On Adaptation (revisited)

The Odyssey (2026)
Directed by Christopher Nolan

As we drove across the country this summer, for our annual visit to Maine, my wife made plans to spend the night in Albany, arriving in time to catch a screening of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. She taught that poem to first year high school students for several seasons, so she is quite familiar with the work, while I am not. But I like Nolan, the cast is (as the kids say) stacked, and I was looking forward to it.

Not only did I enjoy the film, I was moved. Like, seriously, when was the last time I was made to deeply feel something, watching a movie? I experienced a deep melancholy, a feeling of great loss. I was troubled. I still am. I’ve been thinking about it for two weeks.

And the memes are killing me, particularly those that focus on Robert Pattinson.

Those trolls who were prepared to bury it at the box office may have been excited to learn that Emily Wilson, scholar and recent translator of a best-selling version of The Odyssey also hates it, but for diametrically opposing reasons. They hate that it has a diverse cast, she says it isn’t diverse enough. They say it has a “woke” message, she says it has no message at all.

Anyway, it’s a fucking blockbuster, on track to break one billion in global box office on its third weekend in theaters. What are ya gonna do?

Adaptations are a puzzle, transforming a piece from one medium to another. What to keep, what to lose, what to emphasize, what to ignore. And what to outright change – and that’s certainly going to be contentious to someone.

Nosferatu by Jim Shepard (1998)

This summer I have been reading Nosferatu, Jim Shepard’s 1998 novel about German film director F.W. Murnau. Drawing from historic record, it is fiction told (largely) from Murnau’s first person perspective, about his upbringing, his time as a pilot in World War One, and becoming the celebrated director of Nosferatu, The Last Man and Tabu. It is also the story of one man’s struggles with passion and guilt in a time when his relationships were literally a crime.

Adapting Bram Stoker’s supernatural saga Dracula into a visual medium to create Nosferatu at the nascence of the motion picture era was an artistic challenge, and several of Murnau’s experiments with light and shadow are iconic while other seemingly clever tricks with slower frame rates and reverse exposure today seem a bit silly, taking the edge off Max Schreck’s horrifying performance as the titular character.

In Shepard’s novel, the director laments to his journal the static nature of the camera – early cameras were huge and heavy – and how he wished it could move. In a later film, The Last Man (also known as The Last Laugh) Murnau either pioneered or pushed forward many schemes to get the camera to do just that; to pan, to track, the zoom, to swing, even. If those methods had been available to him in 1921, who knows how much more affecting his vampire film may have been.

The Machine Stops (2026)

Last week (still on vacation) a few of us headed out to see a local theater production. The day before, the wife and I took a wrong turn through a village and I was surprised to see a large banner advertising a stage adaptation of The Machine Stops, the early 20th century science fiction short story with which I have a long personal history, producing a radio drama of Eric Coble's stage adaptation for our NPR affiliate, and even making reference to it in And Then You Die.

Sticking out of the program was a letter-size page of director's notes explaining his thoughts about the story and how this production came into being. Hot take? Don’t do this. Telling people what to think about the thing they are about to see just before they see it is never a good idea.

That's what your blog is for.  

Reading it over – after the performance – did clear up a few questions. It was originally a thirty-five minute adaptation, rich with movement and sound and style and passion, performed by high school students, created for a high school theater festival. The costumes, lighting, the ensemble choreography were all very effective in telling E.M. Forster’s classic tale of a future when mankind has chosen to live underground, apart from one another, all of their necessities served by the Machine. And it was all right there in this production – especially powerful were the constant droning sounds of the Machine, created entirely by the voices of the ensemble, making their sudden absence all the more startling when, well. Spoiler alert. The Machine Stops.

Unfortunately (checks director’s notes) in order to serve an adult audience, and to expand the slight original material to an hour, the production had been expanded to include laborsome tangential stories meant to incorporate modern relevance, to wit; opinions about Covid, quarantine, and Liberal government overreach.

