Maybe itās weird, but I guess the thing that feels kinda Tragic to me is that now Iām aching to see new, novel Good Omens Adaptations. Like, I guess since TV Omens ended on such dud, creating aā¦ well, certainly not āperfectā, but a definite take on the narrative feels like it suddenly became an Open Question again.
The Book is a classic, but it is very Of It's Time and also has some Questionable bits of Humor and the fact that Crowley and Aziraphale, the storyās most popular and compelling characters who are on all the book covers and centralized in all the book summaries, are ensemble-members who basically disappear for a third of the story is a hard sell for many people. The Radio Drama does some excellent work with it's medium, but said medium is considered pretty niche nowadays, and it preserves aā¦ maybe disappointingly large amount of the Questionable Humor, and it's probably the least-Dramatic Good Omens version, even compared to the Original Book.
The Musical is a fascinating piece of adaption, but it's practically lost media (ā¦although this might change in about a week) and not of all of it's adaptational choices land for me, the Graphic Novelā¦ is the one Official GO Adaptation I haven't really experienced yet but the main criticism I've seen is that it's a bit too loyal to the source material and doesn't change things or utilizes it's own medium enough. The TV Show felt like the most 'definitive' version of the story, but now has that utterly superfluous dismal Second Ending tacked-onā¦
I mean, even if we ignore GO3 as hard as possible and only focus on GO1 (you know, like what I try to do on a day to day basis), the context of its existence, and thus the greater understanding of how Weird and Bad NG's vision for Good Omens can be, it makes me reconsider of the adaptational choices I used to like or at least accept, makes me think of them in a more critical light, makes me want to think about how things could be done differently, make me want to see more experimentations with these adaptational choices.
And now I have the urge to see and explore more alternative takes on Good Omens, different interpretations of Crowley and Aziraphale that try to stick closer to the book and/or take their characters in different directions, TV Omens had it's own answers to adaptational questions like "how do we balance out this work's clear intention to be a very Modern, current-day take on both the Apocalypse and Kids' Adventure Books with the fact the original text is also very firmly late 80's-early 90's?", "how can we preserve the book's most memorable narration/internal monologue lines in a non-literary medium", "How do we add some needed diversity into this very White-By-Default cast?" and "how do we deal with the fact Crowley and Aziraphale are the most popular and well-beloved part of this narrative but they are also Not the Main Characters and that's kind of the point?", but now I kinda want to see someone try and find new answers to all of these. Like, could you actually change-up and flesh-out GO's original Human cast enough to the point audiences do find them as compelling as the Ineffable Husbands? Isn't it worth a shot for someone to try?
I know a lot of people see Too Many Adaptations to be a problem of, like, a lack of creativity or not enough opportunities being given to original concepts and I do understand that. Butā¦ Maybe it's a result of my time in Superhero Fandoms, where your fav having like a double-digit number of adaptions in just one medium can be pretty Normal and you can easily be like "hey, they already made the Perfect Definitive Version of My Guy back in 1992, so now I want to see people get Weird with him!" Orā¦ maybe it's a result of my time in Musical Theatre Fandoms, where different productions, both big-name 'official' stuff and the no-budget community theatre and high-school productions you can find in YouTube, can all be considered equally 'Real' and ""Canon"" takes on the same core concept and even just little changes and experimentation with the casting and line delivery can lead to different interpretations and takes on the storyā¦
Or maybe it's just because of my childhood watching a lot of the Disney Rip-Off Animated Movies that adapted the same Public Domain Fairy-Tales in a slightly-different not-infringing-on-the-Mouse's-Copyright wayā¦
But I just like seeing different variations of the same core story and characters. Again, it feels like a lot of the aspects of adapting Good Omens feel like 'Open Questions' again, and I would've liked to see more different answers to them.
I mean, I get why this is unlikely to happen. And the tragic thing is that Good Omens is specifically a story stuck between one creator who turned out to be an absolutely vile human being, where even if there was a legal way to ensure he wouldn't be able to financially benefit from any further attempt to reiterate on this work, the risk that would find a way to benefit from it socially is pretty fucking bad as well. And folks very understandably want to distance him and his vision from this work as much as possible. And then the other Creator died in a very tragic way and also ended up being kinda weirdly 'deified', with everyone being very concerned how to best pay tribute to his legacy and visionā¦ This is just a Very Bad Creative Environment to the kind of Weird Adaptational Experimentation I'm wishing for. And again, considering the NG Situation, it might be for the best if we don't get anything 'official' Good Omens for the foreseeable future?
But, man, if only I could, likeā¦ the Dream Scenario for me is that I just get to hand over the Good Omens Adaptation rights to like 50 random GO Fandom Creatives of varying backgrounds and varying degrees of Derangement + 50 random up-and-coming media creators with varying degrees of familiarity and affection to the Source Material and just be like "Hey, it's Your City Now, do whatever YOUR vision for the story feels right to you, also all proceeds go to NG Getting Kicked in the Balls" and just see what kind of variations on the story comes out from that.
