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Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics.

Today is a joyous day for the small proportion of us who are both geeks and loves sports ball, specifically baseball and bat ball and all the rest of it.

They see his opening day for the rest of the league that didn't start in Japan's So I am in my New York Mets best.

But today we're here to talk about a topic that we've kind of been bouncing around thinking about but became kind of perfect for today, the ethics of remakes, reboots and adaptations.

Now, if you're one of the loyal fans who's been tracking us on our Google calendar, which I strongly recommend you do, information about that is in the show notes, along with everything else about this podcast.

You'll see we're trying to announce our upcoming podcasts as often as we can so that people can get ready for them.

They can send in questions and thoughts and discussion, and so they can if they want to join us in our live broadcast every Thursday at noon twelve o'clock Central.

That'll change sometimes, but that's the general time and today.

The reason I mentioned all that is if you've been looking ahead, you would have seen that we had scheduled that today we'd be talking about the first half of the Daredevil TV show.

We did an episode on episodes one and two.

When I made the schedule, we were all pretty excited about it, me and especially Jessica Plumber, who's a freaking guest on this podcast and like me, a huge fan of the character of Daredevil.

We thought we were gonna want to watch the whole season and be really excited to talk about the first half.

Well, that kind of changed within about the first three minutes of the first episode of Daredevil Reborn.

I won't rehash all of it here.

I'm sure it'll come up a little bit, but as you heard if you listened to our podcast about it, Danielle and I really didn't like it.

We particularly we thought it was a very unfaithful reboot and adaptation of both Daredevil character in general, but especially of the character that had been established in the Netflix MCU and so Rieky and I had kind of looked at each other and thought, well, we were a couple other episodes we were trying to schedule, but we couldn't line up any of them for this week, and thought, since we're not doing our normal topic because one of the co hosts is so doesn't like the way it's being adapted and remade, why don't we about remaking and adaptation.

So that's kind of my pitch and where I'm coming from, though I promise you do have a lot of positive things to say as well.

But Riki, for you, what makes this an interesting topic?

Well, most of the franchises that I follow either rebooted or have continued in a way that is new.

I'm thinking of Star Wars right, Like Star Wars is all in the same continuity, but for every generation, like a fandom, there's been kind of a new thing and it's gone in a different direction than the previous iterations of like the movies, and now we see the TV shows are starting to do different things.

So I think like these franchises have become very much like entities in themselves that adapt with the times and change, and I always find that interesting, you know.

I have a lot of interest also in the comic book industry, and that of course has been going on for much longer and has seen many more changes in characters that have existed almost for a century now at this point.

In some cases, I think we're coming up on like Superman's hundredth right within.

Or so fourteen years away.

Yeah, well, like take a character, take a character like Superman and what he means to people, and to just examine like why he endures as a popular character, but also like how he has changed in many ways.

We really like the way you framed it because I think you covered a number of the different things we're going to be talking about today, Because something like Daredevil is kind of a very obvious example of like a remake or a reboot where they are keeping the same characters and they're staying in the same visual medium, but they are in this case and they're sticking with a lot of the same actors.

I don't think any actual characters have been recast, but they are kind of rebooting the canonicity, and of course they'll also kind of you know, so there's discussions about how accurate are there being both to the comic books but also to the earlier version of the show.

But if you brought up like Star Wars shows, are's actually a lot of other kind of things that can happen.

Because first of all, there is, as you said, kind of the over time and over generations.

The world in the nineteen seventies is incredibly different than the world of the late nineteen nineties and then the world of the twenty tens.

One of our three kind of major generations of films have come out.

But at the same time, within Star Wars, you've also had the adaptation of characters from books come and in some ways full stories coming into live action.

You've had like with the Ahsoka Tales of the Jedi, or of course the character of General Thran.

You've had characters who start out in animation coming into live action, Ahsoka being the most obvious example, but Sagerera, a number of others.

Thron starts in the books but then goes to animation before he comes to live action.

And then you've had characters that have gone the other direction.

You know, with the Clone Wars, you had a lot of characters who started in live action, then became animated characters, and now are back to being live action characters.

And I think with all of these there's so many questions that comes up about, you know, how do we do adaptations, what does it mean to do an adaptation?

All these kind of things, and we're gonna kind of bounce back and forth with a couple offent directions of approaching this, but let me kind of just start with the most general question for you, Riki, why do you think, well, actually, let mean back up even a little bit further before I get the kind of ethics of it.

Why do you think we're getting so many remakes today and reboots?

And does it feel like it's more than there has been in previous years?

It feels like it.

One of the stats I guess I heard from twenty twenty four in movies, like the top ten grossing movies in theaters were either reboots of things or sequels to existing movies.

I don't know that that was like around November, and I don't know if it held up all the way through, but I think like Wicked was like just about to break into the top ten.

And of course that is an adaptation of a novel slash stage play.

Right, they're both themselves at you know, take ons of a franchise seventy years old that is literally one hundred years old.

So I mean, you cannot ask a question like this without engaging with just the business side of it of movies, TV et cetera.

And there's a safety in the business of making an adaptation of something that you know already has an established fan base, like the Wicked movie.

Right, Like people went to see the play, people read the book, and like, oh, movies coming out.

I know the story, but like now I'm excited to see it in theaters.

It is like a thing.

Yeah, and I think that happens with any of these franchises right that adapt something certainly like the young adult novel into movie trend brought a lot of fans and especially like those younger fans that read the novels into theaters.

Right, if you grew up with something, A, you want to see it yourself, and B, especially if youre an adult, maybe this is how you introduce your kids to it.

You really want to kind of you know, focus on that.

And I think there's a lot of this that's kind of outside the purview of this podcast.

In terms of the economics of it, I can't say I know all of it.

I do know that we're in economic time with movies a lot because of the special effects budgets, but for many other reasons where yeah, it's harder to take a chance on something and people want much more safe bets.

And I think there's a lot of conversation that we talked about about how that hurts movies in general and media in general.

Although it means that there's a lot more possibility on TV, but even then, sometimes, you know, the budgets can be astronomical.

Yeah, that's the thing is that I think when you say it's harder to take a chance on something, it's harder for a movie that costs two hundred million dollars, like let's just say as a ballpark to take a chance on something, right, Like a high budget action movie has to draw in a certain amount of people a certain amount of money.

But I do like for me, like you know, I am a huge horror movie fan, and those movies have very small budgets, you know, relatively speaking for movies.

Oh yeah, like somewhere between like ten to fifty million, right, it's a small budget.

But those there's a lot of horror movies that take chances right with new things.

You know, there are established franchises like Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, that kind of thing, but a lot of my favorite horror movies within the past five years are just like new things and the studios and the filmmakers are just taking a chance on something and it's exciting, and there is this thing where, yeah, like some of them are probably gonna spa spawn new franchises, like Muthrigan for example, Like I know there's already a sequel being worked on.

Right Well, So let's with that, let's kind of talk about some of the other reasons, because I think money is obviously a big one, but I do think there are other reasons why people make remakes and I just kind of put a couple of them together if you want to jump in a comment any of them or add others to the list.