Really, I want you to imagine enjoying a seamless and well-executed multidisciplinary performance that comes to an abrupt stop every ten minutes so that company members in street clothes can drag a chair and a table onto a well-designed set, and perform seemingly unrelated and obvious agitprop under a nondescript spot before moving on. It’s crazy.

I bet the original high school version went over like gangbusters, and those young people deserved it.

There have been several summers when I would be here, on vacation, and also using that time to conduct research for plays. One year I was reading books on the Globe Theatre, and the voyage of the Sea Venture and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Another, it was all about the Lusitania, the “Great Silence” and even more about World War One. Those were for assignments, or commissions, what have you. Most of the adaptations.

This summer I have been reading and re-reading a certain novel, and like The Machine Stops, it is another work of early 20th century science fiction. This one was, shortly after it was written, adapted into a classic silent film, one which I would like to adapt into a stage play. 

And there are perils in adapting early science fiction: Do you play it straight, which (depending on the work) may seem dated, and lack the desired sense of immediacy? Do you entirely update it, as many modern films have done (see: Spielberg's War of the Worlds or Will Smith in I, Robot) and become something entirely other than what fans of the work are expecting? And how much do you push your idea of what the message of the story may be, to the alienation of certain audiences, as with The Odyssey, or this local production of The Machine Stops?

It is a voyage upon which I look forward to embarking.

See also: On Adaptation (2011)

CWRU 50th Annual Science Fiction Marathon

Pizzazz was a short-lived pop culture magazine produced by Marvel Comics from October 1977 to January 1979. Any given issue might include articles about Mattel’s Slime, Spider-Man, Shaun Cassidy, or the film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also notable for including short comics of the first new Star Wars stories to follow the original film.

I had my tenth birthday during the all-too-brief print run of Pizzazz and I was absolutely the demographic. The June 1978 issue (“First National Edition!”) featured the article “Do-It-Yourself Guide to Day-And-Night Marathon Summer Vacation TV Watching.” A tongue in cheek piece (but I didn’t know that) it was intended for that kid who saw the summer as one long, boring stretch of nothing to do.

The story included tips on what to wear (ratty bathrobe), what to eat (and where to store it within arms reach), how to orient yourself in front of the TV, even what to use to change the channels without getting up (a grocery store stick) in the era before remote controls. Fans of Ferris Bueller might be interested to know it provides instruction on how to trick your parents into believing you are ill which includes making a tape recording of yourself coughing.

It Came From Outer Space

They even suggested using an egg timer to take naps during late-night commercials before the stations went off the air (they used to do that) and you could catch a couple hours sleep before sign-on.

After completing a week's worth of non-stop television viewing, the article concluded, “You’ve done it! You’re 10 times more bored than you were when you started. You swear you’ll never watch another minute of TV for the rest of your life. But just think how good the rest of the summer looks now!” Which is pretty much how I felt by the conclusion of the CWRU Film Society 50th Annual Science Fiction Marathon last weekend.

Since 1976, at this time of year, Strosacker Auditorium on the Case campus would be packed with nerds to watch non-stop flicks from Friday evening to some time after midnight on Sunday morning. I’ve been several times, usually to catch a few movies in a row depending on what was being offered. This year the rundown was so epic, I decided for the first time to do the entire thing.

Mars Attacks!

While I did not pack a ratty bathrobe, I did bring a change of pajama pants, slip-on shoes (not slippers) a pillow, and also a blanket that I never chose to use. I have been watching what I eat recently, due to an elevation in my bad cholesterol. For the marathon I brought no food of my own, only cash with a resolve only to consume what was made available. Before the show even began, that included a slice of Dewey’s pizza, a bag of popcorn and a Pepsi. It was luxurious.

We watched Ready Player One (2018) and It Came From Outer Space (1953) and for a midnight snack enjoyed a vanilla muffin with chocolate chunks. Every year there are two or three “surprise” attractions, and at 1:15 AM that was Mars Attacks (1996). I changed into my soft pants, settled in and promptly fell asleep.

One Million B.C.

I was a bit self-conscious about wearing pajama bottoms, I know the kids do but I’m not a kid. But then I saw grown men walking into the bathroom in their socks, so I stopped worrying about it.

