Recently, my daughter and I have been discussing the Teen Titans, with whom she has become familiar from the ‘Teen Titans Go!’ shorts. She recognized Cyborg, but couldn’t figure out why he didn’t look like he was supposed to from my Justice League comics, a confusion that didn’t get any clearer when I showed her the original George Perez Cyborg from the 1980s. (She did love his hair, though.) While I’ve never sat through an entire TTG short, I did enjoy the old Teen Titans cartoon series, even though it made a lot of changes that forced me to categorize it as ‘alternate universe.’ Likewise, the cartoon version of G.I. Joe bothered me by side-lining the two coolest Joes (Flash and Snake-Eyes, in that order) and saddling Scarlett with the weak sister/Duke’s girlfriend role, handing her Action Girl job to Lady Jaye (presumably because of the hat.) It’s weird how easy it is to rationalize: I still utterly adore comic book Scarlett (she was one of my first imaginary crushes, after all), all the while not caring for a second if cartoon Scarlett wandered into the afterburners of a Sky-Striker. As it usually does, this dichotomy begs a query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) has a similar-but-different issues when it comes to Danny Ketch, but that’s another QOTD, asking: What characters do you LOVE in one medium/incarnation but find you cannot stand in another?
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As usual, my examples come from the world of magical girls. My biggest example is Rei/Sailor Mars; in the manga & the live action she is passionate but disciplined, serious, & focused, while in the anime she is a mostly annoying mood-swingy “tsundere” type (made much worse in the dub). Yet I still have great love for Rei despite the most well known version of her being my least favorite. A more minor one would be Cornelia from Disney’s embodiment of wasted potential known as W.I.T.C.H. In the comics, she was posh but kind & sisterly, a voice of reason figure; in the cartoon, she was a thoroughly unlikable alpha bitch who went from welcoming the new student in the first comics issue to deliberately shunning her in the first episode. Not even Greg Weisman could repair the damage done, and trying to keep as much focus on her as the comics did but having a wildly different & wholly unpleasant new personality kind of killed the show. Like your example of Scarlett, it seems like they want to take mature, sensible characters and turn them into putzes sometimes for spits & giggles.
I’m going to steal Matthew’s and say I love Scarlett – she too was one of comic book crushes growing up. Even though Rachel Nichols was dead ringer for the character in “Rise of Cobra”, I hated how the movie made her into the typical cold Hollywood heroine who can’t “quantify emotions”. I was even more enraged to see her end up with . . . not Snake-Eyes . . . not even Duke . . . but MARLON WAYANS?!
Conan
REH Book Conan is awesome
Movie Conan (arnie) Is O.k.
Every other Conan is bad
Loved GI Joe and Transformers cartoon (and toys and comics), not really too fond of the live-action movies (had to say live action since I love the old animated movies from the 80’s). Transformers movies are still fun to watch for the robot fights, just not if I want something with a solid plot.
Love Dungeons and Dragons tabletop games, novels, the old cartoon and a few of the video games, but I cannot stand the first D&D movie. The “sequel” was a lot better even though it was lower budget and only connected to the first movie by one character. Can’t really say about the third since I only saw part of it when I was really loopy from being sick and on heavy meds.
It isn’t any secret that my favorite superhero concept is Green Lantern, and I love the comics, cartoon appearances (including Duck Dodgers!) and the occasional game appearance of any GL, but I really felt like the GL movie didn’t live up to it’s potential.
I love the original Star Wars trilogy, the Expanded Universe novels and comics, the majority of Clone Wars animated and even some parts of the prequels (Yoda’s fight was awesome enough for me to not hate the prequels entirely), but aside from Star Wars Galaxies, the LEGO games, a couple of the RPGs (tabletop and video games) and card games, I just cannot stand Star Wars games. They’ve gotten better in recent years (KOTOR, Force Unleashed, etc) but most of the time I just can’t bring myself to play them for more than a few minutes.
I could keep going, but I think I’ll stop now before I make a full novel on the subject.
That would be Catwoman. As in the Eartha Kitt Catwoman. She was so feline, so sexy and so evil you had no problem believing she’d dress up as a cat and be able to take on Batman. The other two television Catwomen were awful. Julie Newmar was a horse, in comparison. And let’s just forget that the movie catwomen ever existed. The comic book catwomen were never able to “cat”pture the same combination of sensuality and charm. Meow.