Dr. Bob's minions tire away endlessly to help the good Doctor in the name of science,
but with what little downtime they get they would like to share with you fine people! 

Loyal to the Source Materiel

By Abby

    

Part of what makes nerds so nerdy, is the urge to reinterpret our favorite things over and over. This can take many forms. Take for example Lord of the Rings: Peter Jackson is the definition of a rabid fan boy who was given over $100,000,000 to adapt one of his favorite books and succeeded in making a commercially profitable, well-loved film trilogy. I can attest to this personally: to this day I have barely read a word of Tolkien but I can quote the movies with astounding accuracy. If there's ever a zombie apocalypse, I can act out the trilogy from memory to entertain the masses.

The Hobbit, however was an obvious cash grab that was developed to make a bunch of money. To wit, Jackson and company managed to make three movies out of many fewer pages than the the prime LOTR trilogy. Why? Because that generates three times as much revenue, no matter what story you happen to be telling (see the final film installments of The Harry Potter and Twilight franchises).

There is even another facet to consider: Batman is clearly a comic book character, but superb iterations of the films, and even a well-regarded children's animation TV show. Purists will tell you that someone can't be a true Batman fan unless they have at least a few issues under their belt, but Batman wouldn't be the same without Adam West or Tim Burton, so it's unless to pretend that only the comics matter. Any comic that's been out for any amount of time is bound to reboot itself at least a couple times. Consider the meme where someone took a photo of a cosplayer dressed as Martha Wayne in the Flashpoint universe- for those of you that aren't familiar, she looks like a feminine steampunk Joker. The test of the meme was that surely a girl wearing Joker makeup with a low-cut top was inventing such a costume to show off her cleavage. The reality is that DC and Marvel make up some weird stuff, and the person making the cosplay knew more than the person making the meme in this case. This also proves that you should think twice before critiquing a Martha Wayne or Duela Dent cosplayer, because she will probably harm you physically.

There are so many examples where someone created new material that felt good and rang true, and also a fair number of times where the adapted material fell flat, see the Catwoman or Fantastic Four. Sometime the new version of the old version can't quite survive, and sometimes thenew version is overtaken. Such is the nerd cycle of life. Enjoy, my friends!

 

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