>>89231
>the stuff about Sherlock Holmes vs Superman et al
The point is that having no legal works that are not controlled by a central authority does not make it simpler.
>The biggest problem with DC and Marvel is that there is no actual "base" foundation one can refer to if you want to say that "This is Spider-Man" or "This is Aquaman".
For Spider-Man it would be quite easy to just look at Ditko's stories. For Aquaman it isn't easy because nobody gives a flying fuck about Golden Age Aquaman, and he slowly evolved into being even more of a ripoff of Namor than he originally was.
>Who said no one wants to read anything unless it's directly related to a previous identity?
>That's sort-of what you're implying when you stated that you cannot create certain stories and works unless you're allowed access to another's property.
No, what I'm implying is that if I'm FW Murnau and I have these great ideas for a film based on a novel by Bram Stoker, I should be allowed to execute that vision without getting sued and having my film buried for decades and almost entirely lost to time. Yes, I could make other movies instead, but I have ideas for this movie, and I should be allowed to make it.
>Doubt it as we can look at Japan and see works like Bleach, Death Note, and Dragon Ball (All series published under Shounen Jump, but are owned by their respective creators) were all demanded to be changed or continue beyond the original story planned.
Okay, then we can look at Steve Ditko, who essentially quit the big companies, or at least doing any actual work he cared about for them, and went off to do independent work for the rest of his life, even though it made him almost no money, and he could have made much more if he just continued writing Spider-Man. He seemed to care about Spider-Man, and didn't like that Stan Lee kept fucking with it, so he quit right on a cliffhanger, just before revealing a long term mystery (the Green Goblin's identity), without telling anybody. If he had the rights, he probably would have wanted to finish his story, and to finally do it the way he wanted to do it, from the comfort of his apartment, where he produced all his independent work after he quit the big corporations. But he didn't have the rights, so we never got that story.
Decades later, he would admit that the guy who replaced him, John Romita, guessed the Green Goblin's identity correctly. But for like 45 years, everyone including Romita second guessed it and wasn't sure.
You have also raised a further point that publishers are scummy and will use any methods they can to be scummy. I do agree with that point.
>Japan already does that, and, as you can see already in this thread, people are still complaining about the lacking variety in material.
Good point. Doujins aren't prosecuted as heavily in Japan. It hasn't destroyed the industries that allow them. So what's the problem again? People can understand that the "official" works are their own thing and doujins are different, but they can still enjoy doujins. Most aren't good, but some are, like anything else.
>Shakespeare
Shakespeare's works are valued for more than just their plot. Their dialogue is obviously a big factor. Any adaptations will have other factors that can add to the things taken from the original. With the Shakespeare example, we can also probably assume things like structure and tone and all sorts of other things might be different. Maybe better, maybe worse. Those differences can be good, and if the author's inspiration is in relation to a pre-existing work, that isn't a good reason to limit it.
>Yes, the films would still have some value, but would be devoid of much of it because we don't know if they improved from Citizen Kane or if Citizen Kane was a plateau of film-making.
Indeed, art gains value from being seen in the wider context of the world, and with every bit of context we lose, we lose a little bit of the value in everything else as well. And that's just one more reason we shouldn't use things like copyright laws to destroy art before it even gets to the page.
>Could they just have reprinted the original 325 stories in a series of collections every decade and remained relevant in that fashion?
With proper marketing and such, that would have helped, sure. It's one step. Disney has also fucked up in this regard as well, though. Younger generations don't give a damn about most of Disney's classic works. They devalued them with awful sequels in the '90s and 2000s, and devalued their overall brand so hard nobody wants to seek out their older works anymore. Snow White and Pinnochio may be masterpieces (and derivative ones), but kids don't care anymore, and I don't think they have since the '90s, if that.
>Care to explain Die Hard or Bayonetta?
I didn't say there weren't works that weren't made better by the limitation of having to change more from the work they were based on, we discussed Star Wars and Donkey Kong, but I don't think every single derivative work would benefit the same way.
>If it's the latter, you don't need Christ himself to exist in the story, you just need a "Christ-like" figure that fits the same bill. In fact, didn't several JRPG have to go that route during the NES and SNES era, where they had to convey the same idea while removing the direct religious symbolism due to NoA's restrictions?
In your spoiler immediately after this, you practically admit to how changing the creator's actual intended character and symbolism to a technically distinct alternative detracted from the art.
>Spielberg and Ready Player One
He can make shitty movies if he wants. It doesn't make the original things he referenced worse. Having the film version of The Iron Giant in Ready Player One can be ignored if I don't like it. Meanwhile, the film version of The Iron Giant remains excellent, despite being an adaptation of a book.