing story and set of characters in order to create a comic that they thought would appeal to a particular audience. Film producers are targeting a film audience - their job is to completely screw with any story they're given so as to appeal to that audience. Why on earth should they feel any compunction to please a comic audience? The notion that they should show some kind of 'respect' for a source material that itself had little respect for its source material is laughable. The concept of this kind of 'respect' is reserved for when film producers are messing with an original property, not a rip-off fest.

And yeah, the major difference with Michael Bay, as Bumblemus points out, is that he genuinely cocked it up.

The TFA team, on the other hand, changed Prowl into a ninja motorcycle, merged Ratchet with Kup and altered various other characters fundamentally - and we love them for it.

The other difference with Michael Bay is that Transformers is original fiction - the characters and story begin and end with the incarnations fans are already familiar with.

I'm not saying I can't understand Thor fans being disappointed. I just don't think they've got any basis on which to get on a high horse about it.

[Optimus Prime Rib]

This is just delving off into sillyland now.


"You cant get mad because we changed the source material from already changed source material because that makes you a hypocrite."

No, that means you like the Marvel version and expect a Marvel movie about a Marvel character to remain loyal to the Marvel source material.

[saysadie]

Let's start again: Hey, did you hear that that guy from that comic is going to be played by a black dude?

[The Last Autobot]

Norse Gods and one of them is black

The gods can be whatever color they want. Or show themselves in whatever form.

They could be even animals or a tree for that matter.


And Thor?


I dont care about Marvel´s Thor that much.

[Best First]

This is just delving off into sillyland now.


"You cant get mad because we changed the source material from already changed source material because that makes you a hypocrite."

No, that means you like the Marvel version and expect a Marvel movie about a Marvel character to remain loyal to the Marvel source material.

This.

[Jack Cade]

Who says they can't get mad?

They can get mad. They just don't have my sympathies. I agree it's a bit harsh to call them hypocrites when they didn't themselves plunder Norse myth, but decrying film makers for not being 'respectful' - if and in so far as that is the sentiment - is richly ironic. They only care about such 'respect' when it's their favourite thing being messed with, not when it's their favourite thing that's doing the messing. Fans of an original property have more of a leg to stand on if they're going to complain on principle.

I mean, what next? "Oh no, they've ruined Guy Ritchie's Holmes"?

[bumblemusprime]

Let's start again: Hey, did you hear that that guy from that comic is going to be played by a black dude?

Captain America?

Actually, Truth would make a specf*ckingtacular movie, you ask me.

[Optimus Prime Rib]

Who says they can't get mad?

They can get mad. They just don't have my sympathies. I agree it's a bit harsh to call them hypocrites when they didn't themselves plunder Norse myth, but decrying film makers for not being 'respectful' - if and in so far as that is the sentiment - is richly ironic. They only care about such 'respect' when it's their favourite thing being messed with, not when it's their favourite thing that's doing the messing. Fans of an original property have more of a leg to stand on if they're going to complain on principle.

I mean, what next? "Oh no, they've ruined Guy Ritchie's Holmes"?

Ok you win. Bring on Luke Cage played by Jason Statham and Black Panther played by Brad Pitt.

I mean wed be total assholes if we argued about them changing the source material, right?

Two wrongs dont make a right, three lefts do.

[Jack Cade]

No one's calling anyone a total asshole. But double standards are double standards. That's the term I meant, more accurately, when I said 'hypocrite'. I mean this is a clear case of double standards.

Luke Cage is an original property. Black Panther is an original property. These aren't proper comparisons. A proper comparison would be: "Oh no, they've completely ruined Disney's Pocahontas by making her 12 in this hideous 'reimagining'!" "Oh no, those whackos have changed Michael Bay's beloved Bumblebee character into a Volkswagen beetle in this comic book! And how come he can talk??"

[Optimus Prime Rib]

No one's calling anyone a total asshole. But double standards are double standards. That's the term I meant, more accurately, when I said 'hypocrite'. I mean this is a clear case of double standards.

Luke Cage is an original property. Black Panther is an original property. These aren't proper comparisons. A proper comparison would be: "Oh no, they've completely ruined Disney's Pocahontas by making her 12 in this hideous 'reimagining'!" "Oh no, those whackos have changed Michael Bay's beloved Bumblebee character into a Volkswagen beetle in this comic book! And how come he can talk??"

How about what they did to Deadpool in the Wolverine :Origins movie?

Tell me I dont have a right to be pissed about that.

[Jack Cade]

Deadpool = original property.

And I'm not telling anyone they don't have the right to do anything. You can be pissed about immigrants taking our jobs for all I care - but I reserve the right to form my own opinions about the merits of the complaint!

[Best First]

Sorry - this whole hypocrite/double standard thing is nonsense - i suspect half the people (if not more) who are irked about it weren't even alive when Marvel originally launched Thor.

