Half-baked Adaptation:Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

Hello,its been a long time since I made an original metal-unrelated post like this...oh,wait.No.OK,then its a long time since I made a post on cinema.And thanks to this current slurry of movies that are adapted from popular literature or recreation,my topic is quite relevant.


I recently saw Transformers 2:Revenge of the Fallen.I loved it.Yes,Megan Fox was in the movie and there were times I felt helpless about not being able to do anything to her...but,the special effects and animation work created magic with the Autobots v/s Decepticons battles themselves.From my wandering on the net,I have not yet come across very serious backlash against the accuracy of the story to this movie franchise (as I know nothing about it myself).Yet,a movie that recently (and after much delay) released in India before this one was the eagerly-awaited X-Men Origins:Wolverine.I was waiting for the day this movie would release and had extremely high hopes from it.Especially when I learned that among others,Deadpool is a featured character.I was raring to see the red uniformed sword master with a big mouth at his best,killing mutants for money:

What I got instead was a semi-mummified,naked-chested freak that was indestructible and was basically William Stryker's new toy.Far from the real Deadpool story (a mercenary who gets cancer and after ending up as a failed Weapon X program,gains healing abilities beyond Wolverine's).And this is just a small part of the bigger lamentation:the story itself.Wolverine is NOT Sabertooth's brother (rather,Sabertooth is Wolverine's gardener's son),he works at a lumberjack outpost immediately after escaping his home as opposed to the movie portrayal,he ALMOST kills his 1st Weapon X captor (which happens right after World War II) and many other such grievances.

Which brings me to my point:cinematic adaptations are almost completely exclusive of the real story.Directors these days just bank on a star actor portraying a character to gather the cash.Cases in point:Hugh Jackman as Wolverine,Sienna Miller as Baroness (for the upcoming G.I.Joe),Tom Hanks as Professor Robert Langdon etc.Yes,they all have a certain level of excitement in them,but when will they start doing justice to the real story?

And what about TOTAL bastardization of a franchise like Eragon?Where the hell do I begin with this complete waste of 70 mm reel?The fact that a DRAGON was given feathers?Or Arya's sexy brunette imagined image was urinated upon?Or the Urgals looking like fired sumo wrestlers and NOTHING like a sleeker version of the Minotaur?Or the fact that the WHOLE story was so badly mangled (removal of the Hadarac desert scene,no breaking of the Isidar Mithrim,no Solembum and not even the mention of Murtagh's Zar'roc wound) that by the time one reached the end,the only thing he can do is lament.

Other popular movie adaptations like the Harry Potter,The Lord of the Rings and Spiderman series are less infuriating with the inaccuracy (though I hate Sam Raimi for killing Venom off).But on a whole,I have learned that if I should watch an adaptation,I should just unlearn anything I know about the original story.