Authors Saving Throw / Live-Action Films

• Adam (2019):The film removes many of the more controversial aspects of the novel, such as many racist, homophobic, and transphobic comments, and the fact that Gillian, who identifies as a lesbian, is "cured" of her lesbianism after having sex with a cis man
• Alien: Covenant:
  • After Prometheus got flak for being Stealth Prequel for the Alien series and concerns it'd happen again, the title made its connection to the series clear and even the posters featured the Xenomorph's head and an egg. Other, however, do lament the decision to skip Shaw and David's travels.
  • As mentioned on the main page under "Tabletop Games", the film itself was subjected to one in Alien: The Roleplaying Game after Ridley Scott omitted stuff from the script stating that David was only copying the Engineers and going with a Fan-Disliked Explanation that David created the Xenomorphs. Fox and the game chose to ignore Scott's changes and went with the original script and the novelization's explanation that the Engineers did create the Xenomorphs, and David's creations, which are copies of the Xenomorphs, are called "Praetomorphs".
• In Aladdin, the climax has Jasmine take part in the action to get the lamp back, instead of having to go through Go-Go Enslavement and Show Some Leg like in the animated movie. As years went by, this part was seen as tasteless and sexist, and even more so because Jasmine was only 15.
• Carry On... Series: Carry On at Your Convenience had Sid James playing a family man much like his role in Bless This House to make up for criticisms of his character in Carry On Henry being too much of a Dirty Old Man.
• Cats was Christmas Rushed for the 2019 awards season and thus had some dodgy, unfinished effects. These were corrected later in the film's theatrical run and for all home media releases.
• Christopher Robin could arguably be seen as this in order to provide an optimistic contrast to the depressing experience of Goodbye Christopher Robin.
• Cinderella (2015) makes a few alterations in response to criticisms of Disney's original film (Each human is a Flat Character, the search was poorly executed, the stepmother got away, etc.). For example, Ella and the Prince have more of a personality now, he has an actual name, he and Ella meet each other well before the ball, the Prince's hidden presence in the search party ensures that Cinderella is found, and Lady Tremaine and her daughters are actually punished in the end.^note er, Ella still forgives them, the stepsisters in particular as their antagonism was actually lesser than in the original film, but only because the movie's Aesop is "be kind to others". All three, and the Duke, are mentioned to have left the kingdom and never returned after this.
• Dad's Army (1971): During the scene of Captain Mainwaring inspecting his platoon for the first time (adapted from the Pilot, "The Man and the Hour"), Private Godfrey is given Private Bracewell's role of "man in tuxedo with golfclub", while Private Godfrey's original role ("man with gun who refuses to give it up") is given to General Wilkinson. This works in the film's favour as later in the series, Private Godfrey became a pacifist who couldn't kill a mouse, let alone a Nazi, and wouldn't have wanted to keep a gun.
• The film version of Dear Evan Hansen was derided due to Ben Platt's (27 at the time) unconvincing looks made to play a teenager. Afterwards, the studio announced that a Re-Cut would see limited release in theaters before being used for the streaming release, using CGI effects to make Platt look younger.
  • The film also makes various changes to make the title character come across as more sympathetic and less manipulative than in the stage show, most notably his relationship with Zoe. Evan forcing a kiss on Zoe while sitting on her dead brother's bed and arranging for her band be involved in the remembrance ceremony he's involved in are both cut, as her "You gave my brother back!" line when she first kisses him.
  • The ending was also changed to provide some more consequences for Evan. Rather than his lie never being revealed Evan admits the deception publicly and tries to make amends by trying learn more about and preserve the memory of the real Connor.
• In The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Tris had her hair cut into a pixie cut, changed from the chin-length haircut of the books^note The reasoning for this is Shailene Woodley having cut her hair completely short for The Fault in Our Stars and couldn't grow it out in time for The Divergent Series: Insurgent, prompting complaints. So The Divergent Series: Allegiant has her hair back at chin-length.
• The Hobbit: The extended cuts of the films redeemed the trilogy in the eyes of many disappointed fans. Like with The Lord of the Rings, they include more scenes from the book (the Goblin Town song, the first proper meeting of Beorn) and explain certain things (the fate of Thrain which according to the second film's extended commentary was filmed when it was meant to be two movies and Kili's crush on Tauriel is foreshadowed in the extended cut for the first film). The third film's extended cut especially has received acclaim from both fans and critics for fixing a lot of problems for what was considered the weakest of the three movies, including the effects and giving the dwarves a chance to shine.
