Oddaptations - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight → Adventure Time

This book cover is doubly dishonest: 1) it implies that these works are Tolkien originals rather than translations, and B) it implies a totally awesome scene in which Sir Gawain and the Green Knight must join forces to fight a more powerful foe (no such scene exists).

Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that turned out. Today's Oddaptation:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (13XX) by ‾\_(ツ)_/‾, trans. J.R.R. Tolkien into Adventure Time, "Seventeen" (season 10, episode 5) (2017) dir. Cole Sanchez, written and storyboarded by Seo Kim and Somvilay Xayaphone

Oddapta-tions, c'mon grab yer friends!
We'll blog 'bout olde time po'try trends!
With decapitations and allegory,
The fun will never end!
Lucas Blogs 'bout Books! (sung to this tune)

The Original: So, King Arthur's throwing a fifteen day Christmas bash, as one does, with jousting and feasting and whatnot. On New Year's Eve, a party-crasher shows up and proposes a party game. This party-crasher is a gigantic Green Knight (green clothes, green hair, green beard, green skin, green horse, the works) who offers a sweet axe to any knight brave enough to strike him with said axe. Seems too good to be true, right? The catch is that in a year and a day, that same knight will have to seek out the Green Knight and allow him to return the favor. Arthur is about to accept when his nephew, Sir Gawain (sometimes spelled "Wawain") steps up and says, "Look, all the other knights have a thing. Maybe accepting weird challenges from strangers can be my thing." Arthur acquiesces, the Green Knight kneels, and Sir Gawain lops his head clean off. Don't worry, he gets better. The Green Knight picks up his head and makes a point of showing it to Guinevere. Then he winks at Gawain and says, "I'm called the Knight of the Green Chapel, see ya in a year, tiger." Most of a year passes and in the fall, Gawain sets out to find the Green Chapel, which would be a lot easier if the Green Knight had been more specific about the directions. In any case, after a number of adventures that our anonymous poet felt were too exciting to describe to 14th century audiences (in spite of his (her?) insistence on describing the significance of the use of the pentangle as a device on Gawain's shield), Gawain arrives at a mighty fortress. It's almost the new year, and the lord of this castle invites Gawain to join their holiday festivities. During said festivities, Gawain starts crushing hard on the lady of the castle, but don't worry, he's too much a paragon of virtue to act on these feelings. Anyway, he tells the lord about his quest for the Green Chapel, and his host says, "Cool. It's just around the corner. Since New Year's Day is coming up in a few days, how about you stay here in my castle, and we play a little Christmas game." Gawain remembers his commitment to be the weird challenge knight, and listens as the lord proposes a game in which Gawain will stay and rest in the castle while his host goes out hunting. Then, the next evening, the two will exchange whatever they've gained in the course of day. "Yer on!" says Sir Gawain. So, the next day, the lord goes out hunting and just massacres a bunch of hinds ("hind" is ye olde English for "doe"), butchers 'em up, and hauls the venison back to the castle as a gift for Gawain. Speaking of, while her husband is out, the lady of the castle creeps upon the sleeping Gawain to put the moves on him. This is awkward because Gawain is a courteous gentleman and it would be rude to reject her advances outright, but it would also be bad to participate in adultery. So he splits the difference and lets her give him a smooch which he then gives to the lord in exchange for the previously mentioned venison. The lord is obviously curious about just where Gawain obtained that smooch, but our gallant hero points out that technically they only agreed to swap their material gains, not to disclose said gains' provenance. Next day, Gawain trades the lord two smooches for some pork and a fearsome boar's head, and the next day three smooches for a fox pelt. Oh, one more thing, on that third day, Gawain, in addition to accepting three kisses from the lady of the castle, finally cowboyed up and told her that nothing was going to happen between them (aside from all the smooching). As a reward for his honesty, she gifted him a green silk girdle that protects the wearer from any physical harm. Gawain recognizes how useful this would be in his meeting with the Green Knight, and how awkward it would be to give the lord of the castle his own wife's girdle, and hides it away, in flagrant violation of the rules of their little game. Anyway, the next day Gawain girds himself with all his armor and stuff (and also the girdle), and one of the lord's servants leads him to the Green Chapel. The servant begs Gawain to turn back, but he won't and soon he comes upon the Green Knight sharpening an axe. The Green Knight seems pretty stoked to see that Gawain has kept up his end of the bargain. Anyhow, Gawain lays down and prepares for the blow, but the first time he flinches, the second time the Green Knight fakes him out, and the third time the Green Knight actually does strike him, but the girdle ensures that he receives nothing worse than a nick. Then the Green Knight says that Gawain is repaid for his faithfulness and unfaithfulness in their last game. See, it turns out that the Green Knight is actually the lord of the castle, Bertilak de Hautdesert, and he was transformed into the Green Knight by Morgan le Fay (Arthur's half-sister and Gawain's aunt) as part of a convoluted plan to scare Guinevere to death (you may recall it did not work). Anyway, Gawain turns down Bertilak's offer to stay at his castle a while longer and get some family time with his aunt because he wants to be alone with his shame. And to aid in that, Bertilak lets Gawain keep his wife's girdle (fun fact: he told her to put the moves on Gawain to test his chivalry and chastity). After Gawain returns to Camelot and tells everyone the story, the knights of the Round Table all think that he's a pretty swell guy, and they all start wearing green sashes to honor him. Or make fun of him? The moral: it's okay not to be perfect so long as you acknowledge it and try to be as good a person as you can, or something. Anyway, shame on you if you think ill of it.