But I think one is because the desire to tell a story in a new medium.

And I think a lot of this time it's the let's take a novel or a you know, a comic book or something like that and put it on the big screen.

A lot of times it's the let's take something animated and put it into live action.

And that's a topic that you and I have, like, you know, some mixed feelings about We've discussed we needed to touch on again.

There's the idea of bringing characters into an established EU, you know, And so with the MCU.

This is the biggest one we have with we're kind of like remaking the X Men movies now so they can and the Fantastic Four because they've been to bring them into the MCU, although Fantastic Four will hit another reason on my list or with this new Daredevil show, it's to more explicitly bring it into the MCU.

Animational live action in which we've talked about modernizing a story, I think is often kind of one of the reasons for it.

And to some extent this is a purely financial thing of that there's a need to protect copyright.

I think the most famous of these was the second in or of the Final Four Final Four the Fantastic Four characters known with Michael P.

Jordan as uh, Johnny Speed, Johnny Rockett was his name, Johnny Storm, Johnny Storm, thank you.

Where you know you have to protect a copyright by making something every twenty years or so, but also just sometimes you know, you know, my characters like Superman, like Batman, like the stories can be great, but sometimes you want to introduce them to an audience, partially to make money, but also sometimes to update the story in some ways.

And then and then I think, uh, and then of course just you know, the money grab anything I missed on that list, you think, or any comments want to make on the things on that list.

Sure, I think I always think of Spider Man as the we are just trying to hang on to VIP.

Yeah.

Yeah, because we had the Toby Maguires and then Andrew Garfields and now we get like the Venom Slash Spider versus Villain boes that just come out every couple of years, and it's like, that's what they That's what Sony Studios needs to do in order to hold on to their license.

As part of the right hold on to the the other characters as well.

You know, that's why they'll do Venom and then have a lot of the other villains and stuff like that.

But yeah, like animation, I think is a very important one to me because I love anime.

We all love, you know, like the Star Wars animated serieses like Rebels, and to see those characters come into live action there's something special about it.

Yeah.

The one piece anime, like Japanese anime to live action has a very mixed bag, mostly bad, right, But you know, we talked about the one piece live action in my opinion was probably the best anime to live action adaptation i've seen.

Yeah, and the the fact that it was done well is just heartwarming and promising for other future projects, and I hope that they happen and that people like the people who are doing these things pay attention to why it succeeded.

Yeah, and the love and care that the people involved had for the property and put into it.

You talked a lot about the business and the money, but I do also believe that there are people who love these things and just like want to make them.

Yeah.

I think Star Wars a lot of the people now who are creating the Star Wars things we're watching are like us.

They grew up on Star Wars and they're like, I now have this opportunity to add to this thing I love.

Yeah, and true, why wouldn't you take that chance if you're like a writer or director?

Right?

I think that's true.

I'm really glad you brought up the anime to TV one because I think that's one where I think there's actually another thing I'm should put on the list, which is expanding the audience because and this is again where I think it's kind of a mixed bag because as you and I have discussed, I think both of us think there can be a fantastic storytelling in animation anime specifically, but also just in other forms of animation.

And sometimes I don't like the idea that it's not really a real story until it's become live action, and that's been a lot.

I think we're probably not even gonna touch the whole debates over the Disney live action remakes, but I know that discussion comes up a lot there.

But with anime, like there's two examples that come to me that really kind of do two different things.

One is One Piece, which I think was very intentionally and very successfully.

It did expand the audience for a lot of people.

I didn't love it as much, but for me that I'd more do with the characters than anything else.

But I think a lot of people who don't necessarily love animation really loved it, and of course the anime fans who really did loved it.

But for me, Cowboy Bebop is one of my favorite stories, and I don't like the anime very much.

I loved the live action, and now a whole bunch of fans are throwing a whole bunch of things that they're at their phones.

Please don't do that.

If you want to send me tomatoes, just send them to me.

I'll turn them into an I sauce.

But like, I loved it in part because I found and again, this is just the way my brain works.

It's my own fault not critiquing the medium.

But I found the medium of the original Cowboy Bebop really hard to understand, and the TV show totally clicked for me.

And I do think like when there's a story like Cowboy Bebop that is very tied to anime but has a kind of universal story to be understood that I think is worth telling.

I do like the idea that putting it into different formats in different genres, not different genres, but different mediums can help more people to find that story.

Yeah, I fully agree.

Like that's the thing with the one piece live action is that I just want it in front of as many eyes as possible.

Yeah, And in that case, like there's doubly the animation to live action, but also like the Japanese to English audience right, like, yeah, it's a very niche audience for anime still, even though it's become quite popular.

So.

I'm sure there's a lot of people who watched it on Netflix and maybe didn't even realize when they started watching it that it was adapted from an anime.

And just like getting over that hump of resistance, I think.

It's important and I think that it's important to understand, especially when animation is one but there's a number of other mediums in which people are telling great stories, and that medium isn't very accessible to lot to many people, or at least there's some people who for who find it more difficult.

And you know, there's a ton of moralizing on the fact that as a society, people don't read as much as they used to in terms of actual books, and I'll leave that aside.

So I think it's with positives and negatives there, but I think we can sometimes have this very like my point being, I don't want to make a judgment about why or why it is that why it is or isn't that people are finding it harder to read books a lot of the time, But the fact is a lot of people don't read as many books anymore.

And when I look at a character like Admiral Throng, you know, especially with Star Wars, I think that there's a considerable level of like, you know, you're one level of fan if you just want to watch the movies and nothing judgment, but like it's more of an investment to then watch the TV shows.

It's more of an investment to watch the animated shows.

And then that last level of investment is reading the books, and maybe beyond that is like you know, video games and the encyclopedias and stuff.

But like characters like General Throng, characters like some of the people from the High Republic who I have really loved.

It can be dangerous and there's problems with it, and we'll discuss that.

But I think to me, one of my favorite kind of adaptations is when you take something in a medium like that that is less accessible for whatever reason and bring it to a more accessible medium like TV or movies.

Yeah, well, I mean like just comic books.

Yeah, we talked about the MCU being this mega franchise, but prior to those first movies, comic book movies were seen as a joke.

Yeah, and many were many were bad, and just like comic books in general, a lot of people did not consider them to be good storytelling or like they weren't for adults or what you know, whatever, the derogatory thing.

But being a comic book fan, like in the eighties and nineties wasn't popular, right, Like, it wasn't a popular thing in the in the mainstream media, and so many of those stories are iconic.

And now we are we are seeing like this this shift and people are trying to retell some of those stories in movies and TV.

And sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes like they have to change because the story itself is like fifty years old.

Like we start with the MCU.

I know the incredible hook exists, but iron Man, right, is considered by a lot of people to bequote unquote the first MCU movie and the very the start of it.

His origin story in the movie begins in Afghanistan, whereas in the comics it was the Vietnam War, right, And I remember the debates of people like, well, like they changed his backstory.

It's like yo, but it's the year two thousand.

