Media Undercut By The Need To Be Commercialized

[BeerMug Paladin]

I thought it might be fun/interesting to talk about times when you feel the artistic merit of a work is undermined by the need/desire of said art to be commercially viable or successful. This could be based on things people involved in a production have said about creative decisions made. Or it could just be that you suspect certain decisions were made with this goal in mind. Presuming that art does not directly have intent, this is more about whatever message/theme you got out of the art which you feel is undermined by some other element also present. If the art doesn't come across as having any deeper themes or ideas it's aiming for, then it doesn't count for this. I expect most of these examples are going to be adaptations, because anyone working on an adaptation will be concerned with market appeal.

I'll explain what I mean via some discrete examples and describe why I have come to this conclusion about them. Spoilers for the movies described.

Spoiler: Watchmen (movie/comic)

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The movie adaptation of Watchmen had several little changes, but I'll only talk about one. The casting and portrayal of Ozymandias seems to have been done solely in order to make him look more like a villain. But part of what I think makes his scheme so impactful was that he was portrayed/presented as being beyond suspicion. Not only that, but he was actually the noblest, most outright heroic (main) character in the story.

To be so obviously a "good guy", yet also be capable of one of the most monstrous things in that world's history is what the story is about. Among many other things one might say, one can't obviously tell who is going to do the "bad things" in life.

But I suppose movie audiences don't like to be confused by the "hero" doing bad guy stuff. So they made that change to be more appealing to a broad audience or something.

Spoiler: Megamind

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Megamind is an entertaining movie with a pretty straightforward plot. After declaring victory over his rival, Megamind finds out that they're not happy with their success. So they try to enact a scheme that will allow them to return to a life they felt they understood and had a purpose. Only after he starts to go through with his scheme he realizes that his status-quo really isn't something he can just return to. He can only move forward from where he is now.

Eventually, it becomes clear that he never really got the chance to be anything but what society chose him to be, and comes to realize that he can just decide to be something else. He doesn't have to stay in the box that society forced him into. And so he chooses a different life.

The plot is great. It's a light-hearted story about finding meaning in life. With a bit of a warning about "don't believe what others tell you about yourself". Excellent.

But if there is one thing I could change about it (other than giving it an original score), it would be the character design of Megamind, himself. The character's eyes should've been black/beady, or the appearance otherwise looking more downright monstrous. Things being what they are, Megamind's design was necessarily impacted by his role as a protagonist. As the protagonist he has to be visually appealing and able to convey emotions to a sympathetic audience. An audience who won't mind seeing him on screen for a majority of the time. I get that.

And it is above all, a children's movie, so I don't want to be overly critical or misunderstood as engaging in a classic Internet-Trivial Nit-Pick-Ding! But I think a more immediately repulsive look to Megamind himself would have better supported the theme of how society just never allowed him to be anything but a outcast. Based on nothing but his superficial appearance, it would have made the school scenes have more impact if he looked like a wasp or something. Would've drawn a bigger contrast between him and Metroman, too. Especially when Metroman decides that he doesn't want to be forced to stay as a hero.

Spoiler: Death Note (Netflix)

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Calm down. I'll outright say that Netflix's Death Note is a bad adaptation. But for the purposes of this thread I'm only concerned about analyzing it in the context of how it was presumably adapted to appeal to a mainstream US audience. I think there is something interesting that can be said about it in regards to this topic.

I only watched it once, but after a while I came to believe that the alterations and changes they made to the story were at least partly done because they wanted to make Light an anti-hero rather than a villain protagonist. In order to accomplish that goal, they needed to split the actions taken by Kira into two distinct categories. Killing the criminals/bad-guys (anti-hero slayings) and killing those seeking Kira (villainous killings). The main conflict was then between these two characters. Instead of L being the antagonist, he had a secondary role as a complicating factor for the real conflict. The one between anti-hero and villain.

