Have you ever watched an adaptation of a piece of media you like that made total sense to
you, but not to your friends who aren't as knowledgeable about the source material? It's
possible that certain key information was left out and you just didn't notice.
I discussed this, to an extent, back in the Resident Evil episode - you know, las plagas
showing up as if it was a T-Virus thing, lines of dialogue ripped from Resi 5 without the
context that justified the lines, stuff like that - so for this one, let's instead focus
on other adaptations. Primary, of course, Mortal Kombat. In the first MK movie, Liu
Kang challenges Shang Tsung with this line:
Liu Kang: "I am Liu Kang, descendant of Kung Lao."
Consider: at what point did the movie explain who Kung Lao is? When did the movie establish
that Kung Lao once beat Shang Tsung and then lost to Goro? This line only holds significance
if you're familiar with the games, where he's important to the backstory of the tournament,
or retroactively after they made a TV prequel that starred Kung Lao. Otherwise, you're left
wondering why anyone should care who Liu Kang's ancestor is. "Must be a Chinese thing," says
the average viewer.
This happens more often than you'd expect in adaptations, but you might not notice if
you already have that context in your head from the source material. A character might
have certain knowledge or a certain item that goes unexplained in the movie, but because
you've read the book or played the game, your brain automatically fills in the blanks and
makes the viewing experience more cohesive.
A non-MK example would be that the Harry Potter movies never explained who the Marauders were,
despite their map being an important plot point. These films had quite a few of these
as they went on, but given how big HP was at the time, it's a fair bet that most of
the audience would have read or been read the books, similar how newer Spider-Man media
assumes you're familiar with his origin, since it's so ingrained into the public consciousness
by this point. For cases like this, it can be acceptable, but for something that's not
a mega-hit, you can't really do that.
The perfect example of this is the Yakuza movie by Takashi Miike, which does very little
to explain the central narrative. It features some scenes from the game but the setup just
isn't there. Nishiki, the final boss and blood brother of our lead, isn't even mentioned
until about five minutes before the final showdown. Why Kiryu wants to fight him, what
Nishiki's motivation is, what Kiryu's relationship with Date is, what Kiryu's relationship with
Yumi is, why Yumi wants to kill Jingu, Majima's reason for hunting Kiryu... none of this is
ever properly explained. You can follow along easily enough if you know the story of the
game, but without that knowledge, none of this has any justification and is just a series
of random, disconnected scenes.
But this can even happen within the core series, like how Halo 5 expects you to know who Blue
Team from the books are, despite them never having even been mentioned prior to this.
I'm also told that Transformers: The Last Knight did this with Unicron and the Knights
of Cybertron, giving little-to-no explanation and expecting you to be familiar with them
already.
But back to MK. Specifically, MK Annihilation. Sub-Zero saves Liu Kang and Kitana from Smoke.
He explains that,
Sub-Zero: "Two days ago, Kahn reprogrammed Smoke to come after you instead of me."
Who this robot man is and why he might be after Sub-Zero are never explained. Nor is
the reason why there's a yellow version of him in another scene going after Jax and Sonya.
Game fans know that Smoke and Cyrax are Sub-Zero's fellow Lin Kuei who became part of the Cyber
Initiative and now hunt down escapees, but the Lin Kuei itself is never mentioned in
the films, never mind the Cyber Initiative. Nor is it explained how the feudalistic Outworld
Kahn would know how to reprogram a machine when his usual tech expert, Kano, is already
dead here.
Speaking of Kahn, his reveal of his real name in Star Trek: Into Darkness is treated like
a big deal by the film, with emphasis placed by Cumberbatch and a dramatic pause that only
exist for people who know who the Kahn in "Wrath of Kahn" is.
When Sub-Zero has his fight with Scorpion, while it's cool to see the two fight on the
big screen, there's no history between them here. Scorpion's history with Bi-Han was only
alluded to with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it line from Shang Tsung in the first film, and
Scorpion didn't even kill Bi-Han in this universe; Liu Kang did. So, even if Bi-Han and Scorpion
actually had a properly established rivalry before this point, Kuai Liang fighting Scorpion
wouldn't really mean anything. It only holds weight because they're rivals in the source
material, or retroactively with Scorpion's feud with Sub-Zero's ancestor in Conquest.