• Jurassic World:
  • A major complaint of the third movie was how the T. rex was rather easily beaten by the Spinosaurus in a rather blatant example of The Worf Effect. This movie firmly re-establishes the T. rex as the dominant dinosaur. This film has the T. rex smash through a Spinosaurus skeleton on display on her way to confront the I. rex. Despite the I. rex being built up as more dangerous, intelligent, powerful, and sadistic, it's Rexie who ultimately comes out on top. Sure the I. rex kicks her ass at first, but unlike the Spinosaurus, the Indominus has been properly established as essentially a Super Velociraptor rex. So the beatdown made sense. Plus, it allowed for the Velociraptors and T. rex to team up to take down the I. rex.^note actually just one Velociraptor, the sole survivor of the pack
  • Hasbro took some heat when the toys were first minted and sold in stores because the box descriptions used male pronouns despite the film making clear that the dinosaurs are still being bred to all be female. They corrected the mistake on later printings.
  • A major complaint of the franchise in general in the numerous examples of Artistic License – Paleontology that result in the dinosaurs on-screen being completely different than what scientists have proven to be true. The conversation between Dr. Wu and Masrani reveals that In-Universe this was done on purpose. Wu and his team had the knowledge and resources to make the dinosaurs scientifically accurate, but the company requested they engineer the dinosaurs to look like what the public generally perceives them to be, rather than what they really looked like.
  "You didn't ask for reality. You asked for more teeth."
• Lady and the Tramp: Aunt Sarah’s cats are given an entirely new jazz number, as their original song "We are Siamese" had fallen hard into Values Dissonance with its Asian caricatures. Some of the lines remain similar in spirit to the original song, but without the racist subtext. However, they were popular with fans who weren't happy that Si and Am were changed and the song was removed, thus proving how this trope can backfire.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Godzilla (2014):
    • The biggest reason why the last American adaptation of the franchise was despised by fans and Toho alike was that it took too many liberties with Godzilla’s known abilities and appearance by having the creature itself be an irradiated iguana as opposed to a dinosaur, lacks his famous atomic breath and has it die by mere missiles. Legendary Pictures, Warner Bros. and Director Gareth Edwards make it clear that this version is true to the classic movies, as his appearance is much closer to that of the Japanese movies, and retains his invincibility and atomic breath.
    • The last Godzilla film made before this one caught heat from a sizable portion of the fanbase who felt it focused too much on high octane action that the human drama felt noticeably weak. This film gives the human story more weight to it and shows the destruction the monsters are causing and how it’s affecting the world at large. Unfortunately, while it did earn praise by many critics, movie goers and fans alike are more divisive on the matter.
    • For a while, the home video releases had a poor transfer that made the film much darker than it's supposed to be. The 4K Blu-ray release rectifies this issue, making the visuals almost identical to the theatrical release.
    • Doctor Serizawa's character received a massive change from his original characterization in his first appearance: The original was a patriot and pacifist who gave his life to both save his country from Godzilla as well as to prevent his superweapon from being used for destruction in the future. His western version, on the other hand, came across as an Evilutionary Biologist who displayed a callous disregard for human life with the very line that set up this cinematic universe: "Let them fight" (I.E, let the titans fight For Science! so we can see what happens.) In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), while he still displays a rather Blue-and-Orange Morality-like admiration for the titans, he is shown to also care about the future on mankind in this changing world of giant monsters, and ultimately ends his character arc in the same place as his original basis did: With a Heroic Sacrifice, ironically meant to save Godzilla this time. While Legendary's Serizawa is very much an In Name Only adaptation, he's far from unsympathetic.
  • Kong: Skull Island:
    • Some worried that this film's CGI Kong would look too similar to the Peter Jackson version and just end up being a retread. The reveal this Kong was primarily a biped, more brown than realistic gorilla-black, and has a different looking face helped calm these worries.