I'm under the impression that anti-heroes are more popular in US media than villain protagonists. So although I would not make the same decision in regards to a Death Note adaptation, I believe it was done that way to be more marketable to the expected general audience. But in choosing to do that they severely downplayed the role of L and the idealized sense of justice his character represents. L being something of an avatar of justice was sort of the whole point of his character, I think. It's pretty substantial to change who the primary antagonist is, especially when that antagonist represents an entire ideology.

Also, L used a gun just so there could be dramatic tension for a single scene. I actually laughed when I saw it so it entertained me. Mission accomplished there, I guess.

The only person I'm aware of who watched that movie who had no familiarity with previous works liked it. But other than my suspicions, I don't have any idea if those changes were made for that reason. But the notion that this adaptation was deliberately changed in order to make it more appealing to a (US) general audience made me more engaged with it.

I'm sure there's plenty of other factors involved in the creation of that movie, such as having less time for plot and junk. But like I said above, I think the major impactful choice was to make Light an anti-hero to be more appealing to a general US audience and all the other things kind of fell into place largely as a consequence of that.

If that is what happened, it was a weird decision.

Spoiler: First Blood

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From what I understand, the movie First Blood originally had an ending where the main character was killed. Immediately after watching the movie for the first time someone told me that the movie's original ending was changed because test audiences didn't like it.

The movie is about how society sometimes uses people, breaks them, then throws them into the gutter like trash. Additionally, being limited in the available choices for how to respond, problems can be only be addressed in a very narrow way. In this case, with direct, increasing force. As an artistic choice, it definitely would have had more impact if it stuck with the tragic ending.

As far as undermining the theme of the movie, we're still left with a big conflict that we understand never should have happened. All I'm talking about here is the last few moments of the movie doing a sudden thematic reversal-redemption. So I don't have much to say about this one. No, I've never had the desire to watch what I automatically would assume to be worse movies. Do you think I intentionally choose to see movies I know I'll dislike?

Spoiler: Galaxy Quest

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Just kidding! Galaxy Quest is flawless.

Keep in mind that this only applies to the overall main theme(s)/ideas being undermined by other elements in the work. It doesn't apply to changes as minor as a character's incidental traits. Like hair color.

Also, this isn't meant to be a discussion of plot holes. Plot holes don't exist for the purpose of this discussion.

This is for highlighting when artistic presentation undermines its own apparent goals for the reason of trying to appeal to a broader audience.

[Peelee]

Spoiler: First Blood

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From what I understand, the movie First Blood originally had an ending where the main character was killed. Immediately after watching the movie for the first time someone told me that the movie's original ending was changed because test audiences didn't like it.

The movie is about how society sometimes uses people, breaks them, then throws them into the gutter like trash. Additionally, being limited in the available choices for how to respond, problems can be only be addressed in a very narrow way. In this case, with direct, increasing force. As an artistic choice, it definitely would have had more impact if it stuck with the tragic ending.

As far as undermining the theme of the movie, we're still left with a big conflict that we understand never should have happened. All I'm talking about here is the last few moments of the movie doing a sudden thematic reversal-redemption. So I don't have much to say about this one. No, I've never had the desire to watch what I automatically would assume to be worse movies. Do you think I intentionally choose to see movies I know I'll dislike?

Spoiler: First Blood

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So it's not really a redemption ending, since he's not redeemed at all; thematically, it's not too far off from the original ending. In the original, he realizes there is no place for him in modern society, which is why he kills himself. In the revised/actual ending, he still feels this way, but the colonel talks him out of ending it and at least submitting to the authorities. The final scene is Rambo being arrested. There is still no redemption, he just doesn't give up completely. The original ending would have been significantly better, and I dislike the test audiences for wanting a happier ending, but it's at least not a total hack job.

Also, fun fact! There's another major theme that is much more subtle in the movie than in the book. They don't really go into detail in the movie, but you can see war medals in the sheriff's office, indicating that he is a veteran of the Korean War. The tactics used by Teasle & co. and Rambo, along with their feelings towards the continuing escalation of the feud, match the tactics and national feelings towards their respective wars.

