Pointless Viewpoint Characters

So, okay, Sega is apparently developing films based on two of its classic titles: rhythm game Space Channel 5 and beat ‘em up Comix Zone. Which–okay, cool, whatever; this early it’s impossible to say whether they will be any good. (Though my immediate thought was “Okay, now do Crazy Taxi.")

But here’s what caught my attention: the Space Channel 5 film will apparently “tell the story of a hapless fast-food worker who is recruited by a freedom reporter from the future to save the world from aliens using the one thing that unites all people on the planet: our love of silly viral dances.” If you aren’t familiar with the source material: the game Space Channel 5 stars a future reporter saving the world from aliens through dance. There’s no “hapless fast-food worker” in the mix. That’s new for the film.

To be clear: I’m not trying to pick on this film in particular. This is a really common pattern. The Sonic the Hedgehog games (and comics, and I think mostly the shows) are about Sonic fighting Eggman, while the films are about James Marsden meeting Sonic and helping him fight Eggman. The Transformers cartoons (and comics, and old movies) are about good and evil transforming robots, while the Michael Bay films are about Shia LaBeouf meeting good transforming robots and helping them fight evil transforming robots. And on and on; you get the idea. As part of an attempt to give an adaptation of a niche property more mainstream appeal, the studio adds in what TVTropes calls a “lead you can relate to”. As if the audience can’t understand a fantastical setting unlike modern Earth or relate to any of its characters unless there’s a wholly non-fantastical person along for the ride to comment on how unlike modern Earth this all is (and probably end up playing a key role in saving the day despite being wholly unqualified compared to the setting’s preexisting characters).

(Note that this is unnecessary for the Comix Zone adaptation since that game was already about a normal artist getting sucked into the world of their comic; the movie can just do the same thing there with no problem.)

Now, I have to assume from the sheer number of times this has been done and the unimaginable amount of money involved that the strategy works more than it fails (or at least seems to). But it perplexes me. Of course it feels bizarrely patronizing–the source material didn’t need to have an everyman audience surrogate in order for the audience to know how to understand and react to the premise and setting. The audience just had their own actual reaction.

But beyond that, naively it seems like this sort of move should reduce the overall appeal of the adaptation.

For the existing fans, the new viewpoint character is an extra layer of metaphor distancing them from what they came for. They’re here to enjoy retro-futurist dancers / brightly-colored forest animals / transforming robot battles, not to watch someone else enjoy them. Any time or focus the film spends on the normal everyday person is worse than useless because it takes away from the time or focus spent on what makes this IP what it is and the reasons the fan enjoys it.

So presumably the idea is that having a “more relatable” lead character will gain you more mainstream appeal than it costs you in niche appeal, but like… having a generic protagonist is not a unique selling point, by definition! All it does is make the movie more interchangeable with other movies, and there are so many movies out there–if you’re someone who needs that “relatable” lead, are you even going to choose to watch Space Channel 5 instead of an actually-mainstream film in the first place? Why would you, unless the fantastical setting appealed to you? In which case, do you even need the “relatable” lead?

It doesn’t make sense to me. It really seems like this kind of adaptation just waters down what sets the source material apart; taking away some of the reason to watch it in particular, replacing it with weaker generic appeal that makes it stand out less.

I can see where that’s a good approach if there aren’t many choices available to the audience and you just need to avoid pushing people away and thus remove reasons not to watch your film. But given the options available to modern film audiences, I’d expect you to be better off giving people a clear reason to watch your film by offering something other films do not.