    • An interview with Jordan Vogt-Roberts stating that the movie won't be waiting forty minutes to an hour to reveal the monster was seen as a welcome change, given the complaints that King Kong (2005) and Godzilla (2014) got about taking too long to show the titular monster. And he wasn't lying, as Kong is seen within the first five minutes. It's only second behind Pacific Rim for fastest monster reveal.
    • The characters in Godzilla were widely criticized for giving a cast of talented actors little more to do than gape in awe at Godzilla smashing stuff. This film takes steps to ensure the characters have more memorable personalities, and sketches them out through both quiet moments and badass action scenes like Samuel L. Jackson trying to blow up King Kong with dynamite or John C. Reilly and Tom Hiddleston slashing through pterodactyls with a katana.
    • For some, the fact that the film isn't yet another remake of the original, but a new story featuring Kong himself, even if it is a Continuity Reboot.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
    • In the original Godzilla film, Dr. Serizawa's claims of Godzilla's ecological importance were kind of hard to take seriously for some, despite the fact that this influence exists in real-life with keystone species. In this film, it's shown that The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right, with the ending revealing the presence of the awakened Titans is having a massive healing effect on damaged ecosystems.
    • The 2014 film was criticized by fans for focusing too much on the human drama and not giving the monsters enough attention. The filmmakers have addressed this by balancing out both the human story and the monster fights, giving the monsters and the threats at large a much greater presence. Sadly, this became even more polarizing among critics.
    • Godzilla’s design in 2014, while praised for being truer to the Toho Godzilla than the previous American Godzilla, was criticized by fans in a few areas, such as the dorsal spins being too small and too reminiscent of the jagged spikes that took over since Godzilla 2000, and the infamous elephant feet. This film updated the spines to resemble the more traditional maple leaf spines from 1954, and the claws on his toes were enlarged to make the feet look more even.
    • After suffering through Villain Decay in some of the past movies, King Ghidorah is back to his original, villainous, and terrifying portrayal seen in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, as a stand-alone planet destroying menace who proves his dominance over other Kaiju.
    • The first film suffered a case of Digital Destruction upon home release, which affected every copy by darkening the scenes to the point of having to brightening the screen. WB gave this movie has a proper home video release with better video presentation.
    • Although Alexandre Desplat's score for the 2014 film was well-received, many fans were disappointed that it failed to incorporate any of Akira Ifukube's classic themes from the original films. Evidently, Bear McCreary agreed, as his score for King of the Monsters features liberal uses of Ifukube's compositions, including the iconic Godzilla and Mothra themes, and as a bonus, he even included a cover of the beloved Blue Öyster Cult song "Godzilla" sung by Serj Tankian.
    • Although it wasn't a major point of contention, many fans were disappointed that King Kong doesn't even get mentioned during the film, seeing it as a missed opportunity to begin setting up their eventual fight. The novelization then reveals that Kong is too busy keeping the Skullcrawlers from responding to Gidorah's call for help to make an appearance, making him the Hero of Another Story while still putting him in the narrative.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong:
    • A frequent complaint leveled at Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) is that the monster fights are shrouded in darkness and weather effects, while also repeatedly cutting away from the action to focus on the humans.^note Godzilla (2014) is a bit of a Mis-blamed case due to the fact that every known home video release suffered from a VERY poor transfer that outright darkened the picture horribly, even the day scenes were dark because of it. Many claimed the initial theater release looked much better and visually appealing than the Blu-ray release. Godzilla vs. Kong shows fights in broad daylight and one brightly neon-lit night which brings shades of Pacific Rim to mind. Additionally, the fights are shown in their entirety, only cutting to the humans when the battle is at a stalemate.
    • One of the most touchy subjects in the Godzilla fanbase in regards to the first movie that had the two face off was the ending. In the original, King Kong won, but had to be given lightning powers to fight him, which was Godzilla's weakness all of a sudden. This movie brings Kong to a more reasonable scale as he's normally portrayed, albeit it with a size buff and shows in no uncertain terms that once Godzilla starts taking the fight seriously, Kong would be completely decimated.
