On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 9:57 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Wesley McGee <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 11:56 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I am less irritated by the re-pumping of old TV shows than I used to be.
>>> A cops and robbers show set in Hawaii makes good sense. I guess CBS could
>>> have pretended they were not ripping off Five-0, but in many ways that would
>>> really be irritating. A few years ago I thought they were going to give us
>>> CSI: Hawaii; I am happier with a Five-O reboot.
>>>
>>> Wat does make me scratch my head is when they choose to re-make shows
>>> that were not very good in the first place. With all due respect to
>>> affectionate fans of the original, Knight Rider, A-Team, and Wonder Woman
>>> were all really rotten shows the first time around.
>>>
>>
>> I'm not sure I get this at all. You remake a bad show/movie exactly
>> because the original was bad (or unknown) and you hope you can do it better.
>> Why remake a good or great film or TV show, if you don't think you can
>> improve on it? Was it a better idea for "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" to become
>> a Adam Sandler movie? And their hearts were in the right place, "Guess Who's
>> Coming to Dinner?" was not improved with substituting Ashton Kutcher for
>> Sidney Poitier and Bernie Mac for Spencer Tracy. If you remake something
>> good and can't improve on it, it sort of devalues the original, but worse,
>> it harms the new take on it in ways worse than if it was a standalone bad
>> film/program. Remaking a good show or film is perhaps much, much harder
>> because it will always be compared to the original, and unless you ace it,
>> it will be viewed negatively.
>>
>> Now, I think Wonder Woman is a bad example here because the plan was not
>> remaking a show but adapting a character. I'm sure a lot of people your age
>> see Lynda Carter as the canonical Wonder Woman, but there are a growing
>> number of people who first saw WW from her comic, from the Justice League
>> cartoon, or from the last of the 'Superfriends' series "The Super Powers
>> Show" or the later 80s Superman cartoon. (Any more and I'm liable to drift
>> far off topic).
>>
>> Now, what may lead people to decide on whether to do a remake or to just
>> lift an idea is how specific the elements they want to use are. Show about
>> magical girl and how she and mortals interact is at a high enough derivative
>> function to describe "Bewitched", "I Dream of Jeannie", "Wonder Woman",
>> "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", "Sailor Moon" and who knows how many other
>> programs. Make it specific enough like "Witch marries mortal, over
>> disapproval of her family. She and mortal conspire to keep her powers secret
>> from other mortals" and it is probably close enough to Bewitched to make
>> them consider just going ahead and using the name. (Yeah, of course
>> development starts from the opposite direction. We own "Bewitched". Make a
>> new TV show out of it!)
>>
>
> My claim here is that your point about the pointlessness of remaking
> successful originals applies more often to films than television shows; the
> latter depending more on a basic premise, not the recycling of stories and
> even scripts (was it the remake of Psycho that was basically replicated word
> for word and shot for shot?). If I want to make a TV show about a crack,
> secrete espionage unit that relies more on guile and manipulation than
> shooting, I might as well call it Mission:Impossible than think up a new
> name and market it as "kind of like M:I in the 21st century" (assuming I
> already own the rights to the show). Note I am not arguing that this kind of
> recycling is the best or highest form of programming, just that I am less
> irritated by it than I used to be, and that I prefer them being honest about
> the copying and imitation, rather than pretending they are doing something
> unique. And if they are going to copy, I would rather then copy a good show
> than a bad one. It makes more sense to me to try to redo a show like
> Rockford Files, or Twilight Zone, than a ridiculously bad show.
>
> Just to be clear, I do not think that Lynda Carter was the canonical Wonder
> Woman; I think Wonder Woman was a really bad television show not worthy of
> being copied (or defended against copying). If the point of the recently
> discussed series was to capitalize on some new popularity of the character
> among younger people who have really enjoyed the comic books (and not to
> capitalize on kitsch nostalgia from the 70s) then I agree it is not a good
> example of what I am talking about. Though it seemed most of what I read
> about that show here was angst that the new show would deviate from costume
> or other details from the original show.
>
> And to tidy up another point, while I agree that the remake of GWCTD was
> unsuccessful, the twist they put on it made sense, and its problem was more
> execution than conceptualization.
If you read the gnashing of teeth on the comics blog over DCnU (the upcoming
reboot of the DC Comics mythos -- "DC Comics new Universe"), one of the
gripes among many was Wonder Woman in pants. Of course, it's one of the
minor gripes (one of the bigger one seems to be the marginalization of
female characters in the DCU while coincidently seeming unconcerned about
the lack of female artists and writers at the company). Still it is the
also one of the complaints of the J. Michael Straczynski run of Wonder Woman
which was mentioned here back when we first started hearing of DC was asking
David E. Kelly to develop the TV series.
Arguably there are two types of WW fans -- fans of the books (or likely fans
of the Perez onward run...) and I guess fans of Carter, where the only
commonality among them is the costume. Also, the costume is probably old
enough to be given grandfather immunity like the Superman suit, both having
itself become an icon.
Anyway, I think the original Battlestar Galactica was a bit silly where the
update executed the idea better, which was I was trying to argue in my
point. If you try to remake a show where the idea was already executed
pretty well, unless you execute much better you wind up with "The Batman".
("Batman:TAS" and related shows was pretty much lauded as the best animated
portrayal of Batman. It pretty much colored fan perceptions of "The Batman"
so much so that in trying again they did the completely opposite show in
"Batman: The Brave and the Bold".)
Wonder Woman would still be a good candidate for redoing because the idea
behind the character and her mythology has potential. (The mythology was
ignored by the 70s show, though I think the show aired at the time the comic
ignored the mythology, depowering her and making her more of a special agent
action girl. That 70s show left her powers intact, within the constraints of
the budget, but she was still largely a special agent action girl.) One of
the things I had heard about the Kelly pilot was he tries to integrate the
mythos and background into his show, but it was not done well. Though that
*always* seems to be the diffculty, followed by her lack of good iconic
villains that work to her strengths as a character.
(Note: Now, I may have the opportunity to see the pilot to assess this
myself. Though I heard the whole thing has finally leaked online.)
Now, why "Bewitched" instead of "Witch and Mortal married in surburban
America" or "Charlie's Angels" instead of "She Spies" (thanks NBC) or
"Hawaii Five-0" instead of "CSI: Hawaii", it is (a) marketing on familiar
name which may still be recognized by people, and (b) there are probably
items they hope to use which are specific enough to the original shows that
writing around them would make folks more conscious of their absence. Also,
"CSI: Hawaii" would be a different show as it would probably focus far more
deeply on the forensics team than the cops.
Now, back to Bewitched, what may be a problem is the show was very much a
product of its time, when there was very much anxiety about women's
liberation. The premise of the show is that the wife is more powerful than
the husband but she masquerades as the subordinate because... that's what
women are supposed to do, right? (Not to say we're still not hashing this
stuff out in 2011, but the cultural landscape is different enough now that
we can have ABC do a not-remake of "Bosom Buddies" called "Working It"
premised on the dubious idea that women get all of the breaks. Much of what
is specific about "Bewitched" is specific to it because of the time and
cultural landscape it was made.
--
Wesley McGee
http://www.ambivi.com
http://drawing-a-blank.tumblr.com
http://twitter.com/westwit
--
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