Poll: Does ignorance of source material annoy you?

[Mikeyfell]

People used to yell at me for hating the stupid end of Clannad because "The source material"

And I'm like: "Well obviously the anime didn't follow the source material because that ending smelled like it was pulled out of an ass!"

It's when people are talking about different levels of cannon that bugs me.
Like Game of Thrones.
Are we talking about the books? or the TV show? because I haven't read the books, and based on the show I don't think that character is so great!


Just by it's very nature when you're talking about an adaptation, you shouldn't expect that everyone your talking to understands the source material.

And if you're talking about adaptations deviating from the source, well storytelling in no two mediums are directly compatible. Things change, things get lost (Things get shittier)
The adapter should always try to respect the source but, what's the saying? You can't please all the people all the time, but if you add enough Lens Flare no one will notice.

Spoiler: J.J. Abrams-o-vision

 

[Sean Renaud]

I'll try to keep this brief.

First it rarely bothers me if for no other reason than so many things don't have a quality "source" to work with. Spiderman is a great example. Are we talking the long running comic, the one that's been running so long that even the creators decided they needed to reboot it and call it Ultimate because you're kinda asking a lot of new fans to sit through decades of comics.

People have brought up Resident Evil. Have any of you actually tried to sit down and play a game from a genre your not particularly good at? Resident evil is up to six games proper, and some pretty mandatory side games like Nemesis (Go look it up, 3 is the side game, Veronica is the actual game in the story. It's a whole legal thing that happened with Sega and Sony) that's A LOT to ask of someone to stumble through if they aren't already good at something.

Pokemon pisses me off btw. I'm a fan of the series but I have a problem with a game that's tag line is "Gotta Catch em All" and it's literally impossible to catch them all. To the point that you have to attend their events to get the legends and forget your life if your either busy with work or are a kid and can't get anybody to drive you to the damned thing.

Back on subject, is Christopher Nolan's Batman not legit? Does someone who likes those three movies and knows everything about them LESS of a fan than someone who reads the comics or was introduced to the character through the Animated Series? According to the original poster yes, they are less of a fan. I disagree, they simply have a different entry point. Frankly we should all be friends since we love the same thing.

That said, I think the BIGGER problem we have as a whole is let me guess. Most of the people with this "attitude" are between say twenty five and forty. We all remember when these things were ours. We remember a world where the idea of a Football game coming out every year was absurd. Where you had to trek out to your comic store to find out about the X-men, Spawn and Vampirella and now these punk ass kids who did nothing to "earn" the knowledge dare speak the name Gannondorf? They think they know something about something while they think Peter Parker was bitten by a genetically altered spider when any idiot knows it was a radioactive spider? These Narutards who don't realize their precious series rips everything off of a better series about an alien sent to earth from a dying planet who's just super? Basically we're that old guy shouting for kids to get off our damn lawn. They really aren't hurting anything most of the time but it's more that they really annoy us than anything they're doing wrong.

PS: Wesker didn't die. This is Capcom ladies and gents. The company that brought us Dr. Wily, Sigma and M.Bison. Wesker will show up in the next game mildly annoyed that his glasses melted.

 

[verdant monkai]

These people you bring up are talking about different things. You may not like those things but that doesn't mean they don't exist and can't be talked about on their own.

If

You

Had

Read the

Whole thing

You would understand the context

People can talk about the films and spin-offs and that's fine. Its just annoying when they tell me I'm wrong when I'm talking about the source material.

 

[Quellist]

Five words. Lord of The Fucking Rings. As a forty-something who first read the books and a teen and has re-read them several times I totally feel your pain.

I'm not going to give examples or I'd be here all day and end up foaming at the mouth with incoherent rage.

 

[hazabaza1]

Walking dead seems to follow the comic books almost to the letter

I'd really like to know which comics you're reading/which TV show you're watching considering for one they're vastly different and for two, Robert Kirkman admitted to trying to make them different.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Like joker said: "why so serious?", just pretend like you don't care even if you do. Those who can't agree with their enemies will be control by them.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

snip

Depends really. I like it when a new piece of material, be it a game, movie, tv show or whatever else in an existing series tries something new. I don't want to have the same story retold to me.