• The Purge is a horror/thriller which details a suburban American family's struggle to survive the titular event, which is basically an annual government-sanctioned crime spree, purportedly to give the people a chance to act out their violent urges and keep crime down. The result is a home invasion flick with a flimsy Hand Wave explaining away why the family can't just call the cops. After a year of various people snarking at the idea, the sequel, The Purge: Anarchy, attempts to remedy things by revealing that the Purge is simply a scheme by the corrupt ruling oligarchy to terrorise and murder working-class people for fun and profit. The vast majority of citizens hide from the Purge rather than participate in it, so state-sanctioned death squads roam around massacring people to keep up the statistics, and of course, the rich and powerful are completely safe from the Purge and its consequences. The sequel follows a Working Class Anti-Hero protagonist protecting a bunch of people caught up in the Purge and way in over their heads from government death squads. This simultaneously addresses the first film's copious Fridge Logic while tying it all up with a nice political satire and anti-establishment message.
• Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed is what James Gunn made to people disappointed with Scooby-Doo (2002). It shows the characters being likable with numerous references to the original cartoon with a Lighter and Softer tone that certainly helped its demographic.^note The movie was still hit with Sequelitis, but at least it still tried to do this.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), the initial design of Sonic in the teaser trailer and posters received a universally negative reaction, saying that Sonic's design fell hard into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley. Paramount, Sega, and the filmmakers put the brakes on as hard as they could, and delayed the film's release by three months to redesign and reanimate Sonic. Fortunately, they called in Tyson Hesse to provide the new design, which ended up being much closer to his video game counterpart's design. This second design was rapturously received when finally unveiled to the public, and the movie would go on to be a modest hit.
• Sikh groups and a number of fans in general criticized Star Trek Into Darkness for Whitewashing Khan by casting a white Brit to play him. The prequel comic (published months after the movie was released) attempted to try and fix this a bit by explaining that Admiral Marcus subjected Khan to Magic Plastic Surgery to hide his identity, but he was still an Indian Sikh by birth.
• Star Wars: George Lucas had never intended for there to be any ambiguity when Darth Vader told Luke that he was his father. However, he was surprised when a psychologist told him that audiences were unlikely to take Vader on his word alone. Even Vader's voice actor, James Earl Jones, said to himself "Oh, he's lying!" when reading the line and wondered how they would play it out. For Return of the Jedi, Lucas added a scene in which the much more trustworthy Yoda would confirm Luke's parentage.
• Several examples in X-Men Film Series including X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse:
  • Magneto's helmet, while still recolored red from its natural silver color, is a lot darker and a lot less goofy-looking than the one he wore at the end of First Class. It applies to the rest of his costume too. Given that everyone laughed their asses off at his costume back then, it's pretty obvious why the change was made.
  • After how poorly X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine were received by fans and critics alike, the end of Days of Future Past thankfully retconned them out of existence. Previously, Origins itself was subject to a retcon courtesy of The Wolverine, altering all but a few details.
  • X-Men and X2: X-Men United were much better received, but for ages people have complained about how Wolverine tended to steal the spotlight from the other X-Men, most notably the actual team leader Cyclops. Though he's a major player in this film, he certainly doesn't hog the spotlight nearly as much, as much of the ensemble (Professor X and Mystique especially) get a greater degree of screentime. The events of those films may have still happened but only in Broad Strokes, as the Cosmic Retcon more or less leaves the revised future a blank slate. This has given the other X-Men their chance to shine in future films, including Cyclops as his death in The Last Stand was undone.
  • Since the very first movie, fans have complained about the X-Men only wearing black leather uniforms instead of colorful costumes like in the comics. At the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, the X-Men finally don their colorful uniforms from the comics.
  • Psylocke wears her most familiar and long-lived comics outfit from the outset, looking as if she's stepped right off the page — the most comic-accurate character in any X-movie.^note She originally was going to be in a less skin-revealing outfit but her actress Olivia Munn fought hard to keep it as the leotard
    • Her whole character is a saving throw compared to the X3 version, where it was a surprise to learn in the credits or online that that one minor Brotherhood member with camouflage powers was even intended to be Psylocke. This one is definitely her, in all her psychic-blade-wielding ninja glory, hammered in by the right-off-the-page costume.
  • Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 were written to win crowds who were turned off by X-Men Origins: Wolverine with a more faithful depiction of Deadpool that respects the source material.
    • After hearing criticism that in the first film where Deadpool wasn't hinted as pansexual, the sequel gave away plenty of hints.

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