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Adaptational Modesty / Live-Action Films

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From Bedlah Babe to Pimped-Out Dress.
Examples of Adaptational Modesty in films.

  • In 300, plenty of people found something to joke about with the Spartans wearing leather speedos, but that was a step up from the original graphic novel where often they were completely nude (reflecting Greek art in depicting warfare).
  • Absolute Power (1997): The scene with Christy is more explicit in the book, to the point that she removes her panties entirely, with Luther having an unwanted look at her genitals. Here, they don't go nearly that far.
  • In Æon Flux, Æon's Spy Catsuit is fairly sexy, but nowhere near the unbelievably Stripperiffic costume she wore in the animated series. The animation costume would probably not just have been rejected by all taste-and-decency policies, but would never have stayed in position in real life, even if adhesives were used.note 
  • Aladdin (2019) has Princess Jasmine wearing a more covered outfit despite showing a bit of cleavage, in contrast to the original Disney cartoon which has her as a Bedlah Babe. Aladdin himself only wears a vest in the original cartoon, allowing him to show off his arms and chest, while in the remake he wears a white tunic under his vest.
  • The Big Sleep has Phillip Marlowe interrupting a porn shoot and finding a naked girl. Obviously this wouldn't fly on film in the 1940s, so the movie gets as daring as it could by putting her in a nightgown.
  • Carrie:
    • In the 1976 adaptation, the titular character is fully nude when she gets her period in the school showers (as are many of the other girls). Both the 2002 and 2013 versions remove the explicit nudity, the latter even giving Carrie a Modesty Towel. This is because the 2002 version was a Made-for-TV Movie, while the 2013 version cast the 15-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz in the role.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has two examples:
    • Eustace's clothes are destroyed when he turns into a dragon. In the book, the problem is resolved with a magic bath, after which Aslan dresses him. In the film, he's just inexplicably clothed again.
    • In the book, Lord Restimar died in a lake that turns anything to gold, apparently wearing little or no clothing. In the film he apparently fell in with his clothes on.
  • Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away has the Water Bowl segment from Zumanity, an adults-only show, which is made safe for a PG movie via 1) dropping the nudity and 2) changing it to a turn for a solo female performer, whereas onstage it's performed by a female duo.
  • In Greek mythology, Andromeda was to be sacrificed to the sea monster Cetus while fully nude. In both Clash of the Titans (1981) and Clash of the Titans (2010), she is wearing clothes. Likewise, Aphrodite is commonly depicted nude but appears clothed in both films.
  • In the 2004 live-action film adaptation of Cutey Honey, the heroine's main outfit looks more like an armor than the skin tight unitard of power that she wears in the original manga, and the few portions of visible skin are covered with a flesh colored undershirt. It's somewhat jarring considering that the original suit wasn't that revealing (only her shoulders and cleavage are exposed) and the actress playing her, Eriko Sato is a swimsuit model and even appears in some parts of the film wearing only underwear. Another change is that Honey is given an Age Lift so that she's no longer a teenager like she was in the manga and TV show.
  • DC Extended Universe:
    • In Black Adam (2022), Hawkman's costume includes chest armor, unlike in the comics, where he's traditionally depicted bare-chested.
    • In The Flash (2023), Supergirl’s costume is an unitard rather than the blue leotard & red skirt combo it usually has in the comicsnote .
    • Harley Quinn's new costume in The Suicide Squad is a pretty faithful translation of her New 52 redesign by Amanda Conner, but with pants instead of shorts and no exposed midriff. It's also noticeably more modest than her positively Stripperific costume from the first movie.
    • Very delicately played with in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, regarding Wonder Woman's introduction. Strictly speaking, it's a very close approximation of her iconic outfit. But several key differences make it into this trope. The strapless bustier looks more armored and on Gal Gadot the neckline goes to her collar bone, leaving no cleavage or threat of a Wardrobe Malfunction. Instead of a skirt or leggings she still has a swimmer's cut on her legs, but with the hint of a gladiator-style combat skirt. And instead of shoulder straps she wears a combat harness for her sword and shield that wraps around her, creating a similar look while not changing the core appearance. The designer Michael Wilkinson deliberately subverted the Stripperiffic expectations and made something that could be eye catching as well as practical. This costume (itself influenced by a few historical comics designs) came to inform her comics appearance by the time the movie came out, with most other adaptations following that lead. In Wonder Woman: Diana's costume is an interesting play, being about as revealing than her original costume became within a couple of weeks of publication, but more revealing than the one she was introduced in. The flowy culotte shorts she wore originally in the comics were not easy to draw and make clear they weren't a skirt, here she goes with a skirt of pteruges which show skin between them. Her torso is more covered in the film making it seem far more modest regardless.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Downplayed with Greg but because Zachary Gordon was a 13-year-old minor during the filming of Dog Days (which adapts several scenes from the third book, The Last Straw), a few scenes involving Greg in his underwear, unsurprisingly, had to be removed such as Rodrick shoving Greg out of the hotel room in his underwear and Greg's pants falling down, revealing his Wonder Woman underwear (although the former is played via animation at the start of the movie).
