[ SECRET POST #2907 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2907 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #415.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[philippos42]

Years ago, there was this little Elmore Leonard novel called Out of Sight. One of the lead characters was a blonde woman named Karen Sisco, and a secondary character was a big white southern guy named Buddy Bragg.

It got turned into a movie. Karen became more conventionally "Latin," being played by J.Lo. And Buddy Bragg was completely reinvented as a big black dude played by Ving Rhames (and his arc was even a bit different).

The changes to Karen weren't all that much; not awful. The changes to Buddy were glaring to me, although movie!Buddy was an OK character too. Yay for representation?

What gets me is that the movie is wildly beloved by critics. And yet, it feels like an artificial chimera to me. It has Elmore Leonard's plot and dialogue in places, and is cool; and in other places, it has stuff written in a totally different voice with different concerns--the germ of another screenplay folded around some Leonard scenes.

What they did to Buddy was the least of it. (Indeed, his changes were relatively inoffensive if jarring.)

So, what I'm saying, OP, is that the movie will probably barely resemble Suicide Squad, the new Deadshot will probably be totally different from Floyd Lawton, and lots of people who don't know any better will think it's great.

We'll know, OP. Because we remember Floyd.

Personally, I half expect they're going to write Smith!shot as an attempt to combine Lawton and Turner, and completely miss both.

[(Anonymous)]

I would argue, as a general principle, that adaptations should not be judged in terms of fidelity to the original text as a rule

IE, the question of whether the movie is good or not has basically no relation to its accuracy to the book, only its quality as a movie

that said, it's rad as fuck to have someone with serious opinions about Elmore Leonard on F!S

[philippos42]

Well! That was a case of me looking for the movie, because it was so very well-regarded; and reading the book while waiting for a chance to see the movie; and so watching the movie with the book fresh in my mind.

Ving!Buddy was OK, actually. The additional plot bits weren't Elmore Leonard, but they were interesting, and I think better than, say, Jackson's original bits in the Hobbit movies. But it really was a story with a different foundation and themes, with bits of Out of Sight folded in to make the dialogue better. So, yeah, it did affect my opinion of the movie.

[philippos42]

And as for what Warner is going to do to Suicide Squad, there is an issue, because those are ongoing DC trademarks. Lawton is in Secret Six, now, I think.

There's already a big risk that in development, Deadshot (FLoyd Lawton) will be confused with Deathstroke, because of similar names and costumes. If they are making him black, that could imply a couple of other confusions:
1) Marvel's Deathlok is black and looks kind of Deadshot in costume.
2) I haven't read the new stuff, but Suicide Squad used to have non-criminal wranglers to keep the convicts in line. The team leader was a black guy named Ben Turner, who is closer to a Will Smith type of character than Floyd Lawton generally is. They're arguably both massive post-traumatic depression cases [Edit: like most of the Squad!], but they deal with it differently, come from different places, and have different ethics. If they're trying to collapse them into one, it's going to be weird.

Finally, while I have seen Six Degrees of Separation, and I know young Will Smith had serious range, he's definitely known as a goofball, and that implies that the film (does it even have a shooting script?) will use him as a goofball in the ensemble.

Sorry, it just looks like it's going to be dumb.

It would probably be dumb even if they had cast Will Smith as Ben Turner (and the Bronze Tiger deserves more love), but this is just surprising and not reassuring.

[(Anonymous)]

Their using Amanda Waller as the wrangler, and is going to be played by Viola Davis (not Oprah as was rumored elsewhere.

[philippos42]

Not that anyone is going to read this, but Ben was Waller's lieutenant and managed the team in the field where she couldn't. Stripping the team down to Waller and a bunch of convicts, as has been done in some of the comics, is dangerous to her and works less well, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

...I only know that movie because of Michael Keaton's cameo.