Yeah, it can't be Vietnam anymore.

Right.

And that's totally an issue that I want us to get into when we talk about like how what works sure doesn't work with an adaptation because I think often one of the better things you can do is to kind of, you know, bring the story into the modern day in a way that we've seen a lot of stories do well and a lot of stories really struggle with.

The last thing.

I'll just say though on the kind of like kind of the last thing.

I'll say though on this general idea of like shaping the terms what we're talking about, because I think this is more recent and until very recently has very much been a joke.

But by the last couple of years we started to really see it work.

Is the video games to TV movie type things?

Yeah?

Absolutely.

Part of this is I think that just video games themselves, as the technology has gotten better, but also a generations who started on video games have grown up with them.

You know, pac Man isn't telling a story.

I have no idea why the ghosts are trying to chase pac Man and why he wants to eat those little pellets.

I just knew that when I was eight years old it was fun.

I don't think there was a story behind Tetris.

There probably was somewhere, but I just knew it was fun, Russian music and moving the blocks around.

Today, like you know, so many video games have these really in depth stories to them, and some of those are being made into you know, major motion pictures or TV shows, and you think of just comparing the the reaction that the World of Warcraft movie got when it came out, and granted I saw it in theaters, it was real bad.

But compared to the Last of Us a show that was nominated for Emmy Awards and won one for Nick Offerman for a guest Actor in an episode and episode three, and a number of other video game movies have been very well received.

Fallout was one.

The Resident Evil movies are, I think, I don't think they've been OSCAR nominated, but they're definitely considered like some of the best of you know, just when you want like a fun ombie shoot them up movie, like Resident Evil movies are quite beloved by a lot of people.

Rieky is shaking his head, and that's very fair.

Okay, I love the Resident Evil game franchise.

The movies are just so we're going to talk about this in more in depth, but they're they're not true to the video games.

Okay, that's fair.

They are based on is how I would phrase it.

Okay, that that one's fair.

I've heard a lot of debate on those.

Well, so let's start with that.

What do we mean when we say that, Well, actually, even back of a bit, what do we think should happen?

Like, what do we want from an adaptation, reboot, a remake?

And because you mentioned this idea of being true to it, what does that mean?

I mean to me?

The reason I would say that Resident Evil movies are not true of the games is that the main character played by Mila Jovovic, Alice, just like doesn't exist in any of the games, Like it was made up for the movies.

So like she's the focus of those movies and her entire backstory and storyline is just from the movies.

Okay, So that's.

That's where I'm like, this is an adaptation of the material, right like Umbrella Academy, Zombies, t Virus, et cetera.

And there are some beats that match, like the Nuke King of Raccoon City, but it just it just like does its own thing, which is fine.

Like I'm I'm I don't I think the movies are bad, like from a movie making perspective, but I think like the fact that they are different from the games shouldn't be the reason to be like, you know this, this shouldn't exist because they're different.

They're they're different, and they exist.

And I don't like what they've done with it, but I respect that a like they had this passion to do what six movies out of this, Like that is something.

And what it did was also to continue the franchise and keep the name right like in the public eye.

And I think at various points the game franchise itself may be kind of like interest in it flagged because there were a couple of stinkers in the middle, and the movies helped keep it alive in some sense, so like there's this synergy between them.

Okay, well, so if that means not, maybe be the best example to get to my question.

But then so I'll return to the question, what do you think is important when making a reboot or a remake or an adaptation.

I mean, it depends on what you want to do, I guess is my answer, which is like a non answer, but it's okay, I don't know, like just love the thing.

Yeah, And even even if it is not to every fans liking, like the Resident Evil movies are not to my liking as a fan of the video games.

I still acknowledge and appreciate the passion, and I think you have to you have to have the passion.

Like it's it's hard for us as fans to tell, right, are you just making this because of the money?

Right?

So I don't know that that's like a judgment call that each of us has to like decide, like what do we think is going on here?

Right?

Yeah?

I think for me, I think I do have a little more specific about it, but I do I do have a lot of I do think it's very contextual and even some of the kind of specific things I'm about to say, I think there's exceptions to but I do think what you said about having a love for it and a passion for it, and I think for me at least, it is important to be trying to honor the work that you're doing.

And what I mean by that is and here I'll say, I think here's a market difference for me, And this is one of theggest questions that comes up, is I want it to be true to the spirit of the original work, and for me, what that is less about the look of something and more about the ideas behind it, you know.

So I'm gonna take Star Trek for example, because I think actually this is a important divide that comes up a lot.

The original Star Trek series and the Next Generation series.

Obviously, you have a huge fan base.

I would count myself as one of them, and we're a lot of people are very invested in the look of those ships.

And for the most part, every generation has had a like, you know, literally the next Generation, and so when you had a new generation of TV making, you were also telling a new generation of technology in the story, so that a story made in the eighties and early nineties, like the New Next Generation and its follow ups, they looked like they were more technologically advanced than the original Star Trek because the movie making TV making of the late eighties was a lot different than the late sixties.

Then in this kind of third wave you've gotten that started with shows about you know, going back to the time of Captain Kirk and Spock and even a little bit before then, but they made a conscious decision to make them look much more technologically advanced, and a lot of people didn't like that.

And I'm not saying that that's wrong by any means, but for me, at least, what I care about is that not that it looks the same, but that it feels the same, Because for me, an essential part of what Star Trek is about is the spirit of exploration, is the idea of infinite diversity and infant combinations.

Is the idea that we often don't know things, and that our first understanding of something may well be wrong, and that we need to look deeper and passed our emotional responses to things, and that a lot of times negotiation and bridging miscommunications can solve conflicts a lot better than just warfare.

And I think a lot of the TV shows really honor that.

I think the jj Abrams movies absolutely do not, and J like, if you want a fun movie about light, you know, laser fights and people fighting with laser guns and ships fighting with phasers and torpedoes.

The jj Abrams movies are fine, but they don't feel like Star Trek to me, And so I use that as kind of an open example of to me, there has to be some understanding of what's the message that's being portrayed by the show.

What are the questions that it's asking, Even if you're not giving the right answers, or if there aren't right answers that to me is I think the first thing I look to is what's the heart of the characters, what's the heart of the series of whatever it is, and is that being honored.

Yeah?

I like that.

Partly because, Yeah, the whole Star Trek thing is interesting because an nineteen sixties TV show, like the budget and the technology that they have, it's a very cheap show.

I mean, it was expensive for the time, but like compared to now, especially like the lack of CGI like it, it looks cheap.

It looks like a TV set, right that the crew of the sorry, the bridge of the Enterprise looks like a TV set, And that's fine for what it was.

But I absolutely do not think that like a new adaptation of Star Trek should hold to that look because then it just looks like something from the nineteen sixties, and you want it to look like something from you know, two thousand, two hundred or whatever, twenty three hundreds.

I do think though, it's interesting to compare that to Star Wars, which was late seventies, and it's it's very different because the storytelling and Star Wars takes place in a very narrow window, right of about fifty years let's say, like it's all within the lifetime of the Skywalkers, right, right, kind of two generations of Skywalkers.