  • In Ender's Game, the kids are frequently casually naked, though it's devoid of any sexual context. This includes Ender's introduction to Petra (who he doesn't notice is a girl), meeting the slobby Rose De Nose, and Ender's fight with Bonzo (who specifically strips because Ender is naked from showering, so Bonzo will make the fight even). In the film of the book, all the nudity was cut out, along with the kids being made older.
  • Firestarter's John Rainbird is fond of walking around in the nude in the book. None of this is shown in the 1984 film.
  • Flowers in the Attic:
    • Chris catches Cathy admiring herself in the nude in the bathroom. Specifically they're both noticing that she's finally got breasts. The TV film has her just wearing her underwear (probably because actress Kiernan Shipka was the same age as the character while filming). Likewise Chris's rape of Cathy is changed to a kiss and implied consensual sex.
    • The 80s film is technically this as well. Cathy is merely in the bath and Chris is only sitting in the room with her, not notably checking her out. Their actual Brother–Sister Incest is left out of the movie completely.
  • In Darren Aronofsky's accompanying graphic novel of The Fountain (which was released at the same time as the film, but started before it), Tommy and Izzy are both naked when they're seen together in the spaceship, and their sex life is depicted in a bit more detail than it was in the film; in particular, Brother Tomás is explicitly shown making love to Queen Isabella in the scene where she gives him her ring, and there's a flashback scene to the first time that Tommy and Izzy made love thank t didn't make it into the movie.
  • Amongst the changes to the Gor series for the films, the Beautiful Slave Girls go from naked (or very revealing clothes) to wearing bikinis.
  • In Gerald's Game Jessie spends most of the book naked except for some panties (having just been about to partake in bondage sex with her perverted husband, before it all went horribly wrong). In the film adaptation, Jessie despite being played the gorgeous Carla Gugino who’s actually rocked the “naked besides some underwear” look in Sin City, is conversely wearing a slip in the movie.
  • Harry Potter:
    • In the fourth book, Voldemort is naked upon resurrection, and his first words are for Wormtail to give him clothes. In the film, he is resurrected wearing a black robe.
    • In the final book, Harry's naked when he wakes up in the Afterlife Antechamber at King's Cross and doesn't get clothes until some materialize for him out of nowhere. In the film, he's already wearing clothes.
  • The Hunger Games:
    • Katniss was naked a few times in the book and has her body hair waxed. At one point Cinna has a whole conversation with a nude Katniss who stands awkwardly desperately wanting to cover up. In film she has one PG bath scene and keeps her kit on for the rest of the movie.
    • Glimmer is described as wearing a translucent gold dress when she goes on Caesar's talk show. In the film she has a more modest white dress with a poofy skirt.
  • The infamous pre-teen group sex scene from Stephen King's IT was to the surprise of nobody omitted from both the 1990 and 2017 adaptions, despite King himself defending its place in the story. In general most of the sexual aspects of the book are toned down or just removed, however the original script for the 2017 film was more graphic with Stanley being lured and attacked by a naked woman/witch who springs from a Mikvah and poor Beverly getting explicit sexual abuse from her Pervert Dad. Thankfully all of this removed when the new director and writers came in. The 2017 is still more risqué than 1990 version given the Loser’s Club strip down to their underwear and go swimming in the lake, a scene also not in the book where the kids kept their kit on the majority of the time.