Spoiler: Galaxy Quest

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Just kidding! Galaxy Quest is flawless.

Spoiler: Galaxy Quest

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I was aboutta say...

[Kitten Champion]

The two that will forever stand out for me are The Hobbit trilogy and The Golden Compass.

Lindsay Ellis' video on The Hobbit is a more thorough explanation than I could provide, but essentially pushing a relatively slim children's adventure story into a LotR-esque epic and having that fit into the modern concept of a prequel undermined both the tone and structure of the story. Add to that the additional material brought in by the studio - Gandalf's side-quest, Tauriel's love triangle, Legolas fan service, etc - feeling largely maladroit and poorly implemented, I got the strong sense that focus groups were leading the way in filling the huge length of time left over by so thoroughly contorting the story into three movies.

It's such a clear case of greed undermining good taste... but even if the various elements added into it were done more deftly I would still want The Hobbit as the story was intended, and not a LotR-prequel.

The Golden Compass was always going to be a challenge for a Hollywood studio to adapt. Either they go in with the heavy criticism of - {Scrubbed} at the core of the story, or they try to create something more broadly palatable but thematically empty... and they created something more broadly palatable but thematically empty. They clearly wanted their own Harry Potter, but that wasn't the IP they bought the rights to. Watching them tap-dance around the material in the script while doing some great work with the visual effects and some really good casting decisions is just kind of sad. Also, they cut the ending of the book, which again shows the absence of courage necessary to adapt the work.

[Eldan]

The saddest thing about the HObbit is the material they removed to make space for the Council, Legolas and the love triangle: the dwarves. It's also in Lindsay Ellis' videos: she interviews some of the dwarf actors. They had the dwarves worked out, had given each of them a backstory, quirks, mannerisms that the actors portrayed on screen. And had written scenes of the dwarves talking amongst themselves and with Bilbo and doing other, quieter things. These movies could have been so much better if they cut Legolas, half the battle scenes in general and gave the core cast more to do.

[Aedilred]

I think The Hobbit is perhaps the most obvious example, as noted. There is a good movie in there, but it's dwarfed by the bloat. I don't actually have a problem with Legolas being in it; it makes sense that he would appear given they go to his home and his people are fighting in the Battle of Five Armies, but he didn't deserve so much prominence. And the love triangle was just blech.

I think the majority of films ever made have had some commercial interference, although it's not always clear what's a commercial consideration per se and what's done to mollify an actor's ego. The first True Grit, for instance, ends on a rather brighter note than the book or the second film from 2010, but I'm not sure whether that's because it was thought audiences wouldn't cope with a downer ending, or because John Wayne didn't want to be killed off.

Kingdom of Heaven and Blade Runner were both notoriously shredded by the studio to try to make them more commercial. The director's cuts of both are far superior, although I don't think the Kingdom of Heaven cut is as good as is sometimes made out.

There are also pretty much all the Pirates of the Caribbean films after the first. The first film wasn't exactly an indie hit, given the money behind it, but the manner of its success seemed to have been something of a surprise: it was expected that it would be all about Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley as the stars, but the character everyone loved was of course Jack Sparrow and (particularly) Johnny Depp's portrayal of him. Later films leaned into this, foregrounding Jack as the most marketable character, to the detriment of everything: a character who worked best playing off those around him ended up dominating the screen.

I could mention Caligula, of course. That was a film that was murdered by studio interference, but I'm not sure to what extent that was commercially-driven rather than just Bob Guccione wanting to do his own thing. I can't imagine that the hardcore porn he inserted actually increased the film's commercial appeal or was even really expected to.


Sometimes though, I think it works to the film's benefit. Although I'm not 100% certain of this, I have heard that the ending to the original Italian Job was forced because they thought at the time audiences would not approve of the thieves getting away with it. So rather than a straightforward ride off into the sunset, we got something absolutely iconic. There is sometimes a turning-point in a director's career where the studio starts leaving them alone and the quality of their films drops as a result. The obvious example is Michael Cimino: after the success of The Deer Hunter, they let him make Heaven's Gate and, well, we all know what happened.

