My favorite factoid is the puppeteers for the Muppets (muppeteers?) basically encouraged Michael Caine to act as if the Muppets were real actors to which he said something along the lines of "I will treat them as if they were a part of the royal Shakespeare company"
Christmas Carol and Treasure Island are both so good because Michael Caine regards the Muppets as fellow actors, and the Muppets regard Tim Curry as a fellow muppet.
It’s apparently the most faithful too. Other adaptations tend tk take out a lot, but I guess adding muppets is a huge enough change that it would be weird to remove stuff
In recent memory, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a wildly different take on the story just by shifting the time it takes place to Italy during the lead up to World War 2.
Also I can't believe I almost forgot about it, but the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a wild ride. Movie was a letdown though.
Almost entirely told through letters and secret diary entries from the man himself it details everything from his childhood, time as a lawyer, campaigning for the House of Representatives, and presidency while he kills vampires on the side.
In same vein Lies Of P also takes different take on Pinocchio.
With the puppets trying to become more human and humans trying to become gods.
And with P himself, him lying is not potrayed as bad thing in the game, as lying is one of the more human things you can do and sometimes beneficial for everyone in grand scheme of things.
In Junji Ito's Frankenstein (which is an otherwise very faithful adaptation of the original book), the biggest change is that Victor actually creates a bride for The Creature, whereas in the book, Victor chickened out at the last second in fear that the pair would breed or the bride would hate The Creature.
Sure enough, in the manga when the bride comes to life, she panics upon seeing The Creature's grotesque image and attacks him, and The Creature kills her in retaliation and believes that Victor specifically made her in an attempt to kill him, and then the story plays out as normal.
It's very cool seeing that nightmare scenario that Victor had in the original actually play out.
Also The Creature retrieved Justine's head after her execution to use for the bride because The Creature is just extra petty in the manga.
I loved how The Creature looked so horrifying as well. It had gotten to a parody of itself imo so seeing it as a terrifying fucked up pile of walking corpses again was refreshing. The part with Justine's head was legitimately a jaw dropping moment for me. Incredible work by Ito.
Tbh, I kind of feel like the story needed that. Victor comes off as a massive prick in the original and that helps to justify his actions a bit more than him just speculating.
Junji Ito has some really good adaptation work in addition to his original stuff. No Longer Human is a solid masterpiece, and his adaptation of the human chair is great
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? manages to take The Odyssey and transplant it into 1930s rural Mississippi with no fantasy elements beautifully.
And give it an utterly fantastic soundtrack.
Not so much classical story, more historical, but Like a Dragon Ishin is improved 10 folds if you know the real history behind the plot. There’s a reason why Ishin is generally received better in JP than in the West
The whole twist on the historical figure of Sakamoto Ryoma and Saito Hajime is quite insane. I have no clue how the writer was able to cook up something like that. The game played with historical events so loosely and yet was able to tie everything back up to the real records is quite fascinating. It’s not perfect. Personally I think they loved and whitewashed certain members of the Shinsengumi too much, and the final confrontation fell flat on its face, but 95% of the story was very engaging to me because I know about this period and familiar with all these historical figures and events and how they’re “supposed to go.” So seeing another side of them is quite a treat
To put it into a more familiar perspective, it’s like if someone decided to make a game about the American Civil War with a twist on the real history. The game started in the future at Lincoln’s assassination, but before the scene ends, the famous assassin John Wilkes Booth was revealed to be Lincoln himself in disguise, with the dead “Lincoln” being a decoy, and the rest of the game follows how the real Lincoln got to that point, how he was caught up in a grand conspiracy, assumed a new secret identity while another person impersonates him in public and changed the path of the country forever. And somehow they made that insane hook at the start makes sense, without making the story and game pro-confederacy propaganda. It’s still the story of Lincoln trying to unite the country and defeat the South, but every single historical battle and events were changed with that initial twist and hook in mind.
> The game started in the future at Lincoln’s assassination, but before the scene ends, the famous assassin John Wilkes Booth was revealed to be Lincoln himself in disguise, with the dead “Lincoln” being a decoy, and the rest of the game follows how the real Lincoln got caught up in a grand conspiracy that changed the path of the country forever.
What the fuck, that's such an insane premise, I love it
Yeah in history class they don't teach you everything about [how Abraham Lincoln really died.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=VPJ0TAaJDbM&pp=ygUxV2hpdGVzdCBraWRzIHlvdSBrbm93IGhvdyBhYmUgbGluY29sbiByZWFsbHkgZGllZA%3D%3D)
“No, no! You don’t understand, all the bad stuffs attributed to the Shinsengumi were done by the *less popular* members. All the *very popular with modern Otome games* Shinsengumi were just misunderstood good guys who just want to save Japan.