  • James Bond:
  • In the John Carter of Mars novels, Mars has a nice climate and the inhabitants don't bother with clothes much (even finding the idea of covering up one's body mildly distasteful); visual adaptations (including John Carter and The Asylum's Princess of Mars) always give them at least enough clothing to avoid trouble with the censors. In John Carter, Deja even feels the need to state that she feels that the skimpy wedding outfit she wears wasn't her idea and that she considers it vulgar...even though it's not much more revealing than the armor she wore in other scenes.
  • In the live-action Kim Possible film, Kim's mission outfit is based on her first outfit from the cartoon but it doesn't show her midriff.
  • In the book Life of Pi, Pi is Lost at Sea for several months. As time passes, his clothes degrade and he's naked by the time he's rescued. In the film, he loses his shirt and shoes, but not his pants.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: In the book, Frodo is stripped completely naked in the Tower of Cirith Ungol. In the film he has only lost his shirt. Yet Sam's line from the book, "You can't go walking through Mordor in naught but your skin", still remains.
  • In Let Me In when the vampire sneaks into the main character's room to cuddle with him she strips naked and crawls into his bed. In the original book Let the Right One In he's naked too and in the Swedish adaption he's just in his underpants, whereas in the American version he's wearing his pyjamas.
  • The Lovely Bones:
    • Before Susie is murdered, she is raped by Mr Harvey - in graphic detail. The film omits the rape completelynote  - apart from one line about another of Harvey's victims "he had only wanted to touch her", which could imply some form of rape. But it's left ambiguous.
    • Just before Harvey disposes of the safe with Susie's body in the sink hole, Ruth allows Susie to inhabit her body and have sex with Ray before she moves on. The film changes it to just a kiss between Susie and Ray.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, when ymbrynes transform into birds, they don't take their clothes with them. This was changed for the film. Justified in that, while Eva Green often gets naked in her movies, it is a family-oriented film.
  • Mortal Kombat (2021):
    • Mileena has a typically Stripperific outfit with a Navel-Deep Neckline or Cleavage Window in the games to go along with her deranged Really Gets Around behaviour. In the film she has a modest full bodysuit with only her shoulders and head bare.
    • Nitara wears a costume that covers her stomach and legs, in contrast her rather Stripperific outfit from the games.
    • Sonya spent the earlier installments of Mortal Kombat in tight aerobics gear and in the case of MK9 a Navel-Deep Neckline outfit. The 2021 film goes the route of later games such as MKX and MK11 of giving Sonya a more sensible outfit.
    • Downplayed with male example Liu Kang who’s often a Walking Shirtless Scene in the games, but wears a top in the film. He does go shirtless in one scene while training, leading to Kano having a Stupid Sexy Flanders moment.
  • Old: In the original graphic novel it is based, Sandcastle, when the kids suffer from Rapid Aging they no longer fit inside the swimsuits they arrived to the beach in and they spend a good deal of the story in the nude. In the film, the parents had brought extra swimsuits and a change of clothes for themselves and as such the kids were able to use them when they started growing, with the most that ever happens is that Trent spends a few scenes wearing a towel tied around his waist.
  • The film adaptation of One Touch of Venus tried to avert this with the statue at least; one was constructed, modelled off the star Ava Gardner, accurately nude as Venus would have been in art. The Hays Code insisted that the statue be wearing clothes.
  • Naked Lunch, despite its Surreal Horror and Body Horror themes, is still a Disney film compared to the original book - which had lynchings, snuff films and alien pedophiles.
  • Perfect Pie has a much larger Rape Discretion Shot, the scene in the movie cutting away with the gang of teenage boys walking over to surround Marie as she started to panic; in the play, the scene only ended when they'd shoved her to the ground and were undoing their zippers as she began to have a seizure.
  • Planet of the Apes (1968) had the wild humans wearing loincloths, while they were nude in the book.
  • Red Sonja: In the comics, Sonja always wears a Chainmail Bikini. In the movie, she wears a Leotard of Power.
  • Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City:
    • Claire gets this again as in the same vein as the RE2make she’s a wearing a jacket and pants. In stark contrast to the original game where she had a biker vest and booty shorts combo over tight-fitting lycra. Possibly justified, given this version of her is older and less wild than the original RE2 Claire.
    • Inverted with Jill, unlike following games she had a modest outfit during the Spencer Mansion incident in RE1. In the film she’s wearing a vest that bares her arms and cleavage.
  • Downplayed example in Quarantine (2008), while Angela in the original [REC] strips down to a tank top very early on in the film, her counterpart in the American remake spends most of the film in a long sleeved shirt, its not until halfway into the film that Angela has to strip down to her tank top after her shirt is stained in blood.