The movies at least and most most of the TV shows happen in that same window, and they have all intentionally stuck to the visual aesthetic of that first movie to the point where you get like a sound effect like from the targeting computer of a starfighter, right, like that little beeping sound.

They reuse that, and we all recognize it, and like we cheer when we hear that sound.

Of all things, I love every time a Gonkroid appears on my screen and it looks like the most plastic y trash can thing ever.

But I think like that shows the magic of that original Star Wars movie, Like, even though some of it is of its time, yeah, it still looks very good.

You know.

We know now, we've always known, but just people didn't care as much that starships don't bank like they turn in much more direct ways.

And we've had a lot more science fiction shows that acknowledge that.

Battle Star Galactica is one of the best examples of this, so is Babylon Five.

But they still bank in Star Wars because just it looks cool, and we all know it doesn't make any sense.

I will say, though, there is one area in Star Wars where what you said is not true.

I think it stands out because overwhelmingly what you said is correct.

But it's interesting to me because it does spark a lot of debate about this, which is lightsaber fighting.

They were no choreography, but yeah, the lightsaber choreography.

If you compare Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, they're basically stationary.

They're moving around a little bit and they're just swinging these two handed weapons.

Neither of them are martial artists in the slightest.

Now, compare those exact same they're twenty years younger.

But those same characters in Rise of Skywalker or look at like the characters at any other point they're doing.

There's like lightsaber fighting, it becomes a martial art I think at some point along the way, and also incorporates a lot of martial arts, or at least like you know, Parker or something like that.

You know, there's just a lot more body movement and a lot faster movement of the lightsabers, and also they often become one handed weapons instead of two handed weapons, and there are people who complain about it, and I think you can kind of explain it, but but also just sort of accept that, like fight choreography is a lot easier to do on screen these days, and that's okay.

Yeah, I mean you have to point to the casting of Ray Park in The Phantom Menace like an actual martial artist, and what he brought to the character of Darth Maul became the new blueprint for lightsaber fights, like it was cool at the time, and then you know, now everyone's doing flips and stuff and spinning the Yoda one perhaps is a little ridiculous.

My comments about that and the able is involved on record, but we can move on.

But I think that's a very good example of a franchise updating, not even to the times, right, Yeah, Like martial arts movies existed, like you know, Bruce Lee movies in the seventies, so you could have cast Bruce Lee as a Jedi and had him fighting in that in that way.

But I I like it.

I don't know, I don't know what to say other than yeah, stuff changes, styles changed, Like we as much as as fans were like this is this is real, Like this is real history.

So it doesn't make sense that like X would happen, and then why would happen?

And this changes.

They're also just like movies that we like to have fun watching, and I would I would rather watch ray Park do his thing than just have like King Arthur versus the Black Knight type of sword.

Fight, right yeah, and that and that makes no sense to me, And I think that that it's you know, again, you can kind of squee squint your eyes and find a way to explain it and canon.

But also I just don't think you have to.

And I want to be very clear that I'm not trying to disregard what matters to the people for whom, you know, the colors of the uniform or the style of fighting that like, you know, one example we've talked about before, and maybe this is a good good segue into it.

For me, the height of Wolverine is utterly and completely unimportant to me.

And one of that is because I don't have an investment in the originals, and so I'll say that, and so I'm able to enjoin the adaptations on their own.

And I do think there's an important ethical question thereof that, well, there's nothing wrong with that, and I think I should.

No one should ever feel bad for not knowing the source material.

I do think that people who just know the newer version can sometimes be a little quick to denigrate the importance of the concerns of the people who do love the source material what I do think.

But but you know, to me, even I believe, at least for myself, even if I had read a lot of source material, the height of Wolverine would be so far away from a thing that I would care about.

But I know it's really important for you and for a lot of other fans.

It is important.

Wolverine needs to be a short king.

Yeah, and so here.

That may be weird to people, but I would consider his height to be like an essential part of his character.

Yeah, that's fair, like top.

Five, you know, like the healing and the clause being Canadian, like being short.

And that's not just like, oh well, he's like always short, but it they use that in stories like the Fastball Special.

Right, being thrown by Colossus is specifically a battle tactic they use because he's he's short.

Right.

Yeah, No, that makes all of sense to me, And and I think it kind of gets to what I was saying earlier.

Is that I am a lot less interested.

And again I don't want to be dismissive, but when someone's concerns are purely aesthetic, I tend to tune it out a little bit.

But when it is something that is like it's not that he's short, it's that there is discrimination to get short people in our society, and it's something that he experiences and is a part of who he is that I have a lot more sympathy towards rather than just like, oh, the uniform is supposed to be this color or that color kind of thing.

Yeah, I mean, like color was the thing I was thinking of.

H I don't know, because like the nineties X Men movie did that whole thing with like, oh what like you you were expecting yellow spandex Yeah, like specifically called out the comics, which was weird, and of course, like X Men ninety seven just flip that on its head thirty years later and we all cheered.

The comic book fans cheered.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

I think, to me, like aesthetics, colors like that is part of it, especially when you talk about visual mediums like comic books.

As a visual medium, color is so important mkay, right, And then we can go to extreme examples like what if the MCU had decided that the Incredible Hulk, instead of being green, should be blue.

That would just be like mind bogglingly weird, right, Like no one would accept that because being green is part of his character.

Right Why I don't know, Like originally he was gray in the very first issue ever won and they changed it because I think of the ink issues or something.

Yeah.

So, which is also kind of why the Luke Lightsaber changes from green to blue, is that in Return of the Jedi, it may have been from Fluda green.

I think it's from green to blue green.

Okay, yeah, because the blue really didn't show up against the desert in the job of the hot scenes.

But no, okay, you're right, and I will take that back to some extent that may well, it doesn't matter to me.

I probably should have more sympathy and understanding for those kind of concerns.

And I always say, if I can just say further on that, the example you brought up is actually a perfect one because at the time I loved the line you know, what do you expect yellow spandex And that was a line that I would use in trying to convince my friends to go see this movie.

And I realized because what it did was it was kind of giving me permission to say, no, no, no, this isn't a comic book movie.

This is a real action movie.

It just sort of based on the comics, and it was giving me and a lot of other people permission to sort of that it was okay to watch it, even though it was one of those icky, silly comic book movie things, and it worked.

I'm looking back on it, it's pretty shitty to the origins of the thing, and I think that we're now in much more of an age where like reading comic books doesn't by definition to get you stuffed in the lockers anymore.

In fact, a lot of people who read comic books stuff other people in the lockers, and that's not cool, and don't do that.

But you know what I mean, Like thee I feel like we don't need that anymore.

And you're right.

I didn't cheer in the same way, but I felt a little called out by it, and in a good way by that by them going back to the ouspand X in X Men ninety seven, because yeah, it's an interesting example of where I think it's fine to have a little fun with the original and to sometimes be poking fun at it a little bit.