In 1998, to promote the Dobams’s Night Kitchen long-form, sci-fi improv One Step Beyond, members of the company appeared at Strosacker during the marathon to play trivia and give away tickets. Thing is, we appeared twice: late Friday night, and again on Saturday morning. The thing we didn’t think of is that there’s really only one audience for the marathon. The second time I took the stage I was heckled; “Hey! I know why I’m in the same clothes I was wearing last night, why are you?”

I also slept through most of Disney’s The Black Hole (1979) and no one could blame me. By that time I had figured out how to curl into my lecture hall seat in the right way so that I could be comfortable. It was cute.

This Island Earth

One Million B.C. (the 1940 one, not the other one) started a little before five a.m. and that kept my attention, if only because of all of the animals that were harmed or mutilated for its creation.

The first time I brought my son to the marathon was in 2017, when we saw Arrival (2016) and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005). The boy was eleven, he said Arrival was the best movie of that year. He’s never said anything about Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Thankfully, I had brought a toothbrush to the marathon, freshened up and got a cup of coffee. And they had apples! We saw This Island Earth (1955) and breakfast was a whole everything bagel from the Cleveland Bagel Co. with cream cheese and they also had Malley’s stuff here so I had two milk chocolate covered pretzels. It was heaven.

Wall-E

January 2020, four of us came to the marathon specifically to see Twelve Monkeys (1995) and before that, the short French film it was based on, La Jetée (1962). By then, we already knew about COVID-19, it just wasn’t here yet. It was a disturbing evening.

Next up was Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which I hadn’t seen in over thirty years. Forgot how young Ed Furlong is in T2. After, we enjoyed a program of the opening credits to a dozen or so Saturday morning cartoons from the 60s through the aughts.

One year — I think it was 1999 – they showed Until the End of the World (1991) and that was a doozy. A somewhat futuristic noir from Wim Wenders, the obtuse, three-hour plotline was complicated by the fact that the film canisters had gotten out of order, the audience was in revolt. Lone voices in the dark would occasionally cry, “WHERE’S THE SCIENCE FICTION???” and “AUUGGHH!!!”

The Lost World

The Wall-E (2008) screening at 11:30 AM included a trailer for Hello, Dolly! (1969) and shawarma from Aladdin’s. Then we watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (1955) which is possibly the greatest science fiction film of all time. I know this because I have seen it several times, usually at the marathon because they play it so often.

During a tense but quiet moment near the end I loudly observed, “... he came back to life – and his name is CARPENTER!” My riff was met by a cascade of groans and catcalls.

Did you know ..? The Lost World (adapted into a silent film in 1925) is the only short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle not to feature Sherlock Holmes? The midafternoon screening included a live accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis.

Godzilla

For dinner they brought in burgers, and I was surprised to see a large crowd of new audience members file in and fill empty seats for the 6:00 PM screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Rumor has it it was assigned for someone’s class, but who wouldn’t take the opportunity to see Kubrick’s epic? I hadn’t even seen it until last year when it was streaming, and I was excited to see it on a big screen.

There was a bit of acrimony as some joining us had little patience for the riffing coming from those who had been there for almost twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, one of the men’s toilets was down. By intermission the burgers were gone.

Our first CWRU Science Fiction Marathon was probably 1996. I can’t recall going before that time. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) which was on this year’s bill played that year, too. The riffing when Ellen Barkin appeared got seriously rapey and my partner loudly told them to knock that stuff off, and they did.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Trailers and shorts before the feature are always references – or clues – to the feature about to play. For Secret Film #2 they included trailers for Gorillas in the Mist (1988) and The Whales of August (1987) and the Looney Tunes short Rabbit Fire (1951). The movie? The original Godzilla! (1954) I was asleep by the time he crushed Tokyo. With two flicks left I put my pants back on.

By midnight, I was ready to cash it in and head home, but then I decided what’s the point of having done this if I wasn’t going to see it through? We finish marathons. Besides, I still had that pillow. I dozed through a lot of Deadpool & Wolverine and by 3:30 AM we all staggered out into the frigid morning.

