Not every filmmaker is as communicative as James Gunn.
Following the release of your typical film, very few directors take up vigil on the web, combing through questions related to their release and answering them for curious fans. Yet this is exactly what Gunn has been up to over the last week, as a flood of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 related questions hit social media. He’s been particularly active on Twitter, where the celebrated director is taking the time to clue curious viewers into some of the background details sprinkled through Guardians Vol. 3.
He’s already let us down easy, following questions about seeing more of Rocket’s experimental friends, dug into some of the major canon changes he made for the film, and now Gunn is providing his fans — and at least a few of his haters — with a lesson in linguistics, following complaints about adaptations.
A few fans, in particular, really seem rankled by Gunn’s decision to alter some of the details contained within the original Marvel comics. They’ve been whinging, over on Twitter, for hours now, in the comment section of yet another question Gunn was willing to address. Twitter users @Logan78106803 and @Notgoingsane started the discussion with a question about Cosmo’s gender, before doubling down on their misunderstanding of the term “adaptation.”
See, in the original Marvel comics, Cosmo is a male dog. Gunn altered this canon marginally to make her female, in order to pay proper homage to Laika, a Russian dog who became one of the first animals to ever travel to space. She died, several hours into her groundbreaking voyage, and her sacrifice is at least partially honored through Gunn’s minor reworking of her comic book origins.
But that simple change was enough to infuriate our two naysayers, who promptly filled Gunn’s comment section with complaints about comic accuracy. Insisting that “it makes no sense” to change characters in any way, shape, or form. @Notgoingsane dug in their heels and refused to budge. Even after Gunn pointed out that they were perhaps in need of a dictionary, in order to understand just what the word “adaptation” truly means.
Claiming to be a “comics purist” is all well and good, but — as Gunn pointed out — Cosmo’s gender-swap is one of the most minor alterations the director made to longstanding Guardians canon. He also changed the races of several characters — including longtime members like Drax and Mantis — but that wasn’t enough to deter our primary naysayer. He continued to double down on his misunderstanding of the word “adapt,” as he essentially advocated for 100 percent accurate comic retellings with absolutely no artistic wiggle room.
Gunn, who finally tired of the debate, simply advised his detractor to research the meaning of the word “adapt” before arguing any further. This could have prevented the entire dispute, had @Notgoingsane pivoted over to Merriam Webster, which clearly outlines that an adaptation is a “composition rewritten into a new form.” See that “rewritten” in there? It indicates that, in most adaptations, things are going to look a touch different from the original.
After all, isn’t that the real point of an adaptation? We already have the original — if you want to enjoy that, you’ve got access. But an adaptation takes that original and reworks it into something new. It maintains plenty of elements from the original, but it genuinely wouldn’t be an adaptation if it was a precise replica.
None of this is likely to convince @Notgoingsane any time soon, of course, but Gunn’s not shying away from the debate. He’d just like it if his fans came to the discussion armed with the knowledge of what specific words mean.
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