There needs to be some level of adaption from a book or video game to the screen. It’s a very difficult job to actually do well though, because it requires knowledge of the source material and knowledge of what works on the screen. People that can do this are rare and expensive.
Lately it’s almost seemed like it’s become a badge of honor to not actually know anything about the topic being adapted. It’s not surprising that mindset is leading to failure.
And that’s generally forgivable - if you call it anything else. But naming your thing after a popular thing is a reliable way to get butts in seats, even if you completely bungle the tone, content, setting, and message. It’s how you guarantee “the book is better” instead of “did you know it’s based on a book?”
I never understood why you would take a story loved by millions and then change it in unpredictable ways. You are losing the best advocates for what you’re creating! The worst example of this is the horrendous monster that is the latest Terry Pratchett TV show, which was rightly condemned by the estate and everyone who ever read anything by Pratchett.
I think it’s because they’ve gotten away with it for decades. Like the Shining movie vs books. Or Jurassic Park movie vs book, gave movie studios the power to tell the actual author to go fuck off.
But muh
broad appealgreed!ugh. whats the latest show?
I did not even realize that was pratchett. I think I saw something on it before and was like. meh.
It honestly has a surprisingly high rating on IMDb, I did not expect that!
I think the problem is less being unfaithful to the source material and more that many of these books are adapted in an industrial style complete with alienated workers who are completely detached to the finished product. If hundreds of professionals are doing what their boss says to do on a project they don’t really care about, the end product tends to show the lack of effort and care. Any changes individual workers make to the film project that adapts it to the new medium is the only art to be found in a project otherwise fueled by cynicism and spite.
It’s because executives hate art.
Is taking a thing that made money and trying to apply a transformation to it so it can make even more money really artistic though? Sure, there may be some room for creative endeavour in there sometimes, but the fundamental underpinning of the whole concept is “what if bigger number?”
If you are interested in the innards of an adaptation, rambling about old movies, and The Expanse, go watch/listen to Ty and That Guy. It is one of the authors of the series and one of the actors from the show going through it episode by episode talking about production, what doesn’t work, why certain things changed, etc.
From ‘House of the Dragon’ to ‘God of War’ to ‘The Witcher,’ shows are getting smacked by creators for seeming to stray from source material. And there are reasons it’s happening now.
Not sure what’s unfaithful about House of the Dragon. Are fans complaining? Honest question. GRRM is complaining he’s not listened to but given that the man hasn’t finished his books yet I think it’s best he’s undisturbed until then.
God of War didn’t come out so it can’t be judged as unfaithful, it just looks bad.
Witcher could be the best adaptation around and Sapkowski would still find a reason to be butthurt like he was butthurt about Witcher 3 continuing story from his books even though it’s better than anything he wrote since The Lady of the Lake.
Hollywood Reporter co-opted Rings of Power into this article too but unless Tolkien was reanimated it looks like a shoehorned argument. It’s like author wanted to dunk on things they don’t like and ran out of steam very quickly.
Let’s be honest, old Georgie boy isn’t going to finish. It’s been 15 years since the last one came out. Even if it did, with that big a gap in all likelihood it would be trash.
Even if it did come out, it’s only book 6. He had at least 7 planned. From my understanding most of 5 wasn’t originally planned, but he wrote himself into a corner that took an entire book to resolve.
Yup. And he’s not going to finish it because the ending he came up with we saw in the TV series. GRRM now gets to pretend his ending is better without ever showing it, blaming things on how it was adapted.
The only genuine criticism in the article is against The Wheel of Time although I’d gladly hear Brian Sanderson ideas on how to adapt 14-long book series into a TV series that’s going to be watched by anyone other than die hard fans. Being a great writer doesn’t mean you’re a great TV producer.
I don’t think Wheel of Time would be that hard to adapt if you just made it animated (to avoid insane photorealistic CGI budgets) and aggressively streamlined the middle books (which are a slog anyways).
It would have to be insanely long if it were to adapt the entire thing even with those cuts so then you have a problem that at season 10 you don’t get any new viewers because nobody can jump in without 9 books worth of context.
The only way to adapt it is as a Latin American telenovela. You get low budget and captivated audience of older women who’ll watch it out of habit. Rand al’Thor wouldn’t be a dorky redhead but a hot Latino lover and that’s not the only advantage here.
The main problem with the GoT TV series is less the actual ending than that they didn’t put in the necessary work to get there from where they were.
Apparently the guy who is bitching about GOW hasn’t been involved with GOW in about 20 years and always bitches about GOW changes.
Either screen writers have narcissistic egos or the corpos on the top are telling them to change things.
First there’s a reason which is perhaps obvious: Authors have a closer relationship with their fans — and a massive megaphone — thanks to social media. “Just the norms around how one performs being an author — especially with a strong fan base — that relationship has evolved a lot over the last two decades along with the way in which they can communicate and experience people reading their works,” she says.
But also, filmic storytelling itself has dramatically changed just in the last several years. The combination of audience fragmentation (where studios no longer need to draw the largest possible viewership on every show) and streaming services collectively serving up hundreds of long-form titles a year now allows these stories to be adapted with a level of specificity and loyalty to the source material that wasn’t realistic before.
The thing about adaptations is that you can just enjoy the original book, or game or play or whatever that is actually good and became popular based on its own merits. Not to say there aren’t good adaptations, but you have to take it case by case there’s no way most of this stuff should sell just because of name recognition.
Do people hate God Of War tv because it too slavishly apes the look of the game, because there’s very little to go off there?
The article isn’t about people hating things, but specifically creators hating things. In the case of God of War, the creator of the original PS2 games has hated everything about the Norse games because he’s got the mentality of a 15 year-old who just wants to see tits and gore. He hasn’t been involved in a GoW game in almost 20 years now.
He jumped all over the first image that got released so he could get clicks and feel relevant.
I mean, it is weird to completely switch up the tone and gameplay of a series like that, and not lost on me that it was to something more mainstream. And you really can’t blame character action fans for being offended they called the old gameplay “outdated” (luckily, DMC5 came out a year later and disproved the notion.)
