TV/Movies But that's not how it happened! - TV show/movie adaptations

[Mystical]

Some books, mangas or different forms of media trascend enough to become movie or TV shows adaptations. Some of these adaptations make the original source justice. Some become even better than the source, or are just failures. Some movies or TV shows completely alter characters or plot points from the books.

What's your opinion on these adaptations? Tell us about your experiences. What about these adaptations stood out to you? Any gripe or comment?

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Spoiler: My thoughts

For myself, I understand certain changes and omissions from a book to a movie is necessary. For example, in the Harry Potter books there is a poltergeist named Peeves who loves doing mischief around the castle. He got completely cut out from the movies. But he wasn't an essential character.

But on the other hand, some movies or TV shows completely change character personalities or plot events. For example, in Harry Potter (again :P) in the books Harry is portrayed as chivalrous, modest, and not wanting to attract a lot of attention. But in the movies we see several cases of him being a show off and wanting glory in general. As a specific, on the Triwizard Tournament, when he opens the dragon egg in front of everyone. In the book, it is clear that he doesn't want to and is being pressured. In the movie, he enjoys the attention and encourages it.

I have other comments, but this for now.

Edit: I had two different threads for the original source being books or something else but people didn't differentiate, so I just broadened this topic and deleted the other thread.

 

[Mudkip_Mishchief]

Death Note (netflix adaptation) - L isn't black smh

 

[Mystical]

lol is that an adaptation from manga? I haven't seen it (I've heard of it though) but I'm guessing they wanted ethnic representation for whatever reason

 

[Neb]

The Last Airbender. Just the entire movie. The acting, the writing, everything was so stiff and uncomfortable.

 

[Flo]

the PJO movies are abominations and dont follow the book at all

why does Kronos show up at the end of Book 2, when he isn't 'revived' til Book 4

yamero

 

[Thundawave]

I personally dislike movie adaptations of books especially. Cool to watch once, and then I get kinda mad and point out everything that was different from the book. It happens even if the book wasn’t that great in the first place. Here are a few examples:

-The Giver was never movie material. Adapting it into some sort of dystopian flick just didn’t work. The decisions they made to change parts of the book were downright terrible. The book has enough literary merit to be read in schools, but the movie was generic trash.

-Divergent as a movie was okay, but it cut out a lot of the development of the more minor characters aka the other Dauntless initiates. And since you don’t see that, you feel less of Tris’s internal conflict later on. Also still salty about the major change in Insurgent. That was ???

 

[Varhii]

Forrest Gump changed a lot between the book and the screen. The book is garbage though so who cares.

 

[Godot]

Movies and TV Shows based on video games are usually not good. (Yes, I'm including Pokemon in that generalization. I'm not going to argue about it though. I generally find it passable, certainly better than other adaptations out there but pales in comparison to Castlevania). For example the Mortal Kombat movies are god awful, and I'd argue that the only way to enjoy those movies is to riff on them endlessly. Prince of Persia wasn't good enough to be considered a decent adaptation, but it also wasn't bad enough to be any fun to riff on.

I can easily relate the differences between Legend of Zelda and the cartoon based on it. For one, Link isn't silent and this works to the cartoon's detriment. For another Link isn't exactly hero material, being a self-absorbed jackass more interested in kissing Zelda than saving Hyrule. Ganon lives in the underworld apparently, which is in contrast to his being from the world that shares the kingdom's name in the games. He is never shown as a Garudo, instead he's depicted as a humanoid with pig-like features.

I'd give examples of how Castlevania (a great adaptation) gets everything right and makes changes that make sense. But I haven't played the games, so every example I could give would be second hand info.

 

[Reunilu]

I have mixed feelings about TV adaptations. Like, on a personal level it's a lot easier (for me at least) to digest something like a TV show, but at the same time I also feel that typically adaptations try really hard to live up to their origins, but it doesn't work. Like for the original Fate/Stay Night, right? There's a scene in the original Unlimited Blade Works route that's kind of funny in the visual novel, but feels not as good in the anime (it's the scene where Shirou is all like "you can't get close to Tohsaka", or something like that, it's been four years) 'cause it tries to imitate the lines of the original scene.

Person above me mentioned the Castlevania show right? Loved it to bits as a fan, albeit an Igavania fan with a small amount of knowledge of the classic Castlevania, but it's probably because there's a lot of stuff in the series that can be fleshed out like how Kancolle and Touhou are*: 20% official material, 80% headcanon. Because it's like that, Castlevania becomes a perfect series to translate into another media without losing many people that are faithful to the original canon.

*I think the Fate series is kind of this too? Seems to be according to the FGO fandom. That and the whole "all universes are canon", I forget where this is said, but I know it's a part of the original Fate/Stay Night material.

 

[SarasaKat]

Ok sure hate on this stuff but consider: this makes such good meme material. The Super Mario Super Show is iconic as hell, and that sonic movie coming up looks like it's going to be an absolute riot. I feel like 95% of movies/tv adapts from other media are either terrible or ironically enjoyable. Or both.

I personally enjoy things like the Pokemon movies though (but jury's out on Detective Pikachu, that'll be interesting since I actually played the game). And while I forget everything about it, I remember loving the sonic heroes cartoons as a kid. But then you got stuff like the Percy Jackson movie adaptation, which is just so bad it's sad.