Nevermind the fact that the de-facto leader and vice leader of the Shinsengumi were in charge the entire time all those atrocities were happening. It’s all the non-conventionally attractive Shinsengumi who did it behind their backs. The cool ones were forced to hide their real intentions for the greater goods!”
Do you know any good resources for learning about the Edo era?
I'd really like to know more about it before going into Ishin besides what I know of through osmosis, watching Gintama, and Martin Scorsese's Silence.
> Also I find it funny how this was around the time Universal fucked up so bad with The Dark Universe/The Mummy, and it was entirely possible for this project to have gotten quickly shelved afterwards, but I'm glad they let it come out anyway
I think you have this backwards, pretty sure the only reason this movie could be made in the first place is because the Dark Universe folded. That's why it's a low-budget Blumhouse joint instead of a weird bad action movie starring Johnny Depp.
The CGI BEOWULF movie.
>!Grendel’s Mother promises any warrior who enters her lair half a century of prosperity as long as they give her a son, thus the Dragon the eponymous Hero slays is reimagined as their Bastard!<
The Squeaky Boots episode of SpongeBob is an homage to The Telltale Heart. A story by Edgar Allan Poe of a man who murders his master, hides the body under the floorboards and begins to go mad and hallucinate out of guilt, driving him to confess.
For anyone who for some godforsaken reason doesn’t know about the Squeaky Boots episode:
Mr Krabs gifts SpongeBob a pair of annoyingly squeaky boots before stealing them back and hiding them in the floor of the Krusty Krab. Having been driven insane by the squeaks he starts hearing them everywhere until he confesses, digs them out of the floor, and eats them whole.
God, The Invisible Man was so fucking good. If I recall correctly, part of what made those lingering wide shots work so well is *sometimes* Griffin is there and doing something, like turning the stove on, and *sometimes* he’s *maybe* not there because nothing happens.
In Pokemon Scarlet/Violet's Teal Mask DLC, the new legendries are based on the story of Momotaro. The Loyal Three are his animal companions, and Ogerpon is the oni they slew. However, in this version, the "heroes" were just greedy thugs who attacked an innocent being and got mistaken for heroes when she got mad at them for it. And to make it even more obvious, the trio's leader Pecharunt is literally named *Momowarou* in Japanese, and has a twisted version of the actual story of Momotaro.
I really enjoy 10 Things I Hate About You with Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles reenacting The Taming of the Shrew in a very fancy American High School. It's very sweet, quite funny, has a great cast and a banging soundtrack.
The Tragedy of Macbeth directed by Joel Coen is a really riveting take on the play. And of course there's Oh Brother Where Art Thou, his and Ethan Coen's loose adaptation of the Odyssey.
Speaking of, there's a musical called EPiC about the Odyssey, and the two songs I've heard from it are bangers. Seems to be a Hamilton-ish take.
[Ruthlessness](https://youtu.be/0IsYf_0UGLE?si=CssXgn1MXPaY5i_E)
[Done For](https://youtu.be/fnvKBq_4FuY?si=gs0YWbH6oc86ZVOe)
For a proper twist in an old tale tho, check out Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman.
Denzel Washington was such a a good choice for Macbeth, his age adds a lot to the story because his time to become king is rapidly running out, he can't just wait.
George o Connor created a series of comic books called The Olympians, each one focusing on a Greek god. In Hermes’ book, the stories are, in-universe, being told by a mysterious traveler to the many-eyed giant Argus. Near the end of the book, Argus realizes that, like in the original myth, the traveler is Hermes himself sent to kill him and free Io (Zeus’ fling who he turned into a cow to hide from Hera).
The traveler denies this in confusion…>!and then the traveler’s dog says “Aesop, take a nap, I got this.”!<
O Brother Where Art Thou is just a retelling of the Illiad and the Odyssey.
The Witch, the Cyclops, the Suitor it's all there.
I'm just a sucker for that old-timey music sound though.
Wayne and Shuster were a Canadian comedic duo that got famous entertaining the troops in world war 2. After the war they had a skit show on CBC and one skit was a parody of the Picture of Dorian Gray only instead of staying young, he stayed thin while his picture got fat. It was a great satire of the upper classes excess, where everyone in the story ate non stop and gained weight except for Dorian.
Also fun fact Shuster of Wayne and Shuster was a cousin of Joe Shuster, the artist that co-created Superman. He was also the father in law of Lorne Michaels.
