Aaron Pierre in Lanterns John Johnson/HBO Max Logo text If you’re terminally online, you’ve probably found yourself swept up in this year’s exhausting discourse over creative license and beloved IP.
When the now well-received Lanterns premiered its official trailer earlier this year, a vocal subset of fans objected to the premise of taking the ring-powered space cops of the Green Lantern Corps and grounding these colorful, cosmic superheroes in small-town Nebraska for a desaturated, Taylor Sheridan-esque riff on True Detective. Earth’s first Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, also drew criticism for being portrayed as an older, messier iteration of the most famous intergalactic peacekeeper rather than the more idealized version in his prime.
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Concurrently, Christopher Nolan’s modernized adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek poem, The Odyssey, endured endless kvetching prior to becoming the highest-grossing film of his storied career. Some found fault with the use of American accents instead of British ones, something Hollywood has long conditioned audiences to hear in sword-and-sandal epics. Others argued that the characters should be speaking with Greek accents or even in an ancient Greek dialect to honor the source material’s roots in Greek mythology. Additional gripes, among many others, targeted the use of the word “dad,” the Greek soldiers’ anachronistic armor and two casting choices that together accounted for less than ten minutes of screen time.
Resident Evil writer-director Zach Cregger — who delivered two of the most unique genre films this decade, Barbarian and the Oscar-winning Weapons — has also taken a great deal of flak for having the audacity to tell a new story that’s set inside the world of the popular video game franchise. Hardcore Resident Evil devotees contend that he should have just made an original movie if he didn’t want to meaningfully engage with the existing characters and stories. Cregger maintains that his goal was to capture the experience of playing the games he himself loves.
If anyone understands fan backlash and demands for adaptational fidelity, it’s Lanterns‘ Emmy-winning co-creator Damon Lindelof. He’s worked across a wide range of existing IP, including Watchmen, Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, World War Z and The Leftovers. He also co-created Lost, a series that is bound to be revisited or reinterpreted by someone else down the road. Having lived on both sides of the equation, he has heard every possible reaction to his work, from effusive praise to deep-seated contempt.
“We all just have to acknowledge that there’s a level of hubris involved in taking on any of this preexisting IP. But it is called adaptation. Source material is supposed to change and evolve [by definition],” Lindelof tells The Hollywood Reporter. “As a consumer and as someone who’s making this stuff, there’s almost a responsibility to take risks. I don’t think anybody wants to see you be completely and totally vigilant to the source material because then it isn’t an adaptation at all. Shouldn’t we be beyond this conversation by now?”
While some of these perpetual controversies are generated with financial and/or political incentive in mind, Lindelof notes that such grievances are partially tied to Hollywood’s habit of returning to the same wells. And though consumers claim to want more brand-new experiences like Obsession, the numbers continue to show that branded entertainment still rules the day.
“There is a fundamental grumbling and annoyance that we’re still telling the same stories over and over and over again. But at the same time, we’re hungry for something new,” Lindelof says. “And because we don’t want to resolve or acknowledge that paradox in ourselves, we throw it onto the culture. It manifests itself in conversations about whether or not Odysseus is having enough sex.”
Thus, until the audience behavior truly shifts away from franchise stories, barring a few outliers each year, creators like Lindelof will keep utilizing creative license to reimagine the familiar in the most compelling ways possible.
“Nobody who does what we do goes to bed at night, saying, ‘All that I care about is whether or not I pissed off the fans.’ They go to bed at night, going, ‘Did I do anything worthwhile creatively? Did I put anything authentically emotional into this story that people can relate to?’” Lindelof says. “And the fact that we have to do it inside familiar IP most of the time is the cost of doing business.”
Below, during a conversation with THR, Lindelof and fellow Lanterns co-creator Tom King also discuss the inspiration behind the traumatic backstory of aspiring Green Lantern, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), as well as the challenge King currently faces in adapting his 2017 Mister Miracle comic book run for animation.
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It’s nothing new, but the discourse this year surrounding adaptations and source material has been as insufferable as it’s ever been. Whether it’s Lanterns or The Odyssey or Resident Evil, there’s been so much bellyaching over creative license. Some of it is manufactured and disingenuous, but why do you think there’s so much resistance to change when it’s been proven that people rarely want more of the same?
DAMON LINDELOF I love the frame on the question. I love how insufferable [the discourse] is, and at the same time, it feels like it’s such a vital conversation. In the case of The Odyssey, which is millennia-old, or Green Lantern [comic series], which is on the right side of the century mark, our engagement in these works generates a high level of passion. But the other level of it is this weird conceptual framework of ownership, and that’s where it becomes insufferable. There’s a direct corollary to the amount of time that you spend ingesting something or thinking about something or talking about it with your friends or communities. You begin to feel like a proprietary interest in protecting it.
So I think we all just have to acknowledge that there’s a level of hubris involved in taking on any of this preexisting IP. But to your point, it is called adaptation. I don’t have my dictionary handy, and while I’m sure there are multiple definitions of adaptation, the one that resonates the most for me is that source material is supposed to change and evolve. [Writer’s Note: To his point, here’s another definition: Something that is changed or modified to suit new conditions or needs.]
