Hey, what's wrong with the MGS novelisation quote as a page quote? It's a perfect example of the horrible, horrible things that happen in adaptation. Does it need more explanation of the utter missing of the point?
Saying that the practice of changing character names and all around censoring anime is "far from dead" is very misleading, considering that almost every anime licensed by American companies are released only in uncensored DVD format, and the dubs almost always go for getting the same idea across in the way that sounds most natural in English. It mostly happens to little kid's shows.
Didn't
Uncle Toms Cabin use to be on here? And where would it go, anyway?
How the heck is Tarzan not included here? He was degraded from a downright superhuman immortal that spoke perfect English and had encyclopedic knowledge despite being reared in the remote jungle in the novels to a pidgin speaking ape-man in most adaptations.
To be completely fair, Conan Doyle did sow some seeds which might have contributed to the destruction of Watson. In a number of the stories written after
The Valley of Fear, especially 'His Last Bow' (which is the only story in the canon not written in first person), Conan Doyle wrote Watson as uncharacteristically obtuse, much in the style that would later become the popular perceptioin. I personally got a strange sense of the author having built up a kind of resentment towards Watson in those last stories, but that might just be my imagination.
Bluetooth The Pirate: Watson bore an uncanny resemblance to Doyle himself, in background at least. IF Doyle resented Watson, it may be linked to the fact that towards the end of his career, he resented himself. But that's just armchair psychology.
Ununnilium: What do you call it when the premise changes *within* a show to get rid of its more unique elements? For example,
Digimon Frontier, the fourth season of Digimon, lost the "Digimon partners" aspect, making it into a more generic sentai show.
Andyzero: I know what you mean, Chibi, but I'm not sure that's a good example. Technically, Digimon Frontier was a different series. Like how Digimon Tamers was a different series than Digimon Adventure, despite being called "Season 3."
Ununnilium: Point. How about the Mega Man Battle Network anime (I refuse to refer to it as "NT Warrior"), which did something similar in eliminating the "partner" aspect and having the two merge whenever there was a battle?
Ununnilium: ..."the entire Marvel and DC universes"? Huh? `.`
FurrySaint: I think they mean the way they've been changed because of TV shows and movies. And vice versa.
Ununnilium: That's not the same thing, though. I'm takin' it out.
Ununnilium: People,
please. Do
not make an example in the form "Any X, ever". First of all, it just isn't true; every generalization has an exception. (Yes, even that one.) Second, it doesn't illustrate the entry any.
Ununnilium: Weirdly enough, the monster in the
Spider Man clip looks sort of like the Thing.
Ununnilium: I don't know about the
Hitchhiker's example. I don't think it's "worse" so much as "different".
YYZ: Re-edited the re-edit of the Starship Troopers reference. It was not only ungrammatical, but sounded too much like a defense of the movie at Heinlein's expense; I replaced it with something on a more even keel.
- By which I mean it wasn't a neutral entry anymore - I didn't see the point of the edit, unless the point was to say that movies that take the mickey out of the book they're based on don't count as Adaptation Decay.
Space Ace: Isn't
Adaptation Decay an unintentional product? I mean, I wouldn't say that kind of satire is any sort of decay. Mean and underhanded, perhaps, but not decay.
And to be fair, the original entry was as far from neutral as you can get without coming round the other side. It was a Mobile Infantry sobstory if I ever saw one.
Looney Toons:
Adaptation Decay can be either unintentional or intentional. Deliberate changes — such as the kind Disney often imposes on properties it licenses — are clearly adaptation decay.
Silent Hunter: Quick point about
The Spy Who Loved Me- Fleming didn't like the novel very much and when selling the rights only permitted the title to be used.
Man Called True: I see
someone isn't a Roger Moore fan... Given that there are a million places to cite as a low point (see: the number of fans that like to forget Dalton ever existed), focusing the spotlight on him is probably unfair.
WLO: The My-Otome anime was adapted from the manga, not vice versa. The date of the release of the manga's first chapter is mentioned on the official site, with Wiki having a link to said page. Aforementioned date precedes the anime's first episode. Ergo, entry on this page has it the wrong way around. I'm not sure how to correct it, though...
Fast Eddie: Same way you entered your comment here. Go to the page, press 'edit page' and make the fix.
Burai: I would recommend striking ...
The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad (inexplicably combining The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
... as, to my memory, it "combines" them in the sense of an anthology (separate, independent productions packaged together back to back) rather than any kind of
blend as the text currently implies. (They may be individually decayed for other reasons, but co-distribution would not, in itself, be decay). But then, it
has been at least 20 years since I last saw the thing. Can anyone either second or refute my observations?