This has wandered off from the original non-issue but you are talking about these people as if they bought a transcript of the original Norse myths at the start of the week, bought Marvel's Thor 1 on Tuesday and then started complaining about the Movie adaption on Thursday. At one point you say that loosley basing a comic on a thousands of year old myth and basing a Marvel Thor Movie on Marvel Thor are EXACTLY the same. But it isn't is it?

"How very dare they not retrospectively examine the original genesis of Marvel's Thor comic before expressing their distate at the movie adaption altering elements of what, i'll have you know, was a not entirely faithful adaption in the first place? This lack of constency in their criticism over a 48 year period betrays them. Aho."

it seems like a lot of effort to cast the net back that far for the sake of accusing people of double standards. Besides which can you be sure these people didn't complain then? If the internet had been about back then i'd wager half of them probably would have, but such a medium didn't exist back then.

Would it be hypocritical/double standards to complain about changes to Movie Captain America if you hadn't complained about the dropping of 40's racial and cultural stereotyping from the Timely incarnation when he remerged in Marvel form in the 60s?

sorry to harp on but i just don't see that random internet peoplez deserve being branded as such for expressing a dislike of a change in something they like betwixt comic and movie.

[Jack Cade]

Wait, I'm not branding anyone with anything. Why does it keep getting characterised like that? Why can't I just find someone's annoyance silly with good reason? Why does it have to be that I'm calling them bastards or wot-have-you?

I also don't understand what's so complicated about this. If these people really cared about 'respect', they wouldn't be reading Thor in the first place. They don't need to have been there when it was written - they're supposedly against it on principle. I thought that's what their point was. And yeah, you have to take a look at the glass house you're standing in before you throw stones.

The truth is they don't care about 'respect'; they care about someone messing with *their* story. That's somewhat understandable, but I find it silly that they should be the least bit on a high horse about it. It's like someone who doesn't give a crap about litter in their neighbourhood suddenly getting red-faced because someone threw a can on their lawn.

[Optimus Prime Rib]

Thor is an original property.


As far as I am aware, noone actually OWNED the rights to a Norse God until Marvel. I could be wrong. But as far as copy write law is concerned, I am pretty sure Marvel holds the cards.

That being said:

"you like the Marvel version and expect a Marvel movie about a Marvel character to remain loyal to the Marvel source material." Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Now, do I think Elba is a great actor, absolutely. But I agree with saydes when she said that it feels like Hollywood is doing it on purpose now.

[Shanti418]

Let's start again: Hey, did you hear that that guy from that comic is going to be played by a black dude?

Captain America?

Actually, Truth would make a specf*ckingtacular movie, you ask me.

Better than Steel?

[Professor Smooth]

There are some characters that can be played by actors of pretty much any race without screwing up the source material.

Black Kingpin? No problem.
Black Norse God from Thor? Sure.
Black Captain America...as a WWII period movie, that's a stretch, but alright.
Black Spider-Man? Doable. Spidey's race was never a big part of his character. Could be interesting.
White Luke Cage? Really Pushing it, but I guess you could argue that as long as it's a white guy from the slums, it could still fly.
White Black Panther? No. African prince who is the latest in a long-line of so-named superheroes. White Black Panther is just The Phantom.
White Nearly Every Single Person from Avatar: The Last Airbender? No. No. No. No. No. No.

[Guest]

White Black Panther? No. African prince who is the latest in a long-line of so-named superheroes. White Black Panther is just The Phantom.

Albino Black Panther on the other hand...

[Jack Cade]

Thor is an original property.

Bah. In a legal sense, maybe, but the law on intellectual property is ******. Just because no one previously had copyright on the story and characters you nicked doesn't mean you didn't nick them. Marvel thieved from an entire culture and US-ified it into a hideous parody of its former self!

"you like the Marvel version and expect a Marvel movie about a Marvel character to remain loyal to the Marvel source material" isn't reasonable enough for me, principally because of the word 'expect'! Why do they 'expect' it? Because they expect people to not screw with things that don't really belong to them? How can they have that expectation when they're reading a comic that already does that?

What's really going on here is: "people can screw with whatever they want as long as it's not something I like".

[Best First]

Thor is an original property.

Bah. In a legal sense, maybe, but the law on intellectual property is ******. Just because no one previously had copyright on the story and characters you nicked doesn't mean you didn't nick them. Marvel thieved from an entire culture and US-ified it into a hideous parody of its former self!

Why is it hideous? Thor's been one of the better Marvel outputs of the last few years. And is the issue that it changed or that you perceived the original changes as bad? The ‘principle’ you are asking people to live up to seems irrelevant of the goodness or badness of the change.

Which as an aside means if you didn't complain about the departure of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman from the original stories you can't be critical about LXG entirely missing the point of Moore's comic. Which seems, as per the Cap example, suggests an abstraction of a principle to the point where it’s not much use.