I'll talk about another example of that in a minute, but I think that if you feel like I'm trying to remember, there was a viewer who used this as an example of something being really bad and I can't it was one of that I think the middle MCU movies.

I'm not sure, but they said that it felt like the writers were embarrassed by the source material.

Yeah, you have that, you have.

You have to be proud of the source material, no matter how silly it may be.

And otherwise why are you doing it?

Like going back to the whole thing about passion and having a love for the property, right, right, I think when you when you look at the people involved in the making of the MCU, like you cannot get around the name Kevin Feige at this point, right, And if you look at his biography and his history, he loves comic books.

Like he was on the he was like a production assistant in that first X Men movie, and the story goes that he was slipping issues of comics to the actors and being like, hey, like look at this, like this is what I kind of want your character to be like.

And he was even at that point, like he was influencing things and trying to bring more of that comic book authenticity, and now that he's in charge, he's like bringing all that to the forefront, right.

Yeah, And that's to me, that is like my primo example of like the passion and having a love for something and being able to bring that to a wider audience.

I think that's a great way to describe it.

And I think that, like again, that doesn't mean you have to take it one hundred percent serious.

I think you can make fun of things, but there's a difference between being the outsider mocking something versus being the insider having fun with it.

And I'm using this only these example.

I don't think it really qualifies as a remake or reboot.

It is very much a send up.

But Galaxy Quest is making fun of Star Trek left right and center, and it's making fun of Star Trek fans left right and center.

But it is clearly done with love and with reverence by people who love those things, And to me, that's so different than something like the Big Bang Theory or like some of the stuff we're talking about where it feels like it's embarrassed by the source material, you know, And I think that that like to me that the Galaxy Quest is kind of the outer limit of you can have fun and you can you can like you can laugh about the things that are silly about the thing you're remaking while still honoring it.

Yeah.

I was actually like thinking about this the other day, that it seems like we have lost that kind of parody movie.

Spaceballs is another one, right, It's yeah, I feel like it's beloved by Star Wars fans, and I think Galaxy Quest also is beloved by Star Trek fans.

I've heard people say like they consider it a Star Trek movie in a sense, So we don't really see like that kind of parody anymore, which is weird, Like, and the parody almost happens within the franchises themselves.

Like I was thinking about how the whole like the Yellow Spandex thing.

Nowadays, in Marvel movies, there's almost always a scene or a line where some some characters laugh and scoff at a name, right, like in Spider Man and No Way Home when Doctor Octopus shows up, or yeah, they're like, oh, your name is Octavius, like, and they're like all snicker, yeah, and like that name thing like just happens.

It seems like in every movie, and it's the franchise saying like, look at these comic book names.

They're ridiculous.

Yeah, but we're still doing it, you know.

Yeah, Well I don't love it.

I'm just like, oh, okays their name, Like, deal with it.

Yeah.

I do like the Spider Man line, like when he meets doctor Strange, he says, oh, we're using our made up names.

That was a good way of doing it.

Just like laughing at someone's name because it like describes them.

That is just the medium of comic books.

That's what it's always been.

Well.

I also like when sometimes when it's not just poking fun at something, but it's acknowledging that a lot of these stories that we love have kind of problematic roots, sometimes sometimes a lot more than others.

And for me, the example I want to use about this is Cage, and most a lot of people may not have seen the litut Cage TV show or even know the character.

He's definitely kind of on the lesser known side, but he's part of the street level heroes that Daredevil and all them were part of and he had a great show starring Mike Coulter in the Netflix MCU, And the character is a creation of the black exploitation days of the nineteen seventies, when it was a lot of white, white creators primarily creating black characters that were like, in some ways it was like, yeah, we don't have any black characters.

This is a good thing, but a lot of them were also playing into a lot of white stereotypes about black people in the seventies and that has continued to today.

And the show is written and made almost entirely by black crew in terms of like writing, directing, and stuff like that, and really focused in that community, in that world.

And you haven't seen the show, have you.

No, I have not seen any of the Netflix marvels.

So he starts out as power Man in the comic cap and it's kind of a ridiculous costume.

It's very tied into a lot of these ideas.

The yellow Shirt's iconic.

Forgive me spoilers for a show that's about ten years old, but this we'll have some slight spoilers.

In the course of the show, he goes to visit like to find out the doctor who created him, who's a white man, and he's put in a situation where his clothing gets destroyed because showing my culture without a shirt off is something that lots of fans are really happy with, myself included.

But as a result, he needs to put on something else, and so he finds the power man outfit that this guy had constructed for him, and he puts it on, and so we get to sort of check the box of We do get to see Mike Coulter in that original costume while he's acknowledging this isn't me.

This is a creation of the white people who tried to make me what I am.

And also it's kind of ridiculous and it was just to me.

It was such a great balancing of acknowledging the problematic history and how much the show was kind of a reclaiming of like, no, Luke Cage can be a great character, but he's a black character should be told by black artists, and reclaiming that and reframing it in a way because especially like you know, the show came out not long after the show was made, not long after Trayvon Martin and the fact that he was wearing a hoodie and a bullet you know, pierced T shirt.

For a lot of it was a very important look.

And so to me, that's another great example of where like yeah, there should be loved, there should be passion.

We also acknowledge that sometimes out of malfeasance, but often just like the benevolence of the time, that was not understanding a lot of things that should have been understood some of the you know, some of these things creations are fifty seventy one hundred years old and could be used to be modernized somewhat, and that can involve poking a little fun at their origins.

Yeah, I like that a lot.

Yeah.

Well, and so that leads to another one of these historical questions.

You talked about iron Man going from Vietnam to desert storm.

I think this is another thing that becomes really important, is that, on the one hand, if a story is very historically bound, then sometimes I think it is very important to keep it in that time period.

But that at the same time, some of the best adaptations, to my mind at least, have acknowledged that you need to make the story relevant for today and so for today's Yeah, at the time of Ironman coming out like if my parents had lived through Vietnam, but I certainly hadn't, and a lot of younger people hadn't, but we'd all lived through Desert Storm.

And the two examples that I like to use as both positive and negative are V for Vendetta and Watchmen.

And I mentioned those because V for Vendetta is very specifically set the book during Thatcher and during the particular ways that Margaret Thatcher was making the country more conservative, and in the story, the people who made the movie looked at that and said, this is now fifteen years after a Thatcher has fallen.

That's not the concern anymore.

But now we're in this post nine to eleven world of all of these horrible fears about Arabs and about non Christians and about you know, people from you know, brown people in general, and things like that.

And so they updated the story to be a fascist government that was about those fears instead of the kind of things that Thatcher it and make it worry about classism had been.

Watchmen, on the other hand, is written during the Cold War, when a lot of people think it's entirely possible that we're gonna nuke each other.

But by the time the movie came out, that wasn't a concern anymore.

We knew the Cold War ended, and I, at least I have always felt that as a failing of the Watchmen movie that they don't update that, that they try to say, remember how scary it was when we thought that Ozzy Mandias might be justified or probably not, but might be for taking this horrible step to end the Cold War threat when all of usknew it it ended already, you know, and if it had been a different kind of threat, at what might have worked better.

