“Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record…”

–       Leonard Shelby, Memento

Given Hollywood’s propensity for mining old ideas for new revenue streams, we’ve all heard these complaints at one time or another:

They’ve ruined my favorite childhood memories.

What right do they have to change that?  It was fine in the original!

They raped my childhood.

The last one in particular jumped out most recently in a discussion reproduced here in The Basement, spurred by the issue of a new toy from the G.I. Joe movie being released this summer.  That would ostensibly be the same G.I. Joe that was a cartoon series from the mid-1980s.  Which was itself little more than episode length commercials for the G.I. Joe toy line being issued by Hasbro in 1985.  Said toy line being itself a retooling of its own toy line from the late 1960s that was eventually renamed Adventure Team when Hasbro opted to downplay the war theme of the toy in the wake of the Vietnam War (this according to Wikipedia, so take with a grain of salt).

As you can see from the long history of the franchise, a creation can sometimes undergo multiple revolutions over time, if the core idea is marketable but the current approach doesn’t appeal to the present audience/market.  And this is just from a franchise that was commercially successful.  One that didn’t have marketability may wind up being reborn as something completely different, bearing only the same name from one conception to another.

The question criticism such as Sam’s raises is at what point is the fan’s personal investment great enough that fan service can or should potentially trump creative license with an established character or franchise? Continue reading →