“You’ve done it! You’re 10 times more bored than you were when you started. You swear you’ll never watch another movie for the rest of your life. But just think how good the rest of the winter looks now!”

Monday night my wife and I went to the Cedar Lee.

Visit the blog of silent film composer and accompanist Jeff Rapsis for his own take on this year's marathon.

Process LXX

“I feel stupid and contagious.”

Why didn’t anyone tell me Covid was difficult to live with? I am currently reading several books at once, which is good, I’m not usually good at that. The deadlines are coming and they will be constant, from one week to the next.

Did you know ..? The 1927 film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, was adapted from a novel written by Thea von Harbou. It was first serialized and then collated into a book in 1925, though it was always meant to be the source material for the eventual film. This is one of the books I am currently reading.

I’ve been in love with the film since Giorgio Moroder released an abridged version with contemporary score in 1984. Some of the music is dated, very, very dated. Would not recommend someone watch this version for their first time. However, it is because of this version that I know and love this film, so I am very glad it existed, and when it did.

Moroder’s own compositions, however, are still entirely appropriate, most significantly the "Machines" theme.

  

One of the amazing things about early science fiction is that It does not, in fact, cannot rely on words or phrases we all know which act as a shortcut to our imagination. The word “spacecraft” automatically creates in the mind a picture, one of a self-contained vessel, most likely resembling in shape a nautical ship, set against a black sky festooned with stars.

So much of our modern storytelling is derivative in this way. Those who pioneered the craft of science fiction had their own images to work from, but quite often they were creating brand new images for the imagination, some of which can be quite confounding. Von Harbou’s novel for Metropolis is at times incomprehensible, at least upon first pass. I find myself going over passages a few times to make sure I am picturing what she intended.

This week has been very challenging, as I have been coping with the lingering effects of Covid, and also felt somewhat overwhelmed by all the assignments and responsibilities.

But wait – I had previously been lamenting my lack of deadlines, assignments and responsibilities. I just needed to remind myself how much I have been loving this. Grad school has given me life.

Play a Day: Abigail, For Now

Jackie Martin

For Friday, I read Abigail, For Now by Jackie Martin and listed at New Play Exchange.

Last night I had a dream that I was in a public library, trying to produce my half-hour radio program for broadcast on the local station. And I was trying to sit at a crowded table, full of nerds. That's how I thought of them, in my dream.

There was one guy in particular who was railing against the system in a voice we once would have refered to as "adenoidal" and I had just had it and was trying to extract my bookbag from my chair which next to his chair, because he had an entire lack of spatial awareness and I wasn't able to sit at the table in the first place, regardless.

As I stalked away, with my bag, heading over to the recording equipment I thought to myself , "Ugh! Nerds!"

I mean, I was a nerd, myself, which in those days was different than it is today. I think. I played RPGs, had a passing interest in the occult, noodled with computers (back when only nerds would own one) and listened to Genesis. And yet, I didn't go all in, I tried to pass as straight, and yes, I would disown one of my colleagues if I there was social pressure to do so.

I was on the fringes of one circle of dorks, guys who perhaps I had spent one twenty-four hour period playing a single, unending game of "Risk" with. One of our members shot himself when we were juniors. I mourned in shame, because we were friends/not-friends. We had spent good times togther. I had mocked him behind his back.

My daughter was just making new friends as a freshman when one of them she sat with at lunch also died by suicide. As a parent, the terror, worrying that your child might be removing themselves from reality, losing hope for their own future, it's real. It is unspoken. Until it must be spoken.

Playwright Jackie Martin has crafted an unsettling fable of a teenage girl who has come to believe in a reality everyone knows to be false. Her parents are sympathetic, they are real. There are no simple answers, there is no ah-ha moment when some dark secret is made evident, we are left in the dark to wonder, as they do, what has happened to Abigail?

