In fact, the changes in CARTER very much sprang from the old Hollywood mantra that a book is not a movie -- only this time, it wasn't an excuse for Mr. Director to force his "vision" into the work. Take the artifact that gets Carter to Mars. In the book, he basically wishes/dreams/astral projects himself with (at least in the ones I read) no explanation of how he's doing it. Circa 1912, that might have played well with an audience that thought "A Princess of Mars" was a really HOT title (and I am NOT being sarcastic), but there have been a LOT of science fiction and fantasy movies since then. What was new and amazing in the books has been ripped off so many times that alterations need to be made just so the CARTER movie won't seem like it is, itself, ripping off, say, STAR WARS. And the more "sophisticated" audience needs a physical maguffin to focus upon. So we get an amulet instead of a wish/dream, and Carter has something to DO in the movie with which the audience can actually connect. Also, it provides a nice underline for audience members who are too dumb to get it any other way: Carter throws away his amulet when he adopts Mars as his home.

That's just one example, but there are others, and none of them fall into the categories to be found in so many Hollywood (as a mindset, not a geographic location) movies. Like the excesses of LORD OF THE RINGS, for instance, where everything from the time frame to the characters' motivations are changed. (Walt Simonson, a huge LotR fan, actually called me after he saw the second movie. He wanted me to check his thinking on the fact that changes Peter Jackson made actually made it impossible to get to the third book. He was right. The progression into "The Return of the King" happens arbitrarily in the movies, not because of any internal logic.)

Many changes that Hollywood makes are just out of laziness. It's easier to do it one way, rather than another. Race-swapping falls into this category. Rather than spending some time and effort on creating new Black characters -- you know, actually respecting the history and heritage of the Black actors who will play them -- just get out the shoe polish and go all Al Jolson on an existing character.

It was racist when Jolson did it.* It's still racist. Only now, that racism has been repackaged in a way that makes some people think something POSITIVE is happening.

It isn't.

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* From time to time I have wondered how Jolson, who was born Asa Yoelson, would have reacted to a song-and-dance man who sported a huge beaked nose and a yarmulke. Would that horrifying cliché have been as "okay" as his own blackface routines?

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Sometimes it doesn't even take race or gender swapping to create such a schism. Consider Storm, as we met her in GIANT-SIZED X-MEN 1:

Mysterious, ancient, unworldly. . .   but within a very short time she was born in Harlem and grew up with the first part of Modesty Blaise's origin. A completely different character (and tied to a specific bit of world history, the Suez crisis, that makes her my age!!).

Sub-Note: that guy Cockrum could sure push a pencil, huh?

Michael: A good story is a good story, and a bad one bad. 

Beyond that tautology, though, what is the argument that, just for example, Batman (already established) as a WASP-American/male is essentially the same character as Batwoman, an African-American/female? 

Does this not even have to be about race -- e.g., is Superman still Superman if he's not a "male" Kryptonian but a female Australian Aborigine being viewed as an "alien" in terms of race and gender by male Anglo-Aussies? That indeed could be a good story that tells us quite a bit about race and gender, but what's the argument that that's a "faithful adaption," to use JB's thread title?

Mark: Important to whom? What's the context? There's a big difference between adding varied interpretations to a piece that's been done a million times and swapping out the race of a character that's never been on-screen faithfully.

Mark: Are you arguing FOR "race swapping" as it's been described by this thread? Is putting a minority-race face upon a white character better than creating a new character designed with the appropriate background for his/her race?

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Ra's is supposed to be of indeterminate race/ethnicity, according to Neal Adams.