"you like the Marvel version and expect a Marvel movie about a Marvel character to remain loyal to the Marvel source material" isn't reasonable enough for me, principally because of the word 'expect'! Why do they 'expect' it? Because they expect people to not screw with things that don't really belong to them? How can they have that expectation when they're reading a comic that already does that?

because the suggestion that there is no distinction between a change between a Marvel movie and a Marvel comic and a thousands of years old myth and a Marvel comic - no matter how many time's it's reasserted - rings false? I'm not sure who you think Thor does belong to either.

I think the issue i take with your criticism Jack, having revisited the original article, is that your point seems to center around one quote "Norse deities are not of an African ethnicity! … It's the principle of the matter. It's about respecting the integrity of the source material, both comics and Norse mythologies."

Now in terms of that one person – I entirely agree with what you are saying – it’s an idiotic thing to say and the points you make about consistency totally apply. I don’t however think that this then means that everyone who takes issue with the changes between the Marvel comic and the movie version of the same comic should then be held up against the same critical framework as the nature of their complaint may just be that they don’t like this particular change.

That doesn’t mean that they are expressing hypocrisy or double standards, it just means that they are expressing their subjective view that they don’t like something. Maybe, for all we know, some people actively loved the changes from the original myths and don’t like these changes – that’s not double standards, it’s just an expression of taste.

And yes that could be phrased as

What's really going on here is: "people can screw with whatever they want as long as it's not something I like".

But even if this an accurate summary of the gestalt opinion of a bunch of people we have never met - so? Surely that's just a matter of focus, i'm sure there are changes between the Twilight films and the Twilight books, but I’m not going to care about those because I don’t give a **** about Twilight. Of course people will comment on changes to stuff they like, because it comes to their attention by virtue of being stuff they like. That doesn’t however instantly infer that they think everything else is free to be or should be messed with, in many cases it may just a lack of awareness or interest.

So actually what is going on here is “I’m not happy about this change” with the usual side helping of fan hyperbole.

And I’m not saying you can’t express that you think anyone who has an issue with this is silly, but equally I can express my disagreement at the line of criticism you have adopted.

And I don’t think it’s that hard to relate to the general frustration of being a fan of things as they become more mainstream. It’s a no win situation – as a group fans of things like comics essentially prop up a property with their pocket money, in some cases for decades on end, baffled as to why more people can’t see its’ appeal, but when someone who panders to larger audiences does see the potential they inevitably make changes to increase the generic appeal meaning people who have held this thing in affection have to watch as both their idea of the property is distilled and their voice becomes infinitely smaller as they are suddenly less important than, in this instance, the casual movie goer.

And yes sometimes (often) this will be expressed poorly and yes sometimes the frustration will latch onto trivialities, and yes sometimes they will be entirely wrong that organic web shooters will never work – but the hope, if maybe not the expectation (although they do tend to flow into one another when people have an emotional investment), that things will be true to your perception of how they should be is, to me anyway, entirely empathisable with. If empathisable is a word.

Of course a few years ago I think I posted something along the lines of “who gives a crap if it’s not true to the Asimov stories, it’s got Will Smith shooting robots in it” – so I definitely am a hypocrite. But I knew that. And did nothing about it. Ha!

[Jack Cade]

Which as an aside means if you didn't complain about the departure of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman from the original stories you can't be critical about LXG entirely missing the point of Moore's comic.

OK, your point about me generalising and focusing perhaps on one sentiment too strongly is a good one, because the way you phrase it here makes all the difference. Complaining that something 'misses the point' seems to me entirely different to complaining about 'respect' or being 'faithful'. 'Missing the point' assumes that someone has tried and failed to capture the spirit of something. That's a criticism of incompetence. That's fine.

But the words 'respect' and 'faith' seem to me to identify some kind of moral duty. Like if you're going to touch a property, you'd better damn well treat it nicely or you're a bad man. I find that a suspect position to start off with, but as long as someone applies it equally, you know, it's a principle of sort, and principles are something you can respect. It's when someone applies a high-minded principle to one thing and not to another that I call double standards.

So ultimately, it is going to depend on the specific individual making the criticism and whether they're getting on their high horse about so-called 'respect' or simply saying that this decision is an incompetent and ill-judged one for anyone trying to make an effective screen adaption.

As to the frustration, I can somewhat understand it but it still seems a little wrapped up in a sense of entitlement. I though fairly on that the TF movie was going to be rubbish and miles away from what I'd want out of a TF movie, but I didn't think I was somehow owed the version that I wanted.

Re. Thor being 'hideous' - I mean it in terms of how it at least began as a sort of distorted caricature of a set of stories, completely bowdlerised and made twee to appeal to a young audience.

[Best First]

ok - cool.

Although i think maybe you are going a bit heavy on the definiton of respect. Are you a gun toting hooded youth mayhap?

i think you are right about the sense of entitlement - i am just saying i get where it comes from.