It is a metaphor for being adolescent, to literally evolve into a new beign, with the same thoughts and memories of the child whose form is being shed. And also for what it is like, as a parent, to feel helpless in the face of inevitable change.

The ending, too, is a metaphor. Or is it?

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Cul-De-Sac

Joanie Drago

For Tuesday, I read Cul-De-Sac by Joanie Drago and listed at New Play Exchange.

Absolutely everything comes back to quarantine. Today we will post the fortieth of my short plays which have been turned into brief videos since March 15. Most of them, written before the onset of COVID-19, have taken on contemporary resonance recorded as they under shelter-at-home regulations.

Likewise, I want to stage a live, three camera performance of Cul-De-Sac, like a 70s sit-com complete with canned laughter, but also the stage blood, full frontal nudity and armfuls of carrots the text requires.

It's the boredom of quarantine, and the potential for madness I would like to express, which in this case is played for laughs, while at the same time exhibiting a keen emulation of the social commentary of (spoiler alert) Ray Bradbury.

Who should I read tomorrow?

One Step Beyond (1997)

One Step Beyond

Photo: Tony Gray

April fools’ day. Back in the day, urban legends were all the rage. The TV program The X-Files wove them through their storylines, and that was great fun. The 90s was cottage industry for the telling and retelling of classic tales of fiancees sold into white slavery, bugs found in food products, and celebrities helping (or snubbing) helpless motorists.

The vast majority of these tales are patently false. As Thomas Edison once said, “if something sounds unbelievable, it probably is.” Actually, Edison didn’t say that, but saying that he did makes the quote sound better. When we told these stories at camp, or hiking in the dump behind the train tracks, or spelunking under the elementary school, they added a sense of rich history of weirdness to our care-free, suburban lives.

Around the time the internet went mainstream, Barbara and David Mikkelson started their urban legends database, snopes.com. I found it in 1996 and for reasons I cannot remember, but they involved searching for horrible events which have occured in Disney theme parks. What made Snopes.com unique, and endearing it to me, was not that it perpetuated urban legends, but that they researched them and stove to determine their veracity.

For the 1997-98 season of Dobama's Night Kitchen (my third) we decided to revisit the long-form improvisation scenario developed our first season. Our first attempt was The Realistic World, which was more like an onstage soap opera than "reality TV". The company developed stock Gen-X characters who bounced off of each other in a common setting, with the result more often insult humor than say romance or drama, and no real plot to speak of.

 Unexplained Phenomenon

This new endeavor, One Step Beyond, would be inspired by (ta-da) urban legends, part X-Files, part Twilight Zone. Each hour long scenario was based on (and around) one urban legend or bizarre historical news event -- the molepeople, suicide cults -- with a few recurring characters which gave anyone paying attention (was anyone paying attention?) the idea that everything was interconnected like some Illuminati/Gray Alien conspiracy. There was more plot, but also more opportunities for humor, than  in The Realistic World. We scoured the internet for source material, much of it from snopes.

I have been visiting snopes.com for so many years now, that I trust it, and like many, use it to put the lie to certain vicious internet rumors which circulate from time to time. Because with the internet, urban legends have gone from tales of collective spoken myth, into outright lies told simply through infographics posted on Facebook. In this way, “a lie gets halfway round the world before the truth can check its inbox,” as Mary Todd Lincoln once told William Seward. At a party. A friend of my brother heard her say it.

The other day I saw (again) a graphic explaining how wearing pants that sag halfway down your ass so that your boxers show is an old prison trick, to show how available and interested you are to engage in sodomy in exchange for safety. There’s another term for this, but you know what that is.

This “urban legend” has rubbed me the wrong way for some time. People from certain walks of life hate the sagging pants thing. They aren’t racist or anything, but why can’t those boys pull up their pants, it’s ridiculous. The fact that a cultural thing that so irritates certain people would have what is obviously supposed to be a humiliating origin story seemed far too convenient.

Checking snopes I found that this fashion does in fact originate from prison life. Prison togs are often the wrong size, so ex-cons began wearing pants that were too big, and that need to be hiked up every couple of steps. And so became a fashion trend. End of story.