An interesting counterpoint: Kermode's view on Tarantino films. Tarantino has a reputation as an auteur, but Kermode has argued that in fact, after his early output, after the (relative) lack of success of Jackie Brown compared to Pulp Fiction, he gave up on honing his craft, and his next several films and their self-consciously quirky style were motivated more by trying to attract audiences who liked Pulp Fiction and want more of the same than they are by trying to make movies that are actually good.



Edit: I said all that and overlooked the most famous and egregious of all commercialising hatchet-jobs: The Magnificent Ambersons. Not only the ending (originally much more downbeat) was changed, but the film as a whole was butchered, with tracking single-shots cut up into pieces, lines of dialogue removed from the middle of a scene, and so on.

[Lemmy]

I'd say "pretty much every Netflix adaptation"... But I'm not sure they are bad because of the need to be commercialized, because the producers don't give a damn about the original materal or ebcause the writers ar ejust incompetent...

[Caledonian]

Sometimes there's ego involved. A Wrinkle in Time is inherently difficult to adapt, but the recent Disney version failed badly. And a several people have told me that they were warned off when they saw the trailers with Oprah and two other women playing the three 'angels'. The three 'angels' of the book were: Mrs. Whatsit, a bag lady wearing so many layers of clothes it wasn't obvious she was a woman, Mrs. Who, an old woman wearing super-large and -thick glasses who constantly quoted classics in multiple languages, and Mrs. Which, who looked like the ghost of a stereotyped witch complete with scraggly grey hair and broom.

A major point was that appearance was meaningless: the three could change shape, weren't always fully material, and may have been the souls of dead stars. Whatever they were, they weren't good at coming down to the human level, and struggled to express themselves in human speech instead of... some method of communication we could barely understand.

The Disney version? Three beautiful goddesses all glitzy and bejeweled, with elaborate hairstyles and togas and body paint.

[JoshL]

I *liked* the Hobbit movies, but I won't get into an arguement, only state that in the book most of the Dwarves barely get to talk, and one has no personality developed beyond "really good at starting fires". For all the faults, they did do a lot more with the dwarves than the book. But anyway, I get why people didn't like them.

I'll take a different tack and talk about an example where the commercialization HELPED. My favorite movie of all time is Legend (1985 with Tim Curry and some other people). The first cut was released in Europe, with a score by Jerry Goldsmith. The studio insisted for American audiences it be cut, and a more "pop" score put in place, by Tangerine Dream, against Ridley Scott's wishes. As it was about to be released, the studio insisted that Jon Anderson of Yes sing over the final cue in the movie, against Tangerine Dream's wishes. So why was any of that good?

First off, the cut (and this applies to the later released Director's Cut). Not everything is good. The original is heavy handed and artless in place ("you're a princess, princess Lily! You can't princess without your princess princessing" as opposed to leaving who she was vague and implied). The dress dance scene starts out as this beautiful otherworldly thing...and then gets silly at best as they hold hands and run up and down the length of the table. Most of the edits for the US release were for the best, though a couple scenes (the unfinished "dance of death" scene when Jack meets Gump, and the Meg Mucklebones scene) could have stayed in. The version shown on American TV restored just those two scenes. I'm certain they were cut for more "family friendly" reasons because it was a fantasy film in the 80s, and those are two of the more intense/scary scenes.

On to the music! The original score is a good piece of music, but sort of a throwback fantasy/adventure score, kind of generic and often has little relation to the images on screen. We'll go back to the dress dance scene; there was no attempt whatsoever to make the music in the same meter as the dancing. As a result, it's jarring and draws attention to itself in a bad way, because they are clearly dancing to something else. Compare and contrast the TDream piece, which matches the rhythms, the tempo shifts and FEELS like the music the actors are dancing to. And rather than a classic film from the 50s, it feels otherworldly. The whole score does. It matches the atmosphere that Scott was achieving (note that there are almost always particles in the air), even with the more "modern pop" instrumentation. Rather than just copying the past, it creates something new, while still preserving the folklore/archetypes in the film.

