Spider-Man in India

Lord Omlette writes "I'm really surprised no one else has mentioned this, but Spider-Man is getting redone in India! As an Indian-American, I'm quite excited. (Let's get it out of the way: even our comic book heroes are being outsourced, wtf!) The manga version of Star Wars was pretty good, but off the top of my head I can't think of any other comic books that were redone for a completely different culture. Anyone?"

What's he going to swing on?

[l810c]

Spiderman's a character built on the premise of New York. Nothing against India, his character wouldn't work well in my home city of Atlanta either. They just don't have the rows and rows and rows of skyscrapers for him to climb up, scale over and swing through. He would kinda lose that advantage.

And what's with the bottoms? American spiderman doesn't ware suit pants. Is this to make him look more Indian or would there be a cultural backlash against tights?

Re:Am I the only one saying WTF?

[geeber]

The only thing I find really that stupid is that they're going to have to completely reinvent all the relevant characters to fit this 'new' spider man, so what is the point? Why not just make a new super hero?*

Because the movie Spider Man was one of the top grossing movies in India. They want to capitilize on the name recognition of Spider Man while at the same time making a superhero that more Indians can relate to culturally.

Re:What's he going to swing on?

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, apparently have never seen any of the bigger cities in India, like Bombay/Mumbai [google.com].

The Dhoti is a traditional Indian attire, and all that they've done is customized that to suit Spiderman. Pretty creative, if you ask me.

*shrug*

Re:What's he going to swing on?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Tokyo is just as endowed with tall buildings, so what's your point?

Re:What's he going to swing on?

[cygnusx]

It's called a "dhoti". Allegedly more Indian, although you'd be hard-pressed to find a under-40 Indian wear one outside of a religious ceremony or political gathering. Looking through the changes, they are cute. Pavitr Prabhakar makes me laugh - it sounds *forced*.

I like Spiderman, but for this to take off, Gotham Comics India better get their "localization" right - cosmetic changes like Parker -> Prabhakar are miles away from understanding what the typical (i.e., *not* English-speaking) Indian comic reader is looking for. And the Indian language audience already has lots of comic publishers (most notably Diamond [diamondcomic.com]) who do a far better job of creating characters that Indian language readers relate to. The (far smaller but still large) English language audience would never stand for something like this (has "cheap knockoff" written all over it) because they would rather read the originals.

(offtopic) Of late /. has been accepting a lot of story submissions that originally appeared on Boing Boing days ago so here's a tip to get the stories early: use the Boing Boing slashbox [slashdot.org].

Re:What?

[cobe98]

Actually "outsourcing" would mean that the US comic was being created in India which it clearly isnt. In effect India is "outsourcing" its superhero culture by importing one from the states... GYFSA (Get Your Facts Straight!)

Dubbing.

[jelwell]

What I never understood is why bother to dub a movie/cartoon, from say Japan, into English and then not bother to change/translate the character names? It's all well and good that now I can understand what they're saying up until someone's name is mentioned.

Yes, I like original language movies. I'm just pointing out that this Indian remake rather than a simple translation seems like a step in the right direction for people who aren't interested in seeing the original.
Joseph Elwell.

Fist of the North Star

[News for nerds]

There is an example vice versa, the Japanese manga Fist of the North Star [hillcity-comics.com] was remade into the fscked up live-action movie version [imdb.com]. I assume Hollywood has many other things it "smuggled" into the US from around the world (if you don't stick at comic books, there's the recent rush of the US remake of Japanese movies, such as "Ring" or "Shall We Dance?").

Re:Am I the only one saying WTF?

[pla]

Because the movie Spider Man was one of the top grossing movies in India.

So let me get this straight... Indians loved Spider Man, so to capitalize on that, they plan to completely change him to make him more Indian.

Riiiiiiight... So considering the popularity of Anime among geeks, Disney should add a more American touch to it? IIRC, Studio Ghibli had to invoke a minor miracle to prevent Disney from turning movies like Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta into Mickey's Vacation in Laputa.

Strange. I will never understand the corporate world.

As an Indian

[Laxitive]

As an Indian, this is my official take:

This is gay.. seriously gay.

I'm at a loss for words. Someone needs to find the focus group that came up with this, and remove them from the gene pool.

Spiderman with a dhoti? What the fuck? What is wrong with the world today?

-Laxitive

Re:Am I the only one saying WTF?

[nwbvt]

"Explain to me why we're re-doing comics for other locales? Can't they make their own comics? "
How many Disney movies were based on old stories from other cultures?

Re:Im all for a good laugh and all...

[crushinghellhammer]

Otterpop, I appreciate your sentiment and I definitely think that railing at it because Indians have tried to change it is not a reason to criticise it.

However, as someone that grew up in India, I don't see any reason why this is necessary. It's not as if Indian kids cannot understand the cultural setting of the original Spiderman. I knew any number of kids that loved Spiderman, and Superman, Asterix, TinTin etc.

All these comics have been translated into many Indian languages, but Tintin never wore a dhoti or a sherwani or anything like that. We didn't want him to. Why would we want our fav cartoon characters to look ridiculous?

One argument for this change in character might be that only urban kids are exposed to Western culture and can appreciate it, while rural kids know nothing about it and are losing out on a fun character. This is a fallacious argument and this bastardization will only lead to a fall in standards, resulting in a drop in sales of both the original and the new versions.

Re:What's he going to swing on?

[kfg]

However, the success of the Spiderman movie in India could itself be interpreted as there being no need of localization.

I'm intrigued at the idea of an "exotic" Spiderman and might want to have a look at one of the books, but then, to an Indian, NYC is an exotic, far away place of strange excitment.

So localization fails there too.

KFG

How is since odd?

[tehanu]

I don't understand why so many people here find this odd. How exactly is this any more odd than say Hollywood making versions of Japanese manga (or even video games) eg. Akira, Dragonball Z, Evangelion, Streetfighter 2, etc. and redoing them for mass-media American culture (as opposed to mass-media Japanese culture)? Yet that doesn't raise any eyebrows (plenty of comments about the butchering it is likely to get though).