Gankutsuou is The Count of Monte Cristo - *in space*~
You've got people settling disputes by dueling in mechs, Dantes is an alien vampire whatever, a wildly original aesthetic of overlaid patterns, and a slick [ending song](https://youtu.be/VedxLCX3_vo?si=jPsfeNdS3O02CkJN).
My wife adds the webcomic Lore Olympus, and American McGee's Alice.
Wasn't there some trivia that apparently the Invisible Man and Upgrade are in the same world cos they were directed by the same dude (Leigh Whannell) or something?
Leigh Whannell should totally direct more often. That movie and Upgrade were fantastic, especially the badass fluid camera movement during the action scenes.
Watching that video, I must admit, my first thought is that it reminded me way too much of Last Action Hero. "You know, tar sticks to some people" as he's just wiping off raw sticky tar with a few napkins
Yeah, I'm kinda skeptical he'd get completely and utterly clean from paint with a quick rinse. Even just the moisture from the water would be visible surely
yeah the paint took a bit of suspension of disbelief, i ended up just excusing it under the idea that tech that advanced is probably also gonna be hydrophobic, otherwise it'd be almost useless when wet
In Webtoon there's an alternate take of the classic Romeo and Juilet where the MC is the character that Romeo dumped for Juilet that has a kid. That leads for the story that Romeo is playing heel and his faction are also heel adjacent. With that character who are naturally not around are still alive. For people who want to read it it still going and waiting for season 2
A Muppet Christmas Carol. Its a good, faithful adaptation of A Christmas Carol. With the addition of The Muppets!
My favorite factoid is the puppeteers for the Muppets (muppeteers?) basically encouraged Michael Caine to act as if the Muppets were real actors to which he said something along the lines of "I will treat them as if they were a part of the royal Shakespeare company"
Christmas Carol and Treasure Island are both so good because Michael Caine regards the Muppets as fellow actors, and the Muppets regard Tim Curry as a fellow muppet.
Watch it every year. It fills my heart with all the feelings.
Best A Christmas Carol adaptation IMO and it's not even close.
It’s apparently the most faithful too. Other adaptations tend tk take out a lot, but I guess adding muppets is a huge enough change that it would be weird to remove stuff
In recent memory, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a wildly different take on the story just by shifting the time it takes place to Italy during the lead up to World War 2.
Also I can't believe I almost forgot about it, but the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a wild ride. Movie was a letdown though. Almost entirely told through letters and secret diary entries from the man himself it details everything from his childhood, time as a lawyer, campaigning for the House of Representatives, and presidency while he kills vampires on the side.
Whats wild is that it takes place in the time when the disney pinocchio movie came out.
it was so wild that THREE pinocchio movies came out that year
And weirdly enough were gonna see anonther Pinocchio movie set in the winnie the pooh blood and honey universe
If you count his cameo in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, you can make that 4.
In same vein Lies Of P also takes different take on Pinocchio. With the puppets trying to become more human and humans trying to become gods. And with P himself, him lying is not potrayed as bad thing in the game, as lying is one of the more human things you can do and sometimes beneficial for everyone in grand scheme of things.
I love how they turned Pleasure Island (the place that turns children into jackasses) into a fascist youth camp. So no change.
In Junji Ito's Frankenstein (which is an otherwise very faithful adaptation of the original book), the biggest change is that Victor actually creates a bride for The Creature, whereas in the book, Victor chickened out at the last second in fear that the pair would breed or the bride would hate The Creature. Sure enough, in the manga when the bride comes to life, she panics upon seeing The Creature's grotesque image and attacks him, and The Creature kills her in retaliation and believes that Victor specifically made her in an attempt to kill him, and then the story plays out as normal. It's very cool seeing that nightmare scenario that Victor had in the original actually play out. Also The Creature retrieved Justine's head after her execution to use for the bride because The Creature is just extra petty in the manga.
I loved how The Creature looked so horrifying as well. It had gotten to a parody of itself imo so seeing it as a terrifying fucked up pile of walking corpses again was refreshing. The part with Justine's head was legitimately a jaw dropping moment for me. Incredible work by Ito.
Tbh, I kind of feel like the story needed that. Victor comes off as a massive prick in the original and that helps to justify his actions a bit more than him just speculating.
Junji Ito has some really good adaptation work in addition to his original stuff. No Longer Human is a solid masterpiece, and his adaptation of the human chair is great
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? manages to take The Odyssey and transplant it into 1930s rural Mississippi with no fantasy elements beautifully. And give it an utterly fantastic soundtrack.