Charred Knight: seconded, it was an anthology, that combined two short specials. While I have never seen the Disney adaption of Sleepy Hallow since the Headless Horseman scared the crap out of me as a kid. I can safely say that at no point does Ichabod Crane or the Headless Horseman appear in the "Wind in the Willows" . After double checking on Wikipedia. I can safely say that this is not a major adaption decay as can be seen here so I removed it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Ichabod_and_Mr._Toad
Marionette: There's a nice example of
Adaptation Decay in one issue of
Catwoman which features a disguised
Harley Quinn pitching an idea for a Catwoman TV show to Network executives, which they progressively rework until it bears no resemblance to the original. The wit is so sharp that it's easy to infer that it is written from personal experience.
Eno: Apologies if my rather overly-detailed entries on video game to television adaptions is either too long and obstructive or if it doesn't fit into this category... This was the only place I really thought it did.
Wasn't the second Sonic cartoon based on the Archie comics version of Sonic the Hedgehog and not the game?
Some Guy: Nope, the second cartoon was its own creation. The Archie comic was actually somewhat based on the first wackier cartoon before drawing influence from the second cartoon and growing progressively more serious while gradually moving into its own continuity.
Charred Knight: I didn't know where Disgea should go (it's a crappy anime adaptation of a game) so I just put it into the anime part.
Willy Four Eyes: De-
Thread Moding and rewriting the entry on the
Mai-HiME project, as discussion appeared to be going into a
Stable Time Loop. Old discussion preserved here for posterity's sake:
- The Mai-Otome manga can hardly even be called an adaptation of its anime counterpart, except for the setting and characters — and even then, it's Character Derailment galore. (Mashiro is a boy impersonating the supposedly-dead real Princess Mashiro, who is his twin sister unknown to him. Arika is already a Garderobe student when the story begins, and is The Ditz instead of the Naive Newcomer. Nagi dies in a Heroic Sacrifice. The characters meet their resurrected Mai-HiME counterparts... The list goes on.)
- This was intentional, as Sunrise doesn't want the Mai franchise to be all the same. Sunrise comes up with a setting and characters, then the writers of the anime, and the writer of the manga tell completely different stories using those characters. The mangas are generally more Fanservice oriented (including a special Hentai chapter), and are a harem series whereas the anime is a yuri series.
- At this point, it is probably fair to note that the Otome manga actually started publication first. Also, this inclusion is likely to be disputed, given that some fans prefer the manga.
- Even if the anime started airing later, it was still the manga which was based on the anime, not the other way round.
- No, it's not. They were both given the same concept, and went with them independently. Neither is an adaptation of either. Thus it is literally not an adaptation, nor was it meant to be.
J Random User: I think the Sweeney Todd entry should be pulled. "Current actor does not play the role/look exactly like the first actor' does not
Adaptation Decay make.
Charred Knight: It's a
Pragmatic Adaptation the look of the character is not important to the story, and the movie is not worse for it. An
Adaptation Decay is something that is clearly worse.
Charred Knight: In terms of accuracy the Street Fighter american TV series blows the American movie right out of the water. Dee Jay is good, Balrog is evil, Ryu scars Sagat in a flashback, Ryu isn't a slime ball(his just their). Bison brainwashes Cammy (a reference to her hinted plotline in Street Fighter 2), and her fellow troops from MI6 appear. Hell they even have the boss from the first Final Fight show up in a wheel chair.
Caswin: On that note, removing the line "Bison has only one good line in the entire series." Having actually browsed a fan-page devoted to the show (and various others; it's really quite a good site), I can attest that he has more than one good line.
Prfnoff: Removed the
My Fair Lady example, as it was more about a
Revised Ending than anything (and Lerner didn't even invent it, though he wholeheartedly preferred it to Shaw's original ending).
Looney Toons: Sorry, thatother1dude, but I am enamoured of my own verbiage, and have replaced the phrase "mutant Disney offspring" in the example citing
Mary Poppins and
Bedknobs and Broomsticks. It's been there since I created this article three years ago, and unless you're a shill for Disney, there's no real need to change it. It's not like a correction or an expansion, after all.
CA Lieber: Weirdest complaint of this I've ever seen: a syndicated columnist who complained that Kindle editions don't measure up to the hard copies.
—-
OK, to whoever is trying to defend the
KH 2 Novels as not being
Adaptation Decay; do I really have to point out everything that's wrong with them? Believe me, it's a hefty list.