  • In Sannikov Land, the potential brides at the Onkilon wife-choosing festival are naked except for a tiny loincloth. In the film adaptation, they are clothed.
  • The costumes in the live-action Science Ninja Team Gatchaman movie are mostly faithful to the original anime, albeit with a more armored look. The major exception is Jun the Swan, who now wears pants like her male teammates instead of a skirt.
  • In the book of The Shining (hello again Stephen) husband and wife Jack and Wendy Torrance make love repeatedly and at one point they engage in explicit foreplay while their son Danny is sleeping. In both the movie and Miniseries Jack and Wendy aren’t sexually active in the slightest, in the latter adaptation Wendy is even upset over it citing it as one of the reasons why their marriage is failing.
  • Sin City:
    • Exotic dancer Nancy Callahan does not dance with bare breasts and vulva as she does in the graphic novel, at the request of Jessica Alba, who plays her.
    • On the male side, Cardinal Roark, Dwight, and the Yellow Bastard all have clothes added to their nude scenes from the graphic novel (mostly to avoid Fan Disservice).
  • In-universe in Sirens (1994). Norman Lindsey is doing a painting of the Sirens from Greek mythology, who are usually portrayed as naked seductresses. One of his models Giddy prefers to keep her clothes on, so her siren is to be wearing a dress. She later decides to pose nude afterall.
  • The Stepford Wives: The wives were initially planned to invoke Mrs Fanservice by being scantily clad to reflect how they were created for the Male Gaze. Instead, they dress in more old fashioned maxi gowns and almost pioneer-ish clothing.
  • In Street Fighter, Cammy's outfit actually has pants this time.
  • In Summer Camp Nightmare, the boys of Camp North Pines swim around in swim trunks instead of naked as in The Butterfly Revolution, the book that the film was adapted from.
  • The Ten Commandments pushed the limits of the Hays Code in terms of the revealing dresses worn by Egyptian women (designed by legendary costume designer Edith Head). In actual fact, Egyptian women went around topless and wore little more than a skirt.
  • In Utøya: July 22, a reenactment of the Breivik Massacre (which happened on the island Utøya on 22. July 2011) from the perspective of the victims, nobody of the victims sheds any clothing, and it's implied the little boy died because he kept his bright jacket, the only exception being Kaja giving up her jacket in her attempt to help the wounded girl. In reality, many of the victims stripped down to their underwear, either because their upper clothing was too bright, or because they attempted to swim away, or to wade to the shore rocks.
  • Vampirella: They had to rework Vampirella's famous slingshot bikini costume for the 1996 movie to something slightly more modest because of its known propensity for Wardrobe Malfunction.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • In the original trilogy the main team wear black leather costumes that, while maybe tight, are generally covering the entire body. Other mutants tend to wear either casual street clothes or punk attire. This is all in contrast to the spandex, leotards and/or stripperiffic outfits that many characters use in the comics.
    • The exceptions are Mystique, who is actually less modest as they made her technically nude (naughty bits covered by her mutation) under the concept that she couldn't shapeshift her clothes, while her comic/cartoon counterparts typically wear something skimpy (interestingly, in the comics, her clothes even in her true form are also just made by her shapeshifting), and Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class (in which her classic look is almost restored; she wears what looks like lingerie in most of her scenes).
    • Storm is especially notable since most of her costumes either resemble leotards or bikinis, while her movie costumes rarely show any skin.
    • Rogue wears no bodysuit nor does she wear anything revealing at all.
    • Averted with X-Men: Apocalypse, where Psylocke wears a variant of her classic Jim Lee-designed thong from the '90s, while the X-Men themselves receive costumes with numerous nods to Lee's designs in the final scene. It would have been the case with her too, Bryan Singer planning on giving her a more modest black outfit. Her actress Olivia Munn, a huge fan of the character, insisted on having the famous Leotard of Power.
    • X-23 was introduced in NYX as an underage prostitute who very much dressed the part. She also tends to be one of the resident Ms Fanservices of whatever team she's serving on. Enforcing this trope was a deliberate consideration by James Mangold in the casting of 11 year-old Dafne Keen in Logan, as he wanted to avoid the trend of casting a hot twenty-something actress in a sexy costume.note 

Alternative Title(s): Film

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