Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is coming, and the only people happy about it are the ones delighted that everyone hates it.
James Gunn’s Superman, which was a profitable movie but served to disappoint Superman fans, has led Gunn to announce that Batman is “boring” and that he will fix him in the DCU.
This follows the announcement of the Helldivers movie, being directed by a man who has not played the game and has no intention of playing the game. This coincides with the announcement that the new Narnia series on Netflix will be an entirely new reimagining.
At the same time, Avengers Doomsday features the return of Chris Evans as Captain America, potentially replacing Anthony Mackie, who has had a very lackluster reception as the new Cap.
We are seeing two different approaches to cultural zeitgeist. One is the continued defilement of the temple, where creators take a beloved story or character and deconstruct it until it fits their worldview. Examples include the decline of Star Wars, the failure of Marvel’s Phase Four, the outcry against Chani’s rewriting in Dune: Part Two, the cancellation of Rings of Power and Wheel of Time, and the ousting of Henry Cavill from The Witcher because he fought the writers’ deconstruction efforts. Dungeons and Dragons is seeing record sales drops on their latest edition, specifically due to their adoption of a divisive social agenda throughout their books and attacks on the original creators on social media.
The second approach is faithful adaptation that honors the original source material. Destiny 2, a popular first-person shooter with its own ups and downs in storytelling, just released its latest expansion Renegades, which is a beat-for-beat adaptation of Star Wars IV set in the Destiny universe. With lightsabers, cosmetics, force pushes, and Star Wars environments, the new expansion brought the player base back and highlights the failure of EA’s Outlaws, which was supposed to accomplish the same thing but alienated its audience.
Another example is the Warhammer 40k universe, which has struggled with weak novel offerings in recent years but is consistently propped up by excellent video games. Space Marine 2 is a fantastic experience, and the Secret Level episode on Amazon Prime is pinnacle 40k storytelling. There is also extreme anticipation of Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40k Amazon series, as Cavill is known for his dedication to source material.
People love their stories. They hate seeing bad redos done by men and women who hate the source material or its creators. If you are going to adapt something, show respect to the creator, the source material, and the audience. George Lucas made this exact mistake with the prequel release, throwing out all the expanded universe content that had enriched the franchise in the 20 years between movie releases. He thought his story belonged to him alone, and it alienated so many fans that he sold the franchise to Disney, who further damaged it. To this day, Star Wars’ most popular sub-IPs are those that mimic the original trilogy or The Clone Wars animated series. Everything else flops.
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Commentary
Thomas: My book club is reading The Odyssey right now because we were hyped over the poster for Nolan’s movie. Now, while we are still reading and enjoying The Odyssey, we are no longer planning to go see the film.
Jonathan: There are several questionable decisions. The armor looks like Batman’s armor from The Dark Knight. Nolan tried to explain it as blackened bronze treated with sulfur, but it looks like Batman’s armor. No Greek actors were cast. A rapper was cast as a bard because Nolan said oral storytelling is more analogous to rap. The new Narnia on Netflix is chucking everything and using modern music.
Thomas: They see these old works as things to fix. There is a common story on Author Update about estates censoring a dead author’s books for modern sensibilities. From a business side, this never works. People do not want a thing they already did not want just because it was remade to be slightly less repulsive to them.
There was a big push in the ’90s to make Las Vegas family-friendly, and it was a disaster. What fixed it was the tagline “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” You are never going to out-Disney World Disney World. Trying to make a worse version of your thing to accommodate your enemies never works.
This is what killed Marvel. Marvel had high scores among men and lower scores with women, so they put women in charge, changed plots, and featured female characters. The result was that Marvel became way less popular with men and just as popular with women as before. They broke the first law of book marketing: love your reader as much as you love your book.
Jonathan: Henry Cavill was the best live-action Superman. He came to the role with genuine love for the character and put extra effort into making Superman as bright as possible in Man of Steel. That was a movie for people who love Superman. The latest Superman did not feel like it was made for Superman fans.
Then you have the Helldivers movie being directed by someone who has not played the game and has no intention of doing so. It should be nonstop celebrities dropping on planets and getting eaten by bugs.
Thomas: Condescension is bad for marketing with one narrow exception: high art targeted at a tiny aristocratic audience where the whole point is exclusivity. But in publishing, there is no money in targeting just those people. You cannot build a career on it.
We will have a great case study between Epic: The Musical, which has been shockingly successful, and Nolan’s Odyssey. Imagine pitching Epic: The Musical, an opera for Gen Z and Gen Alpha based on a 2,500-year-old poem. They would laugh you out of the room. It has a billion streams. Jorge Rivera-Herránz made it with love, and it shows.
Peter Jackson’s changes to The Lord of the Rings were made out of love. Christopher Tolkien hated the movies, but what saved them was that the changes came from someone who loved the story and loved Tolkien. His interpretation simplified and adapted it into a commercially viable action film, but it was adapted out of love.
Jonathan: Destiny 2‘s Renegades expansion is beat-for-beat Star Wars IV poured into the Destiny universe. Same story, same structure, with a superweapon, lightsaber fighting, and a Sith Lord. It brought the player base back and told Lucasfilm that people love the classic Star Wars. Stop making different Star Wars.
Thomas: The Thrawn Trilogy is key. Timothy Zahn created the best villain in Star Wars after Darth Vader by going in the exact opposite direction. Thrawn had no Force powers. His superpower was theory of mind. He would study the art of your planet and predict what you would do in battle. He was always five moves ahead. The Republic would route in space battles just at the rumor he was there. It is a brilliant narrative device: create a villain who is the anti-Darth Vader, and by doing so, create the second-most beloved villain in Star Wars.
The sequels tried Diet Darth Vader with the helmet and the angry guy, and nobody even remembers the character’s name. Thrawn is not Diet Darth Vader. He is Anti-Darth Vader, and that is why he does not feel like a cheap knockoff.
My brother told me about a video where someone who had never seen Star Wars but had studied the Hero’s Journey tried to tell the story from pop culture knowledge alone and recreated Mara Jade from first principles.
Jonathan: They should have gone with Mara Jade instead of Rey. She is a great female character with a fascinating story.
Thomas: The bottom line for authors is that you have to love your reader, and you have to love your book. These are not in conflict, and if they are, you are not ready to publish. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was made with love by people who loved Mario and loved the fans. My children loved it and chattered about it all the way home. If you allow hatred to creep into your heart, you will walk the path of the dark side.