And the last point, the Jon Anderson song, Ridley hated it, Tangerine Dream hated it, but it's easily one of my favorite songs in any fantasy film (helps that I'm a Yes fan). It IS more pop-y than without the vocals, or the original score. But I love it and we wouldn't have it if the studio wasn't trying to make this dark fantasy film more commercial and accessible.

Spoiler: But hey, don't take my word for it

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So yeah, generally trying to make a work more commercial will ruin the work. But sometimes, some rare once in a blue moon times, studio interference can take something and push it to the next level. YMMV of course, but I love this movie obsessively and can talk about it for days!

[False God]

I thought it might be fun/interesting to talk about times when you feel the artistic merit of a work is undermined by the need/desire of said art to be commercially viable or successful. This could be based on things people involved in a production have said about creative decisions made. Or it could just be that you suspect certain decisions were made with this goal in mind. Presuming that art does not directly have intent, this is more about whatever message/theme you got out of the art which you feel is undermined by some other element also present. If the art doesn't come across as having any deeper themes or ideas it's aiming for, then it doesn't count for this. I expect most of these examples are going to be adaptations, because anyone working on an adaptation will be concerned with market appeal.

I'll explain what I mean via some discrete examples and describe why I have come to this conclusion about them. Spoilers for the movies described.

Overall, converting anything to a movie causes it to lose context.

Spoiler: Watchmen (movie/comic)

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The movie adaptation of Watchmen had several little changes, but I'll only talk about one. The casting and portrayal of Ozymandias seems to have been done solely in order to make him look more like a villain. But part of what I think makes his scheme so impactful was that he was portrayed/presented as being beyond suspicion. Not only that, but he was actually the noblest, most outright heroic (main) character in the story.

To be so obviously a "good guy", yet also be capable of one of the most monstrous things in that world's history is what the story is about. Among many other things one might say, one can't obviously tell who is going to do the "bad things" in life.

But I suppose movie audiences don't like to be confused by the "hero" doing bad guy stuff. So they made that change to be more appealing to a broad audience or something.

Converting anything to a movie means it can and usually does lose context. There's only so much time in a movie, only so much room for storytelling, and they have to convey it as best as possible. I don't think this is a "commercialization" change, but just a simple book/comic-to-movie change.

Spoiler: Megamind

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Megamind is an entertaining movie with a pretty straightforward plot. After declaring victory over his rival, Megamind finds out that they're not happy with their success. So they try to enact a scheme that will allow them to return to a life they felt they understood and had a purpose. Only after he starts to go through with his scheme he realizes that his status-quo really isn't something he can just return to. He can only move forward from where he is now.

Eventually, it becomes clear that he never really got the chance to be anything but what society chose him to be, and comes to realize that he can just decide to be something else. He doesn't have to stay in the box that society forced him into. And so he chooses a different life.

The plot is great. It's a light-hearted story about finding meaning in life. With a bit of a warning about "don't believe what others tell you about yourself". Excellent.

But if there is one thing I could change about it (other than giving it an original score), it would be the character design of Megamind, himself. The character's eyes should've been black/beady, or the appearance otherwise looking more downright monstrous. Things being what they are, Megamind's design was necessarily impacted by his role as a protagonist. As the protagonist he has to be visually appealing and able to convey emotions to a sympathetic audience. An audience who won't mind seeing him on screen for a majority of the time. I get that.

And it is above all, a children's movie, so I don't want to be overly critical or misunderstood as engaging in a classic Internet-Trivial Nit-Pick-Ding! But I think a more immediately repulsive look to Megamind himself would have better supported the theme of how society just never allowed him to be anything but a outcast. Based on nothing but his superficial appearance, it would have made the school scenes have more impact if he looked like a wasp or something. Would've drawn a bigger contrast between him and Metroman, too. Especially when Metroman decides that he doesn't want to be forced to stay as a hero.