I'll get off my stopbox and pretend that I asked a question there so that you can kind of respond to that or tell me how wrong I am or anything like that.

Well, I don't know if you're wrong.

I do think like some stories and some characters do get tied to a specific period in history, and it's up to the new storytellers to decide what to do about that.

And kind of like, to me, like one of the best workarounds has been Captain America, right, Like his origin is tied to World War two, yep, because you know, like Hydra is a sub organization in Nazi Germany and just like putting him on ice and him waking up like whenever the now is is like the perfect workaround that's kind of always going to work.

Yeah, same time period, Magneto being a Jewish child in Carson in a concentration camp and then escaping because as mutant power awakens, starting to be difficult to weave that into modern stories.

Yeah, right, and we saw it X Men ninety seven.

They got around it by just like leaving the story being told in nineteen ninety seven?

Is that the title says, But like, I don't I'm not sure what's going on in like modern X Men stories, Like some I think are just kind of like, yeah, he's old whatever, like maybe his mute powers making him age less type of thing.

Yeah, well, I know that the Magneto one is a very debated topic, and ever since this idea of the new X Men reboot has been it's been one that's come up a lot, and I think there's legitimate arguments on both sides.

I think, on the one hand, there is an extent to which the Holocaust is a unique moment in history, that that having characters that are tied directly to it, particularly Jewish characters, is an important thing and something it shouldn't be.

Lost, and it's important to his character very much because like he's like I lived through this, like you all don't see, like this is the same thing that's happening.

On the flip side.

Though, I think that the idea that it was this completely unique thing that has never happened before and will never happen again isn't actually accurate.

And there have been a lot of situations that are similar enough that a character could draw very similar lines.

And so the idea has been, you know, things like could you set it in South Africa, or could that he you know, was under apartheid or in you know, Southeast Asia under you know, Paul Pott or something like that, or could you put him in just the American South and having gone through civil rights or anything like that.

And I it's one that I think there's almost no way to do without offending a lot of people.

And unfortunately, like a while ago, I would have said, make him a Palestinian or you know, and give him still some Jewish.

Like I've always liked the idea that Magneto is a title that can get passed down and so for example, like the Magneto of a holocaust, has a grandchild who now goes through the other horrible experience, and that that kind of he's the one who takes up the mantle.

But there's a lot of sensitivities about it, and they've gotten certainly a lot worse in the last two years because of the war and the horrible treatment of the people in Gaza.

And and yes, I feel like that's one that I think has to be handled incredibly carefully.

But I will say the fact that a lot of the related characters, like the fact that, you know, characters who are in the in the comics often tied directly to him, like Wanda Maximov and her brother.

You know, those characters are often betrayed as either Jewish or Romani or both do their connection to Magneto and to their mother.

Neither one has been honored.

And yeah, I think it's a really it's a really interesting question of what do we do when characters are not only bounds to historical events, but are bound to one about which the historicity has changed a lot, you know, and or just the the historical understanding has changed somewhat.

I think that would be part of even of the Vietnam thing.

Is that just you know, popular opinion about Vietnam is radically different today than it was at the time that the first Iron Man came out.

And I don't think there's an easy answer, but I think it's I think there's a real importance to really be very thoughtful about what message are you sending, both in who you include and what you change and what you take out, and how is that important and how is that honoring the original spirit versus you know, recognizing what has changed in the world around you.

Yeah, and sometimes it takes time.

I think I don't think now is the right time to write a story or an adaptation about Palestinians, because we're still in the think of it and things are happening and there's a lot of emotion, and I think same thing, like even with nine to eleven, right like now, I think we are starting to see more nuanced stories being told about nine to eleven or like following those events rather than like immediately after it was probably just like all like hyper patriotic stuff.

Now it's like, let's examine like all sides of this, right, And you just I think history, like when you're living through history, it's hard not to be emotional about it, and it does take some time, like to tell a still like look at Shindler's List, Like what was that like forty years say after the Holocaust?

It came out when I was in high school, so that would have been like early nineties, So yeah, like thirty five forty years there.

And that movie was as much about like, let's remember this thing that perhaps like several were several generations removed some of you might not know these stories right, and the need to retell something and make sure that history is not forgotten is equally important.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like we talked about when we did an episode on God's Zilla Minus on about how it was kind of a retelling of the Godzilla story at a time the Gojira and told by Japanese, you know Japan in nineteen fifty three.

Telling a story that's very much about, you know, the nuclear bombing and World War Two is a fundamentally different historical understanding than that movie, which is really kind of a reckoning with Imperial Japan and Kamakazi and all those kind of things in a way that wouldn't have made any sense to tell in the nineteen fifties or even sixties, seventies, eighties.

M.

Yeah, I.

Could go listen to that episode.

Yeah, a lot of feelings.

I think there's so much we talked about in an episode that comes up here.

This gets us into an issue that there's a lot of controversy about, and so I want us to at least touch on.

But I feel like you and I are pretty solidly in agreement and have made our points pretty clear in many episodes before race swapping of characters, gender swapping of characters, any USA.

Beyond getting upset about it's dumb, me, let me make a slightly more nuanced comment down at least I think that to the extent to which it is important part of the character, it is worth examining and thinking about.

And for me, the punching up versus punching down theory becomes very very important of I making more characters non white, more characters non male, more characters non straight or CIS or disabled, like, further diversifying because I fundamentally believe diversity is good.

I learned that from Star Trek is always something I'm gonna be in favor of.

I think that there needs to be some understanding of the dimensions of it and what it means, especially in how that character relates to other groups and things like that.

But I I think in general it is very unfortunate and very disingenuous that a lot of the kind of like larger cultural conversations have become these fights over like, oh, why don't we have enough white superheroes anymore?

And you know, I think just the less set about it, Like obviously I've brought it up, but just to kind of say, for me, at least, I don't think there's much question.

I think there's nothing wrong with adding more diversity to characters.

I think if a character's race or you know, something like that is important, then probably keep that and tell other versions of the story.

But the idea that we have to protect white male characters to protect white men is just something I have no time for.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I agree with that in general principle.

I'm just like kind of think of examples of that and like why it's good or why it might not be might not be good.

I don't know.

Like the first thing that came to mind when you said that is, like, people make this absurd argument argument about like well, what if they made black Panther a white man, how would you feel about that?

And it's just like that that just doesn't make sense.

Like it's like, look at this character and who he is and what he is, right, And yeah, I don't know, make better arguments, I guess, is what I would say to people.

Yeah, I think because most of all, for me, what most of those arguments come down to is that there's sort of an idea that the default is white, male, sis, straight, abled, et cetera.

And so there has to be a reason to make someone not the default.

And anytime we question that and say this is a character for whom their race is irrelevant, for whom their gender is irrelevant, I mean it's always it's always relevant, but for whom it's not a key part of the character.

And yeah, I'm always gonna be okay with switching things around and trying things out in new ways.

In a character like Black Panther, like Cage, like Shang Chi, like any of those characters where it is an important part of who they are, then yeah, I think it should be kept.