The Remake: (note, aside from the obvious SPOILERS this episode takes place pretty deep into the show, so Continuity Lock-Out may be a problem) So, Finn the Human Boy is swiftly becoming Finn the Human Man, and his friends are throwing a big bash for his seventeenth birthday, as one does, with carnival games and candy and candy people. Sure, a slight pall is cast on the celebration by the fear that the Princess's sinister Uncle Gumbald is planning a coup, putting the whole Candy Kingdom on lock-down. After Finn accepts gifts from Princess Bubblegum, Marceline the Vampire Queen, and Huntress Wizard, a partycrasher busts through the castle door. This partycrasher is (you guessed it) a gigantic green knight, riding a mechanical green horse. This green knight introduces himself as the Green Knight and says that he brought Finn a birthday gift, an axe that he can have if he strikes the Green Knight with it. His friends all think something's up, but Finn insists that it's all just a birthday prank by his adoptive big brother/best friend Jake the Dog (a shapeshifting dog) and gleefully lops the Green Knight's head clean off. Immediately afterwards, Jake walks up behind Finn and reveals that his actual prank was to shapeshift his belly into a fake gift. Meanwhile, the Knight puts his head back on his shoulders and the axe turns into an eel in Finn's hands before slithering back to the Green Knight, who deploys a forcefield and insists that he be allowed to return the favor. Instead, Finn offers to challenge the Green Knight to a best-of-three carnival game showdown (again, against the advice of his friends). If Finn wins, he can keep the axe and his head, if he loses, "Chop! Chop!" to quote the Green Knight. The forcefield extends to encompass Finn and the carnival games and block out everyone else. In the first challenge, the Knight uses magic to cheat at a knock-coconuts-off-of-pedestals game, in the second he lets Finn win at a greased-pole-climbing contest, and when allowed to pick the final game, he challenges Finn to an arm-wrestling match. Finn is confident that the robotic prosthesis on his right arm is all he needs to win, but the Green Knight is supernaturally strong. Just when it seems Finn is rallying, the Green Knight reveals that he knows it's Finn's birthday because it's his birthday, too. That's right, the Green Knight is, in fact, Fern (Finn's plant doppelganger that was created when the grass demon from his grass sword combined with the time-travel duplicate from his Finn sword) who Finn believed he had killed several episodes previously (I told you continuity lock-out could be a problem). Fern easily defeats Finn, twisting his robotic arm and throwing him to the ground. He's about to deliver a killing blow when the horse shuts down the forcefield and reveals itself as a sort of Trojan horse carrying Uncle Gumbald (oh, and Aunt Lolly and Cousin Chicle) who calls off the Green Knight and threatens Princess Bubblegum. Although scared off by Marceline, Gumbald seems satisfied that at the very least, he got to show off his technology and humiliate one of Bubblegum's friends. At the end of the episode, Jake and BMO (a sentient videogame console) cap off Finn's "worst B-day ever" with a giant cupcake shaped like his head hiding the Ice King dressed up as Finn's ex, Flame Princess. The moral: just because you've turned seventeen, you definitely haven't hit your stride.

Fidelity to Source Material: I'm wavering between "Negligible" and "Surprisingly high." Let's see if we can't suss it out below

Things that Survived Intact: More than I expected, actually: a green knight crashes a party and challenges a hero to a game of blows; that knight later reveals that he's been working for a more sinister opponent the whole time; the hero being humbled by the end of the story. So, yeah, they were actually able to cram a fair amount of a 100 page poem into an 11 minute cartoon episode.

Smart Changes: So, one of the biggest changes is structural (and necessitated by the change in medium), the Green Knight no longer gives a quest. Instead he shows up and his story is more or less resolved by the end of the episode (obviously the conflict between Finn and Fern is still very much ongoing by the end of the episode, but the Green Knight charade has run its course). This streamlining allows the storyboarders to focus more on the reason the Green Knight was supposedly sent to Camelot in the first place. Remember how the poem reveals the Green Knight's real purpose being to frighten Guinevere to death? Likewise, Gumbald purpose in sending Fern as the Green Knight was to breach the Candy Kingdom's defenses and best Princess Bubblegum's champion, Finn. Also, making Fern into the Green Knight is emotionally potent because Fern was the first sentient being that Finn had ever killed (I have to admit, I'm taking the show at its word on that one, I just finished watching the final Adventure Time box set and I'm not going to rewatch the entire series just to see if that one storyline jibes with the rest of the show). Finn may have been acting in self-defense, but he still hasn't resolved the emotional conflict caused by Fern's death.

Why it Works: Adventure Time was in its tenth season and by the time this episode rolled around several of the characters had already had satisfying character arcs and moved past their goofy original incarnations. This episode takes two villains and puts them into the framework of an old story about confronting your own personal deficiencies. This works because while Finn claims to have "hit his stride" (and he's not too far off, by his seventeenth birthday he's already made peace with his relationship with his absent parents) he's still not at peace with how his conflict with Fern ended. Meanwhile Princess Bubblegum (who's definitely more important a character in Adventure Time than Guinevere is in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) is confronted with her past failings in the person of Gumbald, one of the first candy people she created. So yeah, a story about being aware of your personal faults becomes a story about being aware of your faults.

Links:

A significant chunk of "Seventeen" has been posted to Adventure Time's YouTube channel.

"Are there other adaptions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?" you might ask. "You bet your sweet bippy there are!" I might reply.

Well, apparently in the 80's it was adapted as Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Sean Connery as the Green Knight. The trailer makes it seem like . . . how can I put this diplomatically? A total fucking disaster.

Canadian folk (?) singer Heather Dale has a song about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with the title "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" from her album of Medieval inspired music: The Green Knight. It's . . . an okay song.

Also, there's a new adaptation in development by director David Lowery (you may remember him from such films as A Ghost Story, The Old Man & the Gun, and the Pete's Dragon remake, none of which I have seen) for indie studio A24.

I mean, if you're a completist, you can check out the Modern Adaptations section of Wikipedia's SG$tGK article.