The fandom will also watch the new Harry Potter trailer and be like, “This just looks exactly like Harry Potter.” And then the other side of the fandom is like, “Thank God, this is exactly what I want. This is what I love about Harry Potter.” When you try to split that difference and say, “How can we do something original inside something that is iterative [and/or] older than God?” — that is always the $64,000 question. I should probably add inflation.
The answer, particularly in the case for Tom and I, is that we identify primarily as fans. We were fans of this content long before we got the opportunity to make it. You don’t start from a place of, What would I do? You start from a place of, What would excite me? What would I hate? Then you always come to an answer that’s going to have some risk involved. As a consumer and as someone who’s making this stuff, there’s almost a responsibility to take risks. It’s not just for the sake of taking them; you’ve got to earn them. I don’t think anybody wants to see you be completely and totally vigilant to the source material because then it isn’t an adaptation at all.
Aaron Pierre ‘s John Stewart in Lanterns John Johnson/HBO Max Tom, what’s your take on this tug of war?
TOM KING To me, at the end of the day, it’s quality. And that’s such a stupid answer. Clueless, which is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, is completely different. It almost has nothing to do with it, but it’s such a good movie on its own. When you look into it and you see the Jane Austen of it all, you’re like, Oh my God, that’s an amazing adaptation. So adaptations have to do two things at once: they have to stand on their own and they have to talk to the old material. If they can’t stand on their own, then what you’re going to see is how you misinterpreted the old material. So quality, quality, quality is always just the apex of everything.
When artists or bands cover well-known songs, the whole point is to hear their twist on the material. Nobody expected Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” to be a carbon copy of Nine Inch Nails’ original, so it’s puzzling to me why movie and TV adaptations are held to a different standard.
LINDELOF I hard agree. I also don’t even know if they’re being held to any standard at all. There is a fundamental grumbling and annoyance that we’re still telling the same stories over and over and over again. But at the same time, we’re hungry for something new. And because we don’t want to resolve or acknowledge that paradox in ourselves, we throw it onto the culture. It manifests itself in conversations about whether or not Odysseus is having enough sex.
KING So you do open my emails. Good.
LINDELOF & KING (Laugh.)
LINDELOF But I do find the conversation much more exhilarating on the outside than from the inside. Also, look at the movies and television shows that are generating the most interest and the most eyeballs. It’s disproportionately a retelling versus a telling. So when something fresh and original like Backrooms or Obsession comes along, it’s the exception to the rule versus the rule. All of us are completely and totally overwhelmed by the familiar.
Nobody who does what we do goes to bed at night, saying, “All that I care about is whether or not I pissed off the fans.” They go to bed at night, going, “Did I do anything worthwhile creatively? Did I put anything authentically emotional into this story that people can relate to?” And the fact that we have to do it inside familiar IP most of the time is the cost of doing business. But I don’t disagree with you. Shouldn’t we be beyond this conversation by now?
KING I’m working on Mister Miracle now, this animated series within the DC Universe. It’s me adapting myself, but it’s myself from ten years ago.
LINDELOF The fans will get to say, “You ruined it!”
KING (Laughs.) As a comic book writer, I’ve been to ten years of conventions where people tell me about the parts they loved and hated in the book. So I’ve been arguing with myself from ten years back, being like, Oh my God, you wrote that well, or, You wrote that terribly. I’m hearing those fans from conventions in my head, and I’m hearing my own instincts as a creator who’s learned a ton since then, including by watching Damon create. So all of this is entirely on my mind, and I’m trying to produce something that both honors and elevates the original on a new medium.
Cairo Cash Lee as Young John Stewart in Lanterns John Johnson/HBO Max John Stewart’s (Aaron Pierre) traumatic backstory seems like it has both of your fingerprints all over it.
LINDELOF & KING (Laugh.)
Actually, I could say the same thing about Hal. He has a little bit of Dogen (Hiroyuki Sanada’s Lost character) in his background. In the case of John, though, had one of you been dabbling in Swiss folklore at the time?
LINDELOF In truth, a lot of that came from Vanessa [Baden Kelly], who wrote the [third] episode. Justin Britt-Gibson, as well. He was in our writers’ room, and we previously worked on a Star Wars movie that we never got to make. I don’t know how familiar you are with comic-book John’s myriad backstories and introductions, but it was this idea of trying to honor the inconsistency of his comic book legacy with some new ideas of our own. Obviously, I was really proud to be in this room. This is not a show that I ran; Chris Mundy ran it impeccably. So it felt like I was batting around .175 in terms of the ideas that I was throwing out. But the more exciting part of the job was hearing other ideas from the other writers and going, “Yes, that.” So when it came to John’s origin story, Tom pitched the dad and the apples, and that was very early in the pilot we wrote with Chris. But working backwards from that and saying, “Alright, how did we get here?” — a lot of that heavy lifting came from Vanessa.
KING Yeah, I remember us going, “This is a father story.” And she was like, “No, this is a mother story.”
LINDELOF She was like, “Enough of the bad dads.”
*** Lanterns is now airing new episodes on HBO/HBO Max every Sunday until Oct 4.
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