But you know, if you know, now Black Panther is a woman in his sister god what's her name?

Sure, sure, thank you like, I don't think that's a bad thing.

I think it's interesting to see how it is explored.

Well specifically, like that example, like she has inherited the mantle and the powers of Black Panther, right, right, It's not like they took Black Panther.

It's not like they took T'Challa and then made him.

I don't even know just what the female version of T'Challa would be, but like Mad made that character a woman she is, she is her own character, and she went through her own arc of feeling not worthy of this and then rising to the challenge, and like that that was a good arc for her, for her character, and she rightfully inherited the mantle of Black Panther.

Yeah.

I think like if you take an existing character and story and then just like change it, you just you have to ask yourself the right questions, yeah, like why you're doing this and how important are these characteristics for that character?

And I think you just have to take it on a case by case basis, Yeah, and make sure you're doing it for the right reasons.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's a really good point.

And so let me and me as we're goin to start to wrap up.

We've been an hour.

We will have some bonus content for members of course five dollars a month.

If you five dollars a year, help us keep the lights on, get all sorts of free content.

One of the examples that was brought up by our friend Jacob, former judge, former co host of this podcast, Jacob leech each that I remember, actually we talked about a bit and I want to get your thoughts on was situations where there's a comment being made about a character but in ways that don't really fit anymore or are now seen as kind of problematic, and and is it better to just get rid of it or to adopt it?

And the example he brought up was in Avatar the Last Airbender, the misogyny and sexism of the character of Sokka in the first season because in the show, the character is a very pronounced you know, and let me say that again, in the character in the first season of the animated show Avatar the Last Airbender, Socca is a complete sexist, and not in kind of ways that come off as like malevolent, like he's a villain, but in ways that are almost kind of laughable in the show, because you know, things like where he like meets the warriors of not Yoshi of Kyoshi, thank you, and he's like, oh, you're girls, you can't fight, and quite laughably, like they completely whip his ass.

And it's a part of his character growth.

And at first he's very like he has to protect all the women around him, even though he's not a bender and his sister is.

And it's played for laughs, but also it's a major character lesson for him that he learns by the end of the first season, like this does not make any sense, and he is a different character in that regard by season two and three, the live action show that we liked a lot of and also had some critiques of, took that part of his character out entirely.

And Jacob's point was like, this isn't great, because you know, characters should have arcs and like it's important to learn, like to let go of some of these sexist beliefs and stuff like that.

I think I understand why they took it out because I think there was a time in Hollywood where it felt like it was still okay to be sexist as long as the other characters were laughing at them.

And he still had a lot of very misogynistic humor.

Barry Ston's in the character in Our Simpson in the character of It Bear up, Wow, you got totally wrong.

Barney.

The character in How I Met Your Mother to Me is a great example of this, where there's an awful lot of very misogynistic humor, but it's like it's okay for us to laugh at it because we the audience are supposed to know that he's ridiculous and stupid and terrible for this.

I feel like, though, there's a middle ground where you could update the way that his misogyny is shown without making it the laugh that it is.

And they're kind of like sneaking in misogynistic humor, but still have it been like, you know, just because sexism expressed in very different ways now than it was, you know, thirty years ago when that show came out in animation, twenty years ago, whatever it is, and so I feel like you could have kept that in the character but just portrayed it in a different way.

What's your thoughts on this?

Yeah, I've been thinking about this because, like right now, I'm fine with what they have done with Sakka's character the update because yeah, like just I guess how I would put it is that the show not having that in itself is progress.

I think, like you said, like not not having that be a part of his character means in some ways, like it's not a part of society like that obviously, like not true, but that we are like moving forward in a way that like this character, Like at one point, yes, like we laughed at this character and pointed out how ridiculous he is.

Now like we would say, like he's not even that would not even be a realistic character.

I guess right in a sense, I was thinking about a similar thing in Cobra Kai that the character of Johnny is racist and misogynistic, and we laugh we laughed at it, like oh gosh, like how can you say these things?

Or like think of these things?

And in that show, he learns some lessons and comes in contact with people like particularly Miguel and his mother and grows right right, and it's like that's that's nice.

It's nice to see.

It's heartwarming, Like here's this man who has changed, and then every season he resets and makes some bad joke.

It's like, oh my, like face palm, and I just got so tired of that.

Yeah, that he wasn't growing, Yeah, and they were resetting him.

And that's why, Like, even though it's a it's a different show, like live action Avatar versus animated Avatar, I'm kind of like, Okay, like Socca is not that person anymore, and that's probably better.

Yeah, I think that's fair, And i'd push back a bit on the like it's not believable anymore because like I somewhat agree with you that the way his sexism was expressed isn't but we certainly are seeing a huge resurgence in that very misogynistic like women should be in the military, women shouldn't vote, being like a legitimate political position that some people think.

Some people think it is a legitimate position even though laughingly should not.

I guess for me, it's one of those things where, yeah, I would want to see it modernized.

I like the idea that in this completely made up world of Avatar, that thinking just doesn't exist.

I have no problem with that, but I would wish that either they gave him some level of that thinking, just in a very different way, or they gave him some other thing to overcome, because it does mean that his character doesn't really have any growth, and I think that that can be sometimes a you look at characters from the past, if you're going to take away a problematic flaw, I do think it's important to give him something else to overcome, you know, because if if a part of their growth was it like because I think I don't like what he grows out of, but his growth is such an important part of his character.

I want to see something like that.

So I when I say like it doesn't exist, like it it does exist.

Because we saw in the Northern Water Tribe the the water Bender, there was like I don't I I women can't be warriors.

Was like the attitude right right, or the rule or whatever, so it it.

Yeah, but I think like that that being the character who expresses that being like a very old man, like of the older generation, it's like no, like old man, like you're wrong, and the new generations like we the women can fight, it's cool.

And then like even the older women were like, yeah, just let us fight.

Yeah, yeah that makes sense.

And love do so much to talk about I I I had thrown one.

Uh no, I'm gonna sure that obviously, so much to talk about.

I'm gonna say a word or two about Daredevil in closing uh and then Rinki anything to say.

I'm curious.

I need to hear more about this.

Sure.

So for me, there's two things and this is going to be major spoilers for events that happened in the first five to ten minutes of Daredevil that I've been talking about on a line a lot, but still spoilers.

For me, there's two main things that I care about when you offer me a remake or a reboot of something, and I'm willing to go pretty far in terms of things being very different.

One is I want to know that you honor and respect the thing that you are starting from, even if you're going in a very different direction.

And two, I want to know that you're trying to keep the essence of the character basically the same.

The first five minutes of the of the first episode of Daredevil, and I'm projecting here.

I don't think this is actually what happened, but I think this is what it felt like to me.

It felt like the writer had wanted to write his own Daredevil story and it had gotten a lot of pushback, especially from fans being like, no, no, look, look, we loved Netflix MCU, please keep that, And so they made a point to tell the Netflix MCU people fans, hey, don't worry, I'm gonna honor what you like, and then very intentionally said fuck you.

