This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
- It's generally accepted that the CGI film adaptation of Horton Hears A Who was fairly well done.
I'd disagree. >>
- A less ambitious variant sometimes pops up in Fan Fic novelisations, where layers of Complexity and Conspiracy are added under the main plot. Done poorly, they are unnecessarily confusing crap even worse than the original. Done well, however, they offer good opportunity for insightful What If. One of these that this editor liked is Brothers in Arms
by Solid Shark, a Gundam SEED work with a slowly-revealed but decidedly Metal Gear-esque Super-Soldier undercurrent.
This isn't really the same thing — it's not an adaptation. It's closest to the expansion found in the Expanded Universe.
Taking out In Name Only examples, which aren't direct adaptations anyway:
- The book I, Robot was an anthology of short stories taking place in the universe of Asimov's Robot novels, which didn't really lend itself to the big screen. The Movie wound up being about a berserk A. I. who wildly misinterpreted the Three Laws and became a total Knight Templar. It had the Three Laws, and some names recognizable from the book (as well as some fuss about a robot killing its creator, which is actually closer to the original-original short story by Eando Binder), but that's about it. Probably because it actually wasn't originally supposed to be an adaptation.
- The original Shrek is a thin kid's book, with significantly fewer pop culture references.
Also:
- This troper considers the Hellboy movie an example of how to do this correctly.
So how did it do this, exactly?
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut these and put them here. Adaptation Expansions must keep a significant portion of the original—they just add material.
- Non-film example, but: The book George Shrinks is about a boy who wakes up one morning to find that he's tiny, and at the end of the book, he's normal-sized again. The cartoon series of the same name is about a boy whose surname is Shrinks, and was born tiny into an otherwise normal-sized family.
- The short story "The Iron Man" was expanded into the animated feature film "The Iron Giant". The writers of the film changed almost everything except the basic concept of a friendly giant iron robot, but arguably improved on the original story.
Nornagest: Cut this:
- *The Oldest One In The Book is the Christian Bible, which added on to the Old Testament.
Both the Old and New Testaments are essentially collections of widely varying short media, ranging from narratives intended to be read as factual (the Gospels, much of the first half of the Old Testament) through inspirational fables (Proverbs) to erotic poetry (the Song of Songs). Material in the Old Testament is not duplicated in the New, and the Bible as a whole does not form a plot. Neither "adaptation" nor "expansion" really apply.