But why perpetuate the man-on-man sex myth?

Or more to the point, what are you saying when you “SHARE” this particular item on Facebook?
 
That if you wear pants that sag, what you are really saying is that you are gay?

That if you wear pants that sag, you are really saying is that you want a man to fuck you up the ass?

Is that what you are saying? Is it? That you're gay? You're gay right now? Are you?

In the case of this particular legend, the "f-word" lurks next to the “n-word” in the expression of disgust or contempt generated by the person who shares/tells it. Because you can’t attempt to shame someone out of a certain behavior without making judgement about that behavior.

In a week that my Facebook page has been covered from top to bottom with messages of support for Marriage Equality, and pictures of happy, gay couples, receiving this other kind of message, one which expresses open contempt for and fear of sexual activity between men (mocking, inarguably, one certain race of men - infographic of a Caucasian notwithstanding) was jarring and disappointing.

"Gone Bad"

Near the end of our first, tumultuous year producing and performing You Have The Right To Remain Silent, one of the new guys wrote a piece which I assumed was true, because he had heard it somewhere, and we performed it. It was a very funny piece, where I played a down-and-out member of the Little Rascals trying to mug a young couple, but the crime falls apart because they recognize me and feel sorry for me. Seems Bill Cosby had bought the rights to all the old Little Rascals shorts and wouldn't let anyone see them anymore because of its negative depiction of African-Americans.

It's a trope that comes around every now and again, how some member of some minority group who has attained a certain amount of wealth or power has made things sad for everyone else due to some politically correct action on their part.

These stories are rarely true, subtly or in some cases obviously racist or sexist, though what they convey is not obvious. But they are based in fear, or hate, or certainly disrespect. I have always hated the fact that I participated in that sketch and helped perpetuate this kind of lie.

(Click here to purchase The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection, because it is a shame Bill Cosby owns the rights and won't let anyone see them anymore.)

The Complete Metropolis

Metropolis was directed by Fritz Lang in 1927, the legendary science fiction film which introduced so many elements to the movies, including the robot, the mad scientist with an artificial hand, and the big, ticking clock.

To describe the story simply, there exists in the future a great, glittering city where those of privilege (and to judge by its size, there are billions of them) live lives of luxury and glamor - none more so than Freder Frederson, the young, horny son of the Joh Frederson, master creator of Metropolis.

Of course, there are also untold numbers of Workers who toil break-free, ten hour days in soul-crushing, tedious labor to keep the machines which run the city alive. Or, really, to keep them from overheating. I mean, that’s what it seems most of the human element is responsible for, to keep the M-Machine from blowing up. Again.

They work below the city - they live even lower than that, never in their lives seeing the light of day.

Enter a young woman, named Maria. She arrives uninvited with a number of children to the palace of pleasure above, and shows the children how their “brothers” live. It is meant as compassion from below; we will someday be one family. But we must be patient and peaceful.

Before she is chased away Freder spies Maria, and is smitten. He disguises himself as a worker, witnesses one of her secular sermons on understanding and love, as she preaches that one day there will be a Mediator - the HEART which will unite the HANDS and the MIND.

There’s also a lot of business about a mad scientist and a robot.

Metropolis is an astonishing piece of work, and has fascinated me since the Giorgio Moroder cut in 1984, featuring a now-horribly dated pop music soundtrack. But I did see that at the Colony Theatre in a 70mm print on the last gigantic screen in Cleveland, now sadly no longer with us.

The story has been much-derided for its simplicity. Oh yes, class strife will end if only the heart can negotiate between the hands and the mind. Shut up. It’s either pro-union propaganda or an opiate for the masses, there is something infantile in the message for everyone to dismiss.

Except no one has ever seen the entire story, at least no one still living. Shortly after its release (83 years ago, my Lord) it was cut. At two and a half hours, it was much too long, detailed and had several subplots that could justifiably be cut to make it more commercial. There have been additions over the years, the most recent of which in 2002 which included something I had never heard before - a recreation of the original soundtrack from its score, which fits the mood and style of the piece better than the three other musical soundtracks I have ever experienced.