In the first few minutes, they killed off a major character that didn't have to come back at all, but gave us all this hope this character would be back just to kill him off.

They did a whole other things that felt incredibly like this is sa and including giving He also gives some interviews like there was some preparation for it, but where he was like, yeah, people just sat around and talked too much in the first show, and I don't want that, and that was one of the best things about the first show.

But then, like the utter essential part of Matt Murnoch's character, as we've talked about, was that he doesn't kill and that he wrestles with that and he thinks about it, and he kills someone in the first five minutes of the show.

As it turns out the person has superhuman powers and thus he doesn't actually die.

But Matt Murdoch one hundred pcent believes he killed this person and I'm like, Okay, well that's not a character I have any interest in.

And I've heard, since there's some interesting questions that the show explores, and so I might kind of treat it like I did you know the movie First Night, which is an interesting story about a knight and a king and a queen and a knight is in love with a queen.

It just doesn't bear any connection whatsoever to King Arthur and Lancelot.

And if I just think of this as a story about Michael Murdoch and you know, Dare Demon or something like that, then maybe I'll enjoy the show if I try again.

But the things that I here's the most charitable way I can put it.

But if you want to hear me be angry about it, go back and listen to my episode about Daredevil Jessica Plumber, because she's even more pissed about it than I was, or we were pretty equal.

I'd say the things that I loved about the character of Daredevil and the world of Daredevil clearly are not important to the person remaking it, And so for me, I would say purely subjectively that I don't feel like it's a good adaptation.

But from an ejective standpoint, I would just say it is not the version of the character that I love and care about, and I have thus no interest in watching more of it.

Mm hmm.

Okay, so that's my little rant.

What about for you?

What are any last comics you want to make on this topic before we break?

The bonus content will be us ranking some of our favorite and least favorite adaptations.

Yeah, I mean, I guess what I would ask in terms of Daredevil Born Again, right because I think you're comparing it to the Daredevil Netflix show rightfully, so, because it's the same actor.

Yes, but also through Jessica, I'm also comparing it very much to the comics.

Yes, it's a huge, huge comics fan.

And she also felt like this new show has no connection to the comic.

Books, and that that would be that was going to be my follow up question is like, how does it compare to the comics, which I have no experience with?

So that's good.

That's good that she was able to provide that, because, you know, to sum up all of this, like, yeah, I mean, I think it's okay for new people to tell new stories with existing characters within existing franchises, and sometimes they don't always make a lot of sense in terms of the connections, but there is the essence where you want some you want some through line to be true about these people, And that doesn't mean you can't change them.

But I do think like, if you do change them, it needs to be important.

It needs to be for a reason, right, and the exploration of that is important.

I was reading about Spider Man that this might get a little long, but I was reading about Spider Man and how fans are still pissed that he's not married to MJ in the comics, because that was a big thing.

Mephisto happened and the marriage was dissolved, like with Magic, and fans keep saying, get him back with MJ, get him back with MJ.

And the creators are like, no, Like that story was told for thirty years or whatever, and we're trying to tell different stories.

Now, Yeah, that's fair.

That also leads to it is there's one further complicating thing about the Daredevil thing I should say that I think leads to a general point, which is that one thing Jessica to make clear is that while we only have kind of one other definitive I mean, pick it up, is that with a lot of these things, when we say it's not true to the original, often what we mean is the version of the original that we already have decided is our true one, you know, because in the comics there are like two different runs of Daredevil.

The majority of them are the kind that Jessica's talking about, but there have been some that are pretty wacky and that maybe are closer to what I don't think this is directly connected to any of those, but like there is some level of that.

And I think there's often a danger of saying that your one version of it is the one and true one, and therefore should always be the one that's compared to.

And so for example, I will say I have tried to change my language a lot on Batman as an example, because I think a lot of people hate the Joel Schumacher Batman movies, and that's the Val Kilmer and then the George Clooney Batman's and I think if your origins for Batman are a lot of the darker comics and the kind of Michael Keaton movie or the Batman the animated series, that makes a lot of sense.

But the Joel Schumacher Batman's actually feel very authentic.

If you grew up with Adam West and Batman sixty six and coupaw on screen and a very cheesy, campy version of the character.

And yeah, I kind of think that, especially with some of these characters who that I have had so many different versions.

Like That's why a lot of times I won't say that the Snyder Batman is wrong.

I'll say it's not my Batman.

And that's where I think I try to come down the most on this version of Daredevil.

Is it the Netflix Daredevil established a version of Daredevil that is very deared a lot of people, And this is very much not that Daredevil.

And do I think Netflix Daredevil should be the a pimitive Daredevil.

Yeah, but there's also a Ben Affleck version out there, Like you know, there's a lot of other other things that are out there, and like I think in Star Wars this comes up a lot because you know, I think that the character of Luke Skywalker in Last Jedi quite easily matches up with the Luke Skywalker of the original movies.

What he doesn't match up with is the Luke Skywalker of the Extended Universe novels, and I don't particularly like the direction he goes in those, and he becomes I think, kind of a demigod I don't think that's a good character, but I do want to acknowledge that it is legitimate to a fall in love with that version of the character and to have very much not seen that In the last Jedi, I think he doesn't justify the amount of vitriol if people have at that.

But I, you know, I'll can see that that that there is some legitimacy there too, like feeling that.

But I think that's where we're also important to recognize, Like what am I thinking of as did one true source that we should be you know, paying attention to and is that always the one true source?

You know?

Yeah?

I mean that phrase itself, I think is problematic.

I think these characters have existed for so long, so many versions, so many writers.

Yeah that, Yes, I think we can have our favorites and say I want I want this material to be adapted or I want this writer to be writing it.

But that's that's not the world we live in.

And yeah, I think it's okay to personally dismiss something and say I don't want to watch this new Daredevil, Yeah right, Daredevil Born Again because I don't I don't like the way that this character is going and that's fine, Like, that's your personal opinion, but I don't think as fans we should be like, this isn't the real Daredevil, you know, like I use that phrase regarding Resident Evil, but it's they're just different things.

They're different continuities.

So to see, right, there's one quote from our listeners that I want to find here.

Let me just see if I can find it.

Give me one second.

No, I think that is so true, and closing, I can't find it the moment, so I apologize.

But in one of the discords where I posted this question, someone wrote that for them, the key thing is that if they find an adaptation of something they don't like, it doesn't actually change their version of the character that they like, and they can always go back and reread the comic book or play the video game or do whatever.

And I think, if I have any kind of like moral point about all this, to me, that's the central one.

Is I get being upset about it.

I was real mad about the Daredevil thing, but then I just turned on Netflix and watched the original Daredevil, and guess what, I'm still just as good as he is.

And exactly that's what I was gonna say.

It's just like enjoy the thing you enjoy.

Yeah, all right, well, thank you so much everybody.

This has been real fun to talk about.

Please let us know your thoughts in your comments.

I'm half myself and Rinki.

We have had a great time talking about this with you.

We want to hear your thoughts.

Live long, and process