Then you're missing the story completely. Megamind wasn't a good guy trapped in a monsters body. He was a good guy trapped by circumstances. Wealth. Education. Upbringing. Social exclusion. Megamind's story isn't about how he's a blue freak. Megamind's story is about how life had dealt him a bad hand and how people brought up that way can buy in to the role that society has cast for them.

Metroman's story is told largely off-screen, but it's the same story. Wealth, education, upbringing, social demands made Metroman buy in to the role that society had set out for him.

[Rodin]

The Golden Compass was always going to be a challenge for a Hollywood studio to adapt.

As I recall, the biggest problem was that you can't fit the events of the first book into a 2 hour movie. There's too much lore background to explain, and the movie skipped through it to get to the armored bears. They also chopped off the ending because focus groups didn't like it.

It'll be interesting to see how His Dark Materials handles the commentary as it gets more explicit. It didn't shy away from making the Magisterium moustache-twirling baddies.

[Vahnavoi]

Dungeons and Dragons.

How and why? Well, when TSR was at the helm and AD&D was transitioning from 1st edition to 2nd, they did two things to be more commercially successfull: appeal to moral guardians in response to then-current moral panic, and market the game to kids.

One of the symptoms was a "code of ethics" As the article notes, these rules were never strictly enforced, because if they had been, entire product lines would've been axed. But the attitude behind the code still left a mark on the basic books of 2nd edition of AD&D and either created or codified some annoying ideas and stereotypes about roleplaying games.

Namely: that D&D is for kids, that D&D is only harmless escapism where goods guys fight the bad guys, that players shouldn't play evil characters, that Chaotic Neutral is for insane people... so on and so forth. Notably, 1st Edition of AD&D didn't adhere to most of those ideas and wouldn't have passed this "code of ethics".

Naturally, the current owners of D&D are in process of doing a similar thing, the moral guardians they are appealing to are just different.

[GloatingSwine]

Spoiler: Megamind

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Megamind is an entertaining movie with a pretty straightforward plot. After declaring victory over his rival, Megamind finds out that they're not happy with their success. So they try to enact a scheme that will allow them to return to a life they felt they understood and had a purpose. Only after he starts to go through with his scheme he realizes that his status-quo really isn't something he can just return to. He can only move forward from where he is now.

Eventually, it becomes clear that he never really got the chance to be anything but what society chose him to be, and comes to realize that he can just decide to be something else. He doesn't have to stay in the box that society forced him into. And so he chooses a different life.

The plot is great. It's a light-hearted story about finding meaning in life. With a bit of a warning about "don't believe what others tell you about yourself". Excellent.

But if there is one thing I could change about it (other than giving it an original score), it would be the character design of Megamind, himself. The character's eyes should've been black/beady, or the appearance otherwise looking more downright monstrous. Things being what they are, Megamind's design was necessarily impacted by his role as a protagonist. As the protagonist he has to be visually appealing and able to convey emotions to a sympathetic audience. An audience who won't mind seeing him on screen for a majority of the time. I get that.

And it is above all, a children's movie, so I don't want to be overly critical or misunderstood as engaging in a classic Internet-Trivial Nit-Pick-Ding! But I think a more immediately repulsive look to Megamind himself would have better supported the theme of how society just never allowed him to be anything but a outcast. Based on nothing but his superficial appearance, it would have made the school scenes have more impact if he looked like a wasp or something. Would've drawn a bigger contrast between him and Metroman, too. Especially when Metroman decides that he doesn't want to be forced to stay as a hero.

Spoiler

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No.

Megamind's eyes are bright green thematically because he's driven by envy of Metroman and his acceptance by Metrocity, and also to make it subtle but noticable that they never change when he uses his disguise watch.

If his eyes were noticably nonhuman the disguise watch wouldn't even work and so the whole plot doesn't work.