https:\/\/variety.com\/2022\/tv\/news\/george-rr-martin-neil-gaiman-hate-hollywood-changing-source-material-1235416651\/<\/a><\/p>\nThat was all back in 2022, but very little has changed since then.\u00a0\u00a0 If anything, things have gotten worse.\u00a0\u00a0 Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and “make them their own.”\u00a0\u00a0 It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone.\u00a0\u00a0 No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and “improve” on it.\u00a0\u00a0 “The book is the book, the film is the film,” they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound.\u00a0\u00a0 Then they make the story their own.<\/p>\n
They never make it better, though.\u00a0\u00a0 Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.<\/p>\n
Once in a while, though, we do get a really good adaptation of a really good book, and when that happens , it deserves applause.<\/p>\n
I can came across one of those instances recently, when I binged the new FX version of SHOGUN.<\/p>\n
Must confess, I was dubious when I first heard they were making another version of the Clavell novel.\u00a0\u00a0 It has been a long time, a long long LONG time, but I read the book when it first came out in the late 70s and was mightily impressed.\u00a0\u00a0 (I really need to give it a reread one of these days, but there are so many books, so little time).\u00a0\u00a0 And the 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain as the Anjin was a landmark of long form television, right up with with ROOTS; why do it over again, when that version was so good?<\/p>\n
I am glad they did, though.\u00a0\u00a0 The new SHOGUN is superb.\u00a0\u00a0 Better than Chamberlain’s version, you ask?\u00a0\u00a0 Hmmm, I don’t know.\u00a0\u00a0 I have not watched the 1980 miniseries since, well, 1980.\u00a0\u00a0 That one was great too.\u00a0\u00a0 The fascinating thing is that while the old and new versions have some significant differences — the subtitles that make the Japanese dialogue intelligible to English speaking viewers being the biggest — they are both faithful to the Clavell novel in their own way.\u00a0\u00a0 I think the author would have been pleased.\u00a0\u00a0 Both old and new screenwriters did honor to the source material, and gave us terrific adaptations, resisting the impulse to “make it their own.”<\/p>\n
But don’t take my word for it.\u00a0\u00a0 Watch it yourself.<\/p>\n