My favourite example of this is Scott Pilgrim. The film, the books and the game are all fantastic, and tell different versions of the same basic story. I like that. If they all told the exact same story, that'd be boring. The Potter and LotR films I find disappointing, because they tell the same story as the books, only they lose a lot of the detail. The Hobbit films I eagerly await though, because they include elements from Unfinished tales, which expands the story, making me actually interested in seeing the films instead of wondering what they've left out.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Walking dead seems to follow the comic books almost to the letter

I'd really like to know which comics you're reading/which TV show you're watching considering for one they're vastly different and for two, Robert Kirkman admitted to trying to make them different.

On the subject, I don't know why but I really hate movies or tv series adaptation of another medium that followed source materials to the letter, especially comics. I already read the comics and know how the story goes, I want to see something different on the big screen.

To me, super heroes is about a person with powers with ideals, I'd much rather they tell different stories while staying true to the characters and the morals of the source materials. They really don't need to show us how uncle ben die twice in the movies, Spiderman is about a guy with superpowers that feel he's obligated to use his power for the benefits of others. It doesn't really matter how he comes to that life view, who is family is or how and if they die or what story they try to tell with this character. Once his character stays true to source material he's still spiderman.

Instead they're telling they same old story and competely changed the character.....that to me is more damaging to the source material than if they made uncle ben live. The morals and the message a story sends is more important than the details of the story, one can tell a story in different ways and still stay true to source material.

 

[Entitled]

First of all, it doesn't really matter. This is really the biggest problem we have in "geek culture" right now. The whole "YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW THE SOURCE" sense of entitlement that makes people think that every new media form a franchise goes through should emulate the original stuff to the dot. I always view new visions of old IP as their own new "thing".

Well, that's your problem. Not every new version of an IP is an entirely separate "new thing".

Sometimes it is, but there are also plenty of shows that are basically tie-ins to the bigger franchise, made primarily for the fandom.

For example the Harry Potter movies missed out major novel plot points, and then randomly brought them back in later movies with the understanding that most of the viewers have read the more detailed novels anyways, so they only need to focus on the atmosphere and the basic plot outline for a shorter "movie retelling" of the "full story".

In such a case, there can be as much unreasonable entitlement from the new viewer side, as from the fandom. You wouldn't jump into a TV show's second season's middle, and expect everything to be explained to you. You wouldn't watch a sequel, and expect it to open as clearly as a first movie. You wouldn't watch a Chinese historical movie, and expect it to explain every single element of chinese history to you that is trivial to it's chinese target audience.

So why would you deny that some adaptations and reboots can also be made with the understanding, that you have certain pre-existing about the setting, and if you don't, then you are not the main target audience?

 

[Weatherking]

Knowing the source material myself can defiantly effect my opinion on the respective derivative, I recently watched Watchmen for the first time after reading the comic for the second time and didn't like it at all. It really was pretty faithful but to me it felt a whole lot different in tone and that wrecked it the most for me. To be fair I only would have liked it if it was ten hours of mind numbing(not a negative to me) slow build-up to a soul-crushingly depressive ending, and that would probably make it suck to pretty much everyone else.
In the end, whatever, there's plenty of other stuff in the world for me to enjoy so why focus on the stuff I didn't, especially when I can see I didn't like it for personal reasons rather than objective or actually reasonable reasons.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

It wouldn't bother me that much, not enough to warrant a rant. I would simply explain that I wasn't talking about the film but the games and then recommend them to whoever I was talking to because I think they'd enjoy them.

 

[Winnosh]

A little but it's a silly thing to do. It's why I despise people who use the word canon instead of continuity.

Someone talking about a Movie continuity is completely valid in what they are saying. Just because the movies came later does not mean the movieverse is any less valid an interpretation of the character, it's just a different one and one you may not like as much.

