Fischer: Generally complex

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

In an interview with a Polish news site, executive producer of “The Witcher” Tomek Baginski, lamenting the changes made to the story to adapt the book series to television, is quoted as saying, “When a series is made for a huge mass of viewers, with different experiences, from different parts of the world, and a large part of them are Americans, these simplifications not only make sense, they are necessary. … It’s painful for us, and for me too, but the higher level of nuance and complexity will have a smaller range. It won’t reach people.”

That’s a very diplomatic way of saying that in order to make a product to appeal to a wide audience you need to dumb it down for the lowest common denominator.

Callous as it may be, it’s hardly an uncommon idea. Conventional wisdom generally dictates that there is an inverse relationship between complexity and mass appeal. This is true for most things.

Complex specialty tools may be needed for specific jobs, but simple hammers are sold and used thousands of times a day.

Spicy foods may be incredibly satisfying to people that enjoy the heat, but a relatively bland dish is a safer bet for a pot luck. (Use one jar of ghost pepper salsa and suddenly I’m not allowed to bring chili to family dinners anymore.)

It really does seem to be a constant of the universe that the less interesting you make something, the more mass appeal it will have.

This is especially prevalent in entertainment media.

As a rule, the TV show adaptation of a book series will always be less complex than its source. Likewise, a movie adaptation will be pared down even more.

Some of this is just a reality of budgets and time, but, like Baginski said, there’s also a drive to make these products more appealing to wider audiences. That means leaving the ghost peppers out of the chili.

But is that necessarily true?

Twenty years and change ago, the first X-Men movie hit theaters. It was wildly successful for its time. It was also very much a product of its time, lampshading the more fantastical elements of its comic book source material by making fun of code names and cracking wise about “yellow spandex.” As though a guy with metal claws on his hands fighting a shapeshifter in the statue of liberty is more realistic when he’s in a black leather outfit.

The X-Men movies did well, ushering in the pioneering days of successful comic book movies, but there was always the conceit that the most fantastical stories and concepts would have to be dialed back, lest they alienate the masses.

That’s why in the third X-Men movie, Jean Grey is just a really powerful psychic instead of possessed by a cosmic entity, why movie Juggernaut is just another mutant instead of magically fueled avatar of a demon god, and why the mutant cure isn’t part of a greater alien plot to destroy Earth by firing a planet-sized bullet at it.

Then “The Avengers” happened.

Marvel Studios teamed up a billionaire vigilante in a robot suit, a time-displaced super soldier, and a Norse god and threw them together in New York to stop an alien invasion. By the conventional wisdom of Hollywood, it should have sent the masses running. Instead, it made all the money and then some.

Now, 23 years after the cracks about “yellow spandex,” Hugh Jackman has been photographed suited up in a classic comic book style costume for “Deadpool 3.”

The same thing can be observed in other adaptations.

The Sonic the Hedgehog movies have done well enough, but you can practically see the world building lore surrounding alien worlds and magic gemstones struggle to break away from the studio mandated human sidekicks and contemporary Earth setting.

Then “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” happens, defying “conventional wisdom” by fully embracing every weird and wild aspect of that franchise, and it makes all the money and then some.

One could argue that it take time to ease general audiences in to accepting such things. Maybe “X-Men” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” walked (both of which, coincidentally, feature James Marsden) so that “The Avengers” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” could run.

But also, maybe general audiences deserve a little more credit?

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and would love to see James Marsden staring in a mini-series that fully explores the Scott Summers family tree because if you thought “Game of Thrones” had a complicated history …