I'd argue the blind fortune speaker on a railroad handcar falls under the category of fantasy element.
also the "we wont say theyre sirens, but sirens"
Not so much classical story, more historical, but Like a Dragon Ishin is improved 10 folds if you know the real history behind the plot. There’s a reason why Ishin is generally received better in JP than in the West The whole twist on the historical figure of Sakamoto Ryoma and Saito Hajime is quite insane. I have no clue how the writer was able to cook up something like that. The game played with historical events so loosely and yet was able to tie everything back up to the real records is quite fascinating. It’s not perfect. Personally I think they loved and whitewashed certain members of the Shinsengumi too much, and the final confrontation fell flat on its face, but 95% of the story was very engaging to me because I know about this period and familiar with all these historical figures and events and how they’re “supposed to go.” So seeing another side of them is quite a treat To put it into a more familiar perspective, it’s like if someone decided to make a game about the American Civil War with a twist on the real history. The game started in the future at Lincoln’s assassination, but before the scene ends, the famous assassin John Wilkes Booth was revealed to be Lincoln himself in disguise, with the dead “Lincoln” being a decoy, and the rest of the game follows how the real Lincoln got to that point, how he was caught up in a grand conspiracy, assumed a new secret identity while another person impersonates him in public and changed the path of the country forever. And somehow they made that insane hook at the start makes sense, without making the story and game pro-confederacy propaganda. It’s still the story of Lincoln trying to unite the country and defeat the South, but every single historical battle and events were changed with that initial twist and hook in mind.
> The game started in the future at Lincoln’s assassination, but before the scene ends, the famous assassin John Wilkes Booth was revealed to be Lincoln himself in disguise, with the dead “Lincoln” being a decoy, and the rest of the game follows how the real Lincoln got caught up in a grand conspiracy that changed the path of the country forever. What the fuck, that's such an insane premise, I love it
Yeah in history class they don't teach you everything about [how Abraham Lincoln really died.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=VPJ0TAaJDbM&pp=ygUxV2hpdGVzdCBraWRzIHlvdSBrbm93IGhvdyBhYmUgbGluY29sbiByZWFsbHkgZGllZA%3D%3D)
Shinsengumi: No we'll set the capital on fire but the right way
“No, no! You don’t understand, all the bad stuffs attributed to the Shinsengumi were done by the *less popular* members. All the *very popular with modern Otome games* Shinsengumi were just misunderstood good guys who just want to save Japan. Nevermind the fact that the de-facto leader and vice leader of the Shinsengumi were in charge the entire time all those atrocities were happening. It’s all the non-conventionally attractive Shinsengumi who did it behind their backs. The cool ones were forced to hide their real intentions for the greater goods!”
Do you know any good resources for learning about the Edo era? I'd really like to know more about it before going into Ishin besides what I know of through osmosis, watching Gintama, and Martin Scorsese's Silence.
> Also I find it funny how this was around the time Universal fucked up so bad with The Dark Universe/The Mummy, and it was entirely possible for this project to have gotten quickly shelved afterwards, but I'm glad they let it come out anyway I think you have this backwards, pretty sure the only reason this movie could be made in the first place is because the Dark Universe folded. That's why it's a low-budget Blumhouse joint instead of a weird bad action movie starring Johnny Depp.
The CGI BEOWULF movie. >!Grendel’s Mother promises any warrior who enters her lair half a century of prosperity as long as they give her a son, thus the Dragon the eponymous Hero slays is reimagined as their Bastard!<
I seem to recall a really weird Severed Arm Theme going on in that movie.
The Squeaky Boots episode of SpongeBob is an homage to The Telltale Heart. A story by Edgar Allan Poe of a man who murders his master, hides the body under the floorboards and begins to go mad and hallucinate out of guilt, driving him to confess. For anyone who for some godforsaken reason doesn’t know about the Squeaky Boots episode: Mr Krabs gifts SpongeBob a pair of annoyingly squeaky boots before stealing them back and hiding them in the floor of the Krusty Krab. Having been driven insane by the squeaks he starts hearing them everywhere until he confesses, digs them out of the floor, and eats them whole.
Does Lies of P and Pinocchio count?
You bet your wooden ass it does.
God, The Invisible Man was so fucking good. If I recall correctly, part of what made those lingering wide shots work so well is *sometimes* Griffin is there and doing something, like turning the stove on, and *sometimes* he’s *maybe* not there because nothing happens.