For me this goes back to the old Streetfighter movie. After it people kept saying that Charlie was Blanka and I had to keep correcting them again and again. Well we were both wrong. The correct answer from me would be to say that In the movie Charlie is Blanka but in the games Blanka is a kid named Jimmy. Both different but both equally valid.

Same for comics. There may be a Main comic continuity, but the other paralell stories or cartoons ext, are all valid as well, just valid for different continuities.

 

[Dfskelleton]

One time at lunch, I was talking to a friend about The Divine Comedy.
Lo and behold, another friend chimes in and inquires, sincerely might I add, "So does Dante actually save Beatrice in the end?"

Cue me karate chopping the table in half out of blistering disgust.

 

[Angie7F]

It does annoy me. But then i find it to be a chance to go through many rants about how great whatever topic is, and other friends are probably sick of hearing them already. so I guess it ok.

 

[Edguy]

I don't understand, is this a thread about if it's okey to change source material i adaptations, or is this a thread about whether you dislike people that think they're experts about a subject after watching a movie adaptation?

 

[DuelLadyS]

One time at lunch, I was talking to a friend about The Divine Comedy.
Lo and behold, another friend chimes in and inquires, sincerely might I add, "So does Dante actually save Beatrice in the end?"

Cue me karate chopping the table in half out of blistering disgust.

So... why didn't you answer him? Why not point out that 'dude, that game changed so much, that question doesn't even apply to the book'? He might have been so intrigued by that he'd actually read it.

I will freely admit right now, I am one of these people- specifically, I'm a so-far-just-movies Avengers fan. I'd like to know more, but there's two big issues with that right now. One:

Just because you have watched the Avengers movie, does not make you an expert on The Avengers... Here read this 565 issues of the Avengers, across 4 volumes & you'll be almost half way to being an expert.

That's great... I don't have an extra hundred dollars lying around to buy all these books you claim are required reading just to get started. I could pick things up over time, but what's the best order? Maybe I'll ask someone...

An for all that is holy, if i hear one more person announce that they are a Wonder Woman fan, who personally own less issues of Wonder Woman then i do, i swear by Zues himself, I... WILL... END... YOU.

... or maybe I'll just be a movie fan.

Stuff like this always makes me think back to freshman year of high school. I was out with a friend, and we overhear some guys talking about anime. So my friend immediately chimes in that hey, WE like anime too! Me, I'm more honest, and point out that technically, we've only seen DBZ. One guy physically leaves- I'm assuming out of the same rage and disgust we've got going here. The other guy? He actually makes an attempt to educate- watch Akira, watch Lodoss War, DBZ isn't so great once you branch out. Now, I didn't immediately run out and find these shows... but I took it to heart, and when I did decide to try something new- I found out he was very right. I sought those shows I was told were good, and I was glad to know something to look for. Now I have a collection to rival most cons.

When someone shows how clearly they only know one bit of something, don't immediately write them off- tell the guy who hates Cyclops he's a badass in the comic. Tell them a good 1 or 2 trades to start on. If they answer "F**k the comics", then go ahead and write them off. Just give us noobs a chance, because some of us do want to learn.

As for me, I'll keep consulting with my brother when I find the extra cash for a new book. Granted, he's more DC and I'm looking into Marvel, but at least he knows my interest, while still casual, is sincere. I'll figure this out yet!

 

[Strazdas]

Yes. Watch battlefield earth (2000) movie. I dare you. The reason why its one of the worst movies arent because its a bad movie. its because it got EVERYTHING (up to names of characters) wrong from the book.

I can enjoy when material is reimagine, and it is intentionally so, creating its own universe. i cant however stand when you take them aterial, sell it as the same and completely destroy it (Mysteriuos Island 1956 somehow managed to be successful despite getting nothing but a way they got to an island right)

Also who is wesker and why should i care?

That's great... I don't have an extra hundred dollars lying around to buy all these books you claim are required reading just to get started. I could pick things up over time, but what's the best order? Maybe I'll ask someone...

You can thank the society we have created that people can still profit for material that was created by people gone for decades. Because of course you should be allowed to make tons of money on what somone else did right?
Most of the comic books, at least all goden and silver age ones should be public domain to begin with.