If anything, a fight between Sub-Zero and Liu Kang would be way more interesting here,
but still not as interesting as a fully-adapted Scorpion and Sub-Zero would. Legends had one
fucking job and it gave Sub-Zero, like, four minutes of screentime.
It kinda reminds me of the Production I.G. anime adaptation of Sengoku Basara. In the
games, Tokugawa Ieyasu kills Toyotomi Hideyoshi, leading Ishida Mitsunari to raise an army
to kill Ieyasu. In the anime, it's Date Masamune who kills Hideyoshi, leading to a feud between
Mitsunari and Masamune instead. But, this version isn't as interesting, because Mitsunari
and Ieyasu were friends while they served Hideyoshi, so the grudge is more personal
for Mitsunari (he and Masamune don't know each other before this), Ieyasu doesn't actually
want to fight Mitsunari (Masamune relishes a fight), Mitsunari becomes an empty shell
if he manages to kill his old friend (obviously wouldn't happen if he killed Masamune), Ieyasu
doesn't fare much better in the opposite (Masamune would be fine), and the sun vs moon symbolism
is swapped for dragon or lightning vs moon. Even leaving aside the difference in length,
the End of Judgement anime, which retold the story in a manner more in-line with the games,
was more interesting because of this central dynamic that the Last Party version lacked.
Another instance of key context being left out is with Mileena, who was originally going
to be the sole focus of this video before I noticed more examples. In the movie, Mileena
ambushes Sonya in a desert. We get this exchange,
Sonya: "Kitana?"
Mileena: "You wish."
and then the two fight. For a fan of the games, this makes perfect sense. Mileena is a clone
of Kitana, only distinguishable by her colour scheme and her mouth. With knowledge of Mileena's
origins from the games, it makes total sense that Sonya would mistake Mileena for Kitana,
so long as her mouth is covered.
But the movie never bothers to establish her status as a clone. In the movie, Sonya sees
a masked woman who doesn't really dress like Kitana and isn't even played by the same actress
for close-ups, and she still thinks it's Kitana. I mean, Kitana and Mileena never share a scene
together, so splitscreens and greenscreens didn't need to be considered in casting, and
Talisa Soto was one of only three actors to return from the first film (one of two playing
the same character) so there's no reason at all to not have her play Mileena for close-ups
and her speaking lines, before switching to a masked stunt double for the fight scene.
It's quite similar to the scene in MK2011, where Smoke finds Jade standing over the unconscious
Mileena and thinks Jade beat up Kitana, despite there being absolutely no reason to think
they're the same person, given how the only similarities are raven hair and big boobs.
Even their skin tones don't match, but Smoke still thinks it's Kitana.
If I were to Wasted Plotential this thing, I'd have Mileena, portrayed by Soto, take
Jade's role as the traitor, posing as Kitana to infiltrate the heroes and betray them at
a key moment. She could begin the infiltration after losing to Sonya, claiming she was mind-controlled
like her mother to excuse the fight. Then, Sindel, Kahn or Kitana explains Mileena's
origins when they reach Sindel. Come on, guys, this is easy.
One could argue that a story arc being condensed down to only its bare essentials, or barely
being noticeable to one not familiar with the source material counts as this too. Such
as MK Legends: Scorpion's Revenge's half-assed setup for the Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade
relationship. She hates him throughout the film, he helps her escape captivity from a
group of monsters and proves that he can fight, and suddenly, she's starting to fall for him.
Filthy Frank: "Trash."
Can you think of any more examples of this? I'm also curious to see if anyone has an example
of the opposite: an adaptation adding details that fill in the blanks for them in the source
material. Maybe you consider Kano killing Sonya's partner to justify her hatred of him
from the first film to be this. Of course, that kind of expansion of the story can cause
its own unique set of problems, which I'll be discussing in a future episode when we
discuss SD Perry's Resident Evil series.
And I would talk about the mess of altered and removed context that was the Negima anime
adaptation, but that's getting its own dedicated episode, because what they did the Kyoto Arc
was a fucking disgrace.
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with you.
Today's recommended playlist is the Harry Potterathon by Dominic Noble. It's part of
his show, Lost in Adaptation, where he discusses movies based on books, and this subject comes
up quite a bit as the Potterathon goes on.