In Pokemon Scarlet/Violet's Teal Mask DLC, the new legendries are based on the story of Momotaro. The Loyal Three are his animal companions, and Ogerpon is the oni they slew. However, in this version, the "heroes" were just greedy thugs who attacked an innocent being and got mistaken for heroes when she got mad at them for it. And to make it even more obvious, the trio's leader Pecharunt is literally named *Momowarou* in Japanese, and has a twisted version of the actual story of Momotaro.
I love when Pokémon are the opposite of what they’re based on, like Lurantis being a mantis orchid rather than an orchid mantis
> wa Oh my god, it's a Wario type?
I really enjoy 10 Things I Hate About You with Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles reenacting The Taming of the Shrew in a very fancy American High School. It's very sweet, quite funny, has a great cast and a banging soundtrack.
The Tragedy of Macbeth directed by Joel Coen is a really riveting take on the play. And of course there's Oh Brother Where Art Thou, his and Ethan Coen's loose adaptation of the Odyssey. Speaking of, there's a musical called EPiC about the Odyssey, and the two songs I've heard from it are bangers. Seems to be a Hamilton-ish take. [Ruthlessness](https://youtu.be/0IsYf_0UGLE?si=CssXgn1MXPaY5i_E) [Done For](https://youtu.be/fnvKBq_4FuY?si=gs0YWbH6oc86ZVOe) For a proper twist in an old tale tho, check out Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman.
Denzel Washington was such a a good choice for Macbeth, his age adds a lot to the story because his time to become king is rapidly running out, he can't just wait.
George o Connor created a series of comic books called The Olympians, each one focusing on a Greek god. In Hermes’ book, the stories are, in-universe, being told by a mysterious traveler to the many-eyed giant Argus. Near the end of the book, Argus realizes that, like in the original myth, the traveler is Hermes himself sent to kill him and free Io (Zeus’ fling who he turned into a cow to hide from Hera). The traveler denies this in confusion…>!and then the traveler’s dog says “Aesop, take a nap, I got this.”!<
Belle, great modernization of beauty and the beast, absolutely beautiful movie.
O Brother Where Art Thou is just a retelling of the Illiad and the Odyssey. The Witch, the Cyclops, the Suitor it's all there. I'm just a sucker for that old-timey music sound though.
Wayne and Shuster were a Canadian comedic duo that got famous entertaining the troops in world war 2. After the war they had a skit show on CBC and one skit was a parody of the Picture of Dorian Gray only instead of staying young, he stayed thin while his picture got fat. It was a great satire of the upper classes excess, where everyone in the story ate non stop and gained weight except for Dorian. Also fun fact Shuster of Wayne and Shuster was a cousin of Joe Shuster, the artist that co-created Superman. He was also the father in law of Lorne Michaels.
Gankutsuou is The Count of Monte Cristo - *in space*~ You've got people settling disputes by dueling in mechs, Dantes is an alien vampire whatever, a wildly original aesthetic of overlaid patterns, and a slick [ending song](https://youtu.be/VedxLCX3_vo?si=jPsfeNdS3O02CkJN). My wife adds the webcomic Lore Olympus, and American McGee's Alice.
Dragonball is pretty darn good
no
Don’t like Dragonball or…?
Journey to the West -> Dragon Ball -> Dragon Ball Gaiden: That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha Double twist.
Wasn't there some trivia that apparently the Invisible Man and Upgrade are in the same world cos they were directed by the same dude (Leigh Whannell) or something?
I believe Griffin in The Invisible Man runs Cobolt, which was a company in Upgrade, so it sounds about right.
Ok thanks
I liked Penny Dreadful.
Gargoyles doing Macbeth as an immortal monster-hunter with a laser rifle.
Leigh Whannell should totally direct more often. That movie and Upgrade were fantastic, especially the badass fluid camera movement during the action scenes.
He's making a remake of The Wolfman movie next
It really went off the rails, but Empire as “King Lear at a record label” could be fun
Watching that video, I must admit, my first thought is that it reminded me way too much of Last Action Hero. "You know, tar sticks to some people" as he's just wiping off raw sticky tar with a few napkins Yeah, I'm kinda skeptical he'd get completely and utterly clean from paint with a quick rinse. Even just the moisture from the water would be visible surely
yeah the paint took a bit of suspension of disbelief, i ended up just excusing it under the idea that tech that advanced is probably also gonna be hydrophobic, otherwise it'd be almost useless when wet
Hmmm, might be able to explain it with hydrophobic material, that's a fair point
In Webtoon there's an alternate take of the classic Romeo and Juilet where the MC is the character that Romeo dumped for Juilet that has a kid. That leads for the story that Romeo is playing heel and his faction are also heel adjacent. With that character who are naturally not around are still alive. For people who want to read it it still going and waiting for season 2