What’s the worst adaptation you’ve ever seen?
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What do you think is the BEST or WORST adapatation??
~ Tim
I came to believe adapting a work from one medium to another is like translating it from one language to another — unless you actively try to revise the story, you want to tell the same narrative but with different tools, and you need to take into account the difference between the two formats in order to make it work in its new context.
Heartstopper was a pretty faithful adaptation that also elevated the source material with additions and changes. I'll be honest I did watch the series first which led me to the graphic novels I then proceeded to blitz through. I think the best adaptations usually occur when the original author/creators work along side someone/a team with talent and experience in the genre the work is being adapted into. I know it seems really obvious but its a simple equation many adaptations miss the mark on.
There are some obvious choices, like The Rings of Power or Eragon or inexistent ATLA adaptation, but for me the worst is Howl's Moving Castle. I love the book to pieces and while Ghibli made it beautiful, they strayed so far from the original's soul that it was unbearable to watch. Especially how they butchered the characters.
Cowboy Bebop and Wheel of Time are currently knife fighting in a muddy pigsty for worst adaptation, at least for me.
I think the worst adaptation I've ever seen is Eragon's movie. The worst adaption, though, must be ATLA's, but I didn't even watch it.
Halo is the worst
When we get a bad adaptation that doesn't stand on it's own (like Blad Runner), it's hurts more because not only did we get a bad film, but they ruined the potential to adapt a great story beloved by the readers into something amazing.
Even LotR as acclaimed as it is isn't loved 100% by fans of the books, but it does enough where the core is there and has amazing visuals that I think those that prefer the books can see why the film is loved by so many. I think they'd be hard pressed to deny that it is a faithful adaptation.
For some reason, that intro made me think “A Last Alliance of Men & Elves came together to ruin Sauron’s honeymoon”.
Hopefully no Free Peoples will come to separate you & your Precious. 😅
Rings of power may be the worst adaptation in my memory. They messed up everything: lore, characters, themes, actual plot, while adding nothing of worth.
oh gods too many horrible ones to comment especially video game movies
As someone who has been very unpopular for repeatedly saying "Joel got what he deserved in part 2" it's nice to know that the showrunners also want his actions to be interpreted as excessive, cruel, and unheroic.
The problem with the worst adaptations for me is that I often saw the adaptation first. They were either so bad, that I have forgotten about them or there was still something in it that made want to watch the original.
Like with the last airbender. I found the movie mediocre when I first watched it, but I was interested enough the world and the story that I watched the show. When rewatched the movie later, I thought it was awful, but can I say it is the worst adaptation? No, I don't think so.
I don’t think Percy Jackson deserves to be on a thumbnail with these other three
Funnily, I'd mentioned elsewhere pretty much what you'd said about anime adaptations, though I was talking about animation adaptations in general, including Disney's Live Action manure field. There are things that work better in live action, and things that work better in animation, and Disney often seemed to either completely remove the things that looked great in/because of the animation medium and forgot to put in anything big enough to replace it, or they tried to keep it despite it not fitting the medium or the new actors.
Like, I'd heard a fair number of people complaining about Genie. On one hand, because the super-wild behavior he shows off depends a good deal on the capacity of animation to exaggerate, go off-model and make things as big as they need to be, which live action simply can't do. On the other hand, the style of the original genie was built around Robin Williams, a style that just doesn't fit with Will Smith. Will Smith can certainly be hilarious and vastly entertaining, but it's in a way that is very different from Williams'. They should've reworked the Genie to be more in line with his style.
As far as adaptations, I've actually wished that Disney would do what Blade Runner and How to Train Your Dragon did and remake something much less well-known. For instance, Black Cauldron. The Chronicles of Prydain is a fairly low-magic story. The magic that does occur often occurs off-screen or is composed of much simpler things that can be done more easily and believably in live action. Not to mention that the first two fit very well with some of the efforts Disney has made lately without going too far. First book, Taran doesn't really do much and even complains at the end that he wanted to be a hero but ended up basically being just along for the ride, as the others did most of the heavy lifting. Eilonwy in particular is a real badass early on. First book, she's the one that does most of the fighting and the one that knows the most about the most important things, yet doesn't dominate the story so completely as to come across as faultless or show-stealing. As the story progresses, Taran grows up and plays a progressively bigger role, but she remains very powerful and important.
Best part is that, while there are fans of the movie who love the dark style, overall this is a much more minor movie and as such will have less negative impact from loss or change. Especially if the changes are to make it more reflective of the original books. My recommendation would be miniseries though, not movie. It allows for a more natural progression of the story with less concern about going too long or not long enough.
The Killing Joke absolutely crucified Batgirl in the adaptation. I you ever watch it, just fast-forward to the last 20-ish minutes of the movie when they actually tell the story of the comic.
But for my money, the worst adaptation I can think of is Nutcracker and the 4 Realms. That was always my favorite Christmas story growing up 'cause it was like a holiday fairytale (and I love fairytales). Sometimes I would wonder "When is Disney gonna do Nutcracker, they did all the other fairytales?" I guess somewhere a monkey's paw heard me 'cause 4 Realms happened. 😒
The Mouse King's not the villain, because there is no Mouse King, just a hoard of mice who come together like a Voltron-mouse. 😓
There's not even a Nutcracker, I'm not kidding. It's just a normal flesh-and-blood guy they call a nutcracker soldier because that's what soldiers in that realm are called.
Add to that the fact that they turn Clara into a Chosen One girl-boss and it's just icing on the derivative cake. 👎
I used to think Avatar the Last Airbender was the worst adaptation, but 343i and Paramount said, "hold my beer" and absolutely ruined the potential of the Halo franchise
I have a friend who likes just about anything you'll show him. I have seen him not enjoy one thing. And he didnt enjoy it so much, he was yelling and angry.