 

[Mystical]

The Last Airbender. Just the entire movie. The acting, the writing, everything was so stiff and uncomfortable.

Honestly when I first saw this movie I didn't see a lot of issues with it. But I know it's critisized a lot.

I personally dislike movie adaptations of books especially. Cool to watch once, and then I get kinda mad and point out everything that was different from the book. It happens even if the book wasn’t that great in the first place. Here are a few examples:

-The Giver was never movie material. Adapting it into some sort of dystopian flick just didn’t work. The decisions they made to change parts of the book were downright terrible. The book has enough literary merit to be read in schools, but the movie was generic trash.

-Divergent as a movie was okay, but it cut out a lot of the development of the more minor characters aka the other Dauntless initiates. And since you don’t see that, you feel less of Tris’s internal conflict later on. Also still salty about the major change in Insurgent. That was ???

Agree with this general statement. Normally the book is better. Sometimes movies have some good changes from the source, but this is rare.

 

[neoratz]

i think adaptions can be ok! it's true though, movie adaptions of games have a REALLY bad track record. i haven't watched a lot of stuff in general so i can't say i have any gripes besides the obvious stuff like the netflix death note movie... HOWEVER

earlier last year netflix did a remake of Devilman called Devilman Crybaby (which i guess counts as an adaption since it was originally a manga?) and i hated it SOOOO MUCH. i honestly did not know about Devilman until my friend showed me last year but i loved the OVA and the manga so much more..... Crybaby did several things wrong and messed up my fave charas not only in design but behavior a little as well

I CAN SAY THOUGH.... the music was REALLY good and they did improve a character from the manga a bit. it just sucked that it had to be in somethin like that

 

[Kyogre386]

I've had two adaptations that I saw struggle this year, Steins;Gate 0 and A Certain Magical Index III. I enjoy both, but there are definitely flaws, to the point that I could tell at points in both cases that something was lost in adaptation despite never playing/reading the source material, which usually doesn't happen to me.

Steins;Gate 0 has the bigger excuse as I've heard the VN branches out a lot more than the original and in ways that can't be reconciled but are important. Kagari in particular felt out of place.

A Certain Magical Index III is the fault of the execs giving 26 episodes for 9 novels. I know they are way behind the source material and two seasons before New Testament would probably be too slow, but it causes problems. Most of it has been fine but the Battle Royale Arc absolutely NEEDED another episode. I had to straight up read a summary of the novel to know what was going on.

 

[-Rosen]

Oooooo don't even get me started on this kind of stuff.

Re:Zero has all kinds of stuff that doesn't appear in the anime but does in all of the Web Novel, Light Novel, and Manga. There are other things that appear in certain media that don't in others as well, but the most egregious is definitely the revelation that Subaru (token self-insert isekai protag) isn't the only person who's been transported to this parallel world. It's COMPLETELY skipped in the anime, leaving a lot of important context for most of the third arc out entirely. I had to sit down and read through all 8 officially translated volumes of the light novel to figure out just how much it mattered, and its not HUGELY different, but the anime definitely misses out a lot by leaving it out

 

[Null]

IDC whatever other adaptation is ****, the netflix series of unfortunate events series is a masterpiece.

 

[Kyogre386]

IDC whatever other adaptation is ****, the netflix series of unfortunate events series is a masterpiece.

They actually did it right, then? I only ever saw the movie, which was terrible. The narration is hard to adapt, but I expected better from everything else.

I heard about the Netflix series before and hoped it would turn out better. Looks like I'll have to check it out, that was a fun book series.

 

[Mystical]

One adaptation I can't be mad about is the fourth Twilight movie. I liked how they added a whole battling scene between the Volturi and the Cullens/werewolves even though there was nothing about that in the book.

 

[SiNofTheAbyss]

Oh, boy, you want an adaptation of a series that people love to call a pile of garbage? Look no further than my current signature: Twin Star Exorcists.

Spoiler

The manga? Amazing. Sure, it's pretty typical Shounen stuff, but the characters are endearing and there's no filler to bother you. Yes, there's one of those tournament arcs, and there's the usual "tragic" backstories and crap, but it's a fun read, and I recommend it.

The anime? Anyone who has read the manga hates it. Like, absolutely despises it. The first maybe 20 episodes at most have canon material, but Studio Pierrot (also famous for screwing up shows like Tokyo Ghoul and Bleach), decided to go and make the anime 50 episodes when the manga had only been around for maybe a couple years at best (and this manga is published in a monthly magazine, so you know it was low on source material). The original creator did the designs for a lot of anime-original characters, and at least one of them ended up in the manga eventually, but they weren't quite as interesting as the ones in the manga.

Speaking of that anime-original-to-manga-canon character, he's considered the annoying mascot character that could have easily been done without in the anime. When Sukeno-sensei finally got around to putting him in the manga, he was 80% less annoying than he was in the anime.

I mostly liked the anime because of the Twelve Guardians, particularly Cordelia and Tatara, because they got episodes focusing on them even slightly, compared to the manga where they haven't had a whole lot of time to show off (especially any of the ones that, ahem, die).