A policy question for the Zekemeister

[PointyHairedJedi]

Since it's never actually come up in practice, I was wondering if you'd clear up a point for me: where exactly do you stand on fivers of films and tv series where there is more than one version? Something like Ringu is a good example - there's the Japanese film, the Korean film, the American film, and the Japanese mini-series as well (not to mention an audio adaptaion, though I don't know any details of that). Given that the American version is already fived, would you accept fivers of any of the other versions, or is the whole thing considered to have been covered by the published fiver (at least in terms of submissions)?

[Zeke]

Good question. Similar ones have come up before -- IJD and I, for example, have been debating whether to treat the original Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission as separate games.

I think the best policy is this: If the two versions of something are different enough to make it worth doing two fivers, then we'll do 'em. If they're not very different, we won't do both unless someone has a clever way to do it. For example, Ringu and The Ring are different enough to justify two fivers (though my Ring fiver was designed to sort of cover both -- it was based on the American version, but had a number of nods to the original where they diverged). On the other hand, the Star Wars Special Edition wouldn't qualify for its own fivers, since the differences are relatively small. Another example is Frank Miller's Sin City. The movie was virtually a note-for-note remake of the graphic novels, so if we had a fiver for the movie, we wouldn't have one for the comics, and vice versa.

That said, you can't have anything in the Ring series. They're mine. FOREVER.

[PointyHairedJedi]

Hmm, I was expecting something along those lines. Good to have it all spelt out though.

I don't want to actually five any of the various Ring films, you understand, it was just a good example for my purpose (as would have been Hitchhikers, and many others). Besides, if I'd given Dune as an example you might have devined my ulterior purpose, and...

...Aw, crap.

( :P )