And yhats SyFy Earthsea.
This reminds me of a Smosh bit from years ago about terrible adaptations. Thus my conclusion is we must melt Hollywood into the bedrock.
Another example of something being radically different but excellent would be Star ship troopers..
Worst adaptation is probably avatar the last air bender live action movie. I'm tempted to say the live action Mario movie but it's a cult classic I love.
So the Daredevil movie is probably the worst adaptation I can think of. It just doesn't make sense. The Netflix series, however, is a completely different story, it has its flaws, but I love it.
I think the last episode feeling rushed was intentional. It felt like we were barreling towards disaster and there was no way to stop it. Then the hospital sequence is horrifying in its dissociative quality, and the impact is an intense knowledge of the cost Joel pays to save Ellie. Showing him carrying her out the hospital and talking sweetly to her would have shifted the focus away from forcing the viewer to recon with Joel’s actions and morality to sympathizing with him. It would have broken the disconnected and strange vibe, and have muddied the theme. It’s unsettling on purpose to make you wonder if it was all worth it.
Rings of Power was pretty good. I've read everything by JRRT, multiple times. And I'm still sick to death of fanboys moaning about it.
The worst adaptation I've ever seen was definitely the Jem movie from 2015. I don't know what show the people behind that film thought they were adapting, but it obviously wasn't Jem and The Holograms. I've never seen a film adaptation miss the point of the original work so thoroughly.
One of the best adaptations from book to movie for me was "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World". "Master and Commander" was the first novel in the series, and "The Far Side of the World" was the tenth – and while the movie mostly follows that one it's quite a bit different from the book, and generally pulls from all over the series. But man, it's an amazing film. Also, despite being an entirely fictional story it's one of the most historically accurate movies I've ever seen in regards to details.
I just realize how often I watch people analyze shows I’m never going to watch. But this is done so well! I feel like I’ve watched it now! I don’t have time to watch hours of show but I have the 30 minutes to watch people talk about it… so thanks person on the internet I’ll probably never meet. Love and appreciate this content
vampire academy is an interesting case study imo because the film that was made was actually fairly faithful plot-wise, but the tone was completely wrong and didn't understand why people loved the books. On the other hand, the (now cancelled) tv show is not a faithful adaptation because of how much it changed but kept the heart of what made the books good
CONGRATS ON THE WEDDING!!!!
Oh Eragon and the first Percy Jackson Movies are tied.
The most successful adaptation I know that didn't follow it's original source material is probably How to train your dragon. Both are wonderful stories in their own right, but they are very different from each other.
New viewer here, I love the life is strange art of Max you have in the back 😊 Great video. I can’t wait for TLOU season 2 to come out- I actually really liked Abby as a character and feel a lot of the hate directed at her is just purely bias. Excited to see what they do
do live in new zealand?
What happened to sup furies?
I’m a little surprised that of all the book adaptations people hate today and the examples to counter that hate, no one mentions Dune. A bunch of Book purists hate it for no real logical reason except it wasn’t perfect enough, and general audiences apparently didn’t like it cuz too boring.
darklord tim, has a ring to it (pun intented)
No contest, it’s the last Airbender
Worst: Eragon, my favourite book when I was in HS. I hyped it up to non-Eragon readers and was mortified when I was in the cinema in them. Worst part was when they changed the story to take place in 2 days!
The legend of vox machina stands as a testament to how to adapt, too. Not because it changed much? But because it had SO MUCH content to condense down. I mean, they're trying to condense 40 episodes, each averaging 4 hours long, down into two series of animation. That's a LOT of cuts and adjustments. And they've nailed it.
The last of us got it right by being a movie with gameplay sections, leaving the adaptation to simply copy and paste with minimal changes, resulting in a product that translates well for non gamers but doesn't have much of anything to engage players who have already had the benefits of not just watching the events, but being there with the characters during their journey and experiencing their fight to survive.
At least that's my opinion and why I wasn't super engaged. Glad it exists because it is a great story, but it's definitely for people who aren't going to play the game.
Maybe you get to it in the latter half of the video I haven't yet seen, but it's important to note that this adaptation was in large part written by the game's writers.
IIRC Naughty Dog shopped the adaptation around until someone wanted to make it happen, not the other way around. This goes a long way to explain why the adaptation really gets the source material where many others don't.
The Hunger Games is my hallmark for adaptations – it changes only what is necessary to suit the new format while retaining the essence of the story.
I feel like Tolkien adaptations can be used as the best and the worst example. I loved the original LotR trilogy, and I read the books first, way before the movies, like almost 30 years ago. Were the movies following the books exactly? No. Were they perfect? Also no. But the most important thing for me was that the atmosphere was there, the spirit of the books was there. Or at the very least the movies have created a believable world where everything felt in the right place. So I didn't care much about the details. Cannot say anything about the RoP, because I didn't feel like watching it. Hobbit though. Should never have been made into a movie, much less three. Either it should have been done before LotR or never at all, because it had a much smaller scale of… everything, so it never had a chance in the first place, even as one movie. Ultimately, it was bad because people were greedy and that whole thing was driven by greed, and all creative decisions were overshadowed by greed, so… It would have been a decent animation movie maybe? I don't know, I've never been a huge fan of the book in the first place, and doing it after LotR was never going to work, in my opinion.
Worst adaptation? The first Dungeons and Dragons movie. The one made in 2000. Who ever put that together clearly had never played a good campaign of DnD before.
An adaptation that I really like and that followed the book's intent if not exact story is Ella Enchanted. A lot of changes were made in adapting it from book to movie, but the creators understood what made the story good.