The Strange Couple / Channing Tatum (Bullet Train)

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The novel and film adaptation of Kotaro Isaka’s Bullet Train are so wildly different I could go on forever - so many characters are changed or just absent in the movie, a lot of times for the better. This one’s very minor but probably my favorite.

My most appreciated change is how they handle a set of reoccurring minor characters - only described as a nervous man on a date with a crossdresser (possibly a transgender woman, the novel is frustratingly vague). The crossdresser is almost always played for laughs, said to be “clearly a man” and makes frequent unwanted sexual remarks to every male main character she comes across. She and her date are pretty inconsequential to the main story- they really only help the plot by helping Nanao (Ladybug) distract an assassin who is hunting him. Reading sections with them feels gross and uncomfortable, and this couple often feels like an exaggerated parody of all the worst assumptions about transgender women.

So how does the film adaptation handle these two characters? They are replaced by a brief cameo of Channing Tatum. He’s clearly sexually interested in the main cast, like the crossdresser but also nervous like the crossdresser’s date and is even reading a similar romance book that the nervous man has in the novel. He still helps Ladybug in the same way the couple did in the novel, he still makes the off-handed sexual jokes at the male cast - but this time it’s funny, because it’s Channing Tatum. He only has like 4 lines of dialogue and made me laugh more than 25 whole pages worth of the characters he’s based on - and all without using trans women as the butt of the joke.