But according to the script (recovered from the German Censor’s office, mind you) there was almost a half-hour of material which was presumed lost forever.

In 2008 it was found. In Argentina. WTF? Badly damaged, a 16mm print existed which had passed from art house to private collection to storage. Last night I saw what is being called The Complete Metropolis at the Cinemateque. And it was a revelation.

A Revelation! Get it? That’s a pun!

While I do not believe it is necessary for Metropolis to be two and a half hours long, I believe it was cut poorly in the first place, and that the restorations (as poor in quality as they are - barring millions in cash, which no one would bother spending, the additions will always look scratchy and blurry) contribute subtlety, clarity and context which have been missing for over eighty years.

Edited, perhaps censored, are the more obvious religious overtones of the piece. Freder enters a church where we see statues of the Seven Deadly Sins, this we know. They appear in his fever dream when the Man-Machine is dancing at Yoshiwara. What we miss (and is part of two scenes which remain lost and will now no doubt never be recovered) is a monk preaching about the Whore of Babylon, and the coming Apocalypse. New footage includes the unnamed "Thin Man" (who appears briefly with Joh Frederson, but was otherwise scrapped, more on him in a moment) also part of Freder’s dream, as the monk, making the direct comparison of the Man-Machine with the Beast.

Freder is not merely the Mediator. He is Christ, come to save the world. Maria is some kind of John the Baptist character. Yes, it’s heavy-handed, but this whole movie is a parable, a futuristic parable, with ancient parables within it. The Tower of Babel tale that Maria tells has always been intact, but what is at stake is now glaringly obvious. The Man-Machine will incite the Workers to destroy Metropolis - which is the World. Freder has not been sent (and now it appears as though he has been capital “s” Sent) to negotiate peace between the managers and the workers, but to SAVE THE WORLD.

Meanwhile, other characters were more or less deleted, or their roles diminished. The Thin Man looks like Lurch for the brief moment we have previously seen him; when Joh Frederson sends him after his son. But now we see him threatening Josaphat in his apartment - smiling, fiendishly, like some kind of, I don’t know, German. While Josaphat squirms, he laconically puffs on a cigarette like some kind of, I don’t know, German.

There’s also the character of 11811 - who gets a name; Georgy. Freder takes the place of and switches clothes with this worker, and tells him to go to Josphat’s and wait. We never see him again, presumably because he’s some feckless worker. Certain editions of the film (like Moroder’s) features stills suggesting that he went to Yoshiwara’s. Worse yet! Feckless and a rake!

Now we see. We see him get into Freder’s car, in Freder’s silk clothes. Headed for Josaphat’s. He looks around the car. He does not look greedy - he looks in shock. This man was born underground. He’s always been underground. This is another world to him. He sees a woman in the next car, who smiles at him. He examines his person - his pockets have money. A whole lot of money. Cards advertising Yoshiwara’s drop from bridges above his head, through the open-topped auto. He is weakened, delirious, has to go there, if only for a little bit.

When he returns to the car, the Thin Man is there, and tells him to get back to the depths, and forget about Freder, or to suffer the consequences. And so he does.

But that is not all. Have you seen the film? Do you remember nearer the end when the Man-Machine (as Maria) is inciting the Workers to revolt, and Freder steps out to call it a fraud? The Workers attack him, he must fight off all of these men, when suddenly someone, some faceless prole, steps in on his behalf, and is stabbed.

That’s Georgy. That is a person. Most cuts exclude this fact, because we never got to see him chased away by the Thin Man. But he has a face in the crowd, which we remember. And he gets a death scene, which he deserves. He atones. He is sacrificed. He is forgiven. He is a man.

Editing is a good thing, really, it is. And there are places where scenes in this version could be cut (the destruction of the Worker City is much more horrible in its scope, and scary, and suspenseful ... and goes on too long) but the scenes which have been recovered are too valuable to miss. The Complete Metropolis is grander, richer in symbolism, more compassionate and meaningful than what anyone has seen before.