Scenes in the novels INSPIRED Nomura, who was an editor, nothing more and nothing less, to add scenes in Final Mix. But he NEVER confirmed the novels were canon; link to an interview where he said so and I'll believe you, but otherwise, it's bullshit. Stuff in the novels themselves indicate that it's NOT canon (Ex: Saix fights Riku in Ansem form during the main story and knows full well that he's Riku. In the game, when Riku appears in the World That Never Was, Saix is surprised because he thought ROXAS had killed him during their original fight.)
Last Note: If you're not even going to use propper spelling or grammar, then please don't bother editing your entry back, or otherwise I'll just have to think of you as a troll. The entry doesn't make sense anyway. "If you read the novels, you don't have to play Final Mix"?! Riiight, because you can fight Organization data battles, Terra, the 13 Mushrooms, etc. in the novels, or do all the rest of the stuff not relating to scenes.
Trogga: Is this really subjective?
Nobodymuch: Since most people would not agree that removing the rape of a coma victim from Sleeping Beauty was a change for the worse, yes it is subjective.
Cliche: Since I haven't received a proper justification for its inclusion for, er, long enough, it's off to purgatory!
Ryanasaurus0077: I think that Half Blood Prince's PG rating earns it a special mention on this page. I read the books and half expected this one (and both parts of Deathly Hallows, once THEY get rated) to be rated R, a VERY hard PG-13 at the VERY LEAST. After all, you can't have Deathly Hallows without an instance of
"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" inserted during the final battle.
Twin Bird: Does the
Pastel Defender Heliotrope example strike anyone else as shoehorning in the extreme?
It's not inevitable that the story will be changed when adapted to another medium. Just look at the movie version of Inkheart.
Vampire Buddha: Took a chainsaw to the page (18:03 GMT, 17/5/2009)
Irrelevant
- Note however that everyone involved with the Brett adaptations — starting with David Burke and Edward Hardwicke, the actors who played Watson — has been upfront about their desire to subvert this one all along. Throughout the series, Watson is portrayed as noticeably more intelligent and on-the-ball than is standard.
- The idea (accurate or not) that Watson is kind of dim goes back to the original stories. The humorist Finley Peter Dunne, using the persona of Mr. Dooley, wrote in a 1901 essay that Watson "don't know anything, and anything he knows is wrong. He has to look up his name in the parish register before he can speak to himself. He's a great friend of Sherlock Holmes and if Sherlock Holmes ever loses him, he'll find him in the nearest asylum for the feeble-minded." (Dunne used "humorous" dialectical spellings, which I have
correctedchanged to standardized English).
- The whole point of the current reboot is to make true-to-the-book Bond movies. Casino Royale was supposed to be a direct adaptation of the book, and the upcoming Quantum of Solace is supposed to be what Ian Fleming would have written if he decided to write a direct sequel to that book.
- Timothy Dalton *attempted* to do this upon replacing Moore, but EON's legal problems and the poor box office performance of Licence To Kill doomed him.
- Spectacularly averted the only way it really can be by the TV version of The Middleman- aside from a few pop culture references being made a bit more mainstream, the first episode is pretty much word-for-word, shot-for-panel identical to the comic miniseries it's adapted from. Except that Wendy doesn't have red hair on TV.
- The internet doujinshi known as "Shine Hellsing Now" does a pretty good job of succeeding in putting the two continuities together.
- Justified by Sondheim himself when during interviews for the film he talked of preferring the film to have Actors-Who-Sing over Singers-Who-Act. A sentiment shared by Burton. The logic being that film and stage are very different mediums requiring very different skillsets to be effective.
Natter
- Many of the pastiches (stories written by other authors) also portray Watson more faithfully. Some even have him contribute materially to the investigation when his medical knowledge enables him to serve as a coroner, analyzing victims' bodies and finding information that Holmes can use.
- In a newer remake of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Watson is the main focus of roughly the first third of the movie, and is shown to be eloquent, charming and an all around intelligent fellow. Contrast this to Holmes, who has been living up in a stone shack with no hygienic facilities for roughly a month, and who did not know, prior to meeting Watson, that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
- This troper believes that the movie version of Nancy Drew has more in common with Kim Possible than with the book version of Nancy Drew.
- This troper is a fan of both the book and movie Mary Poppins and finds the decay isn't too bad in that case; Mary manages to retain a surprising amount of her edge. Bedknob and Broomsticks, on the other hand, is mangled really badly.
- This is likely because Poppins creator P. L. Travers had some say in the movie's script, and stubbornly fought Walt Disney at every turn. Whether any specific idea was good or bad is left to the viewer, but the result was the best live-action film Disney ever made, and, as noted, something that captured the spirit of the books.
- Disney initially planned Bedknob and Broomstick, which they already had the rights to, as a potential substitute project because getting the rights for Mary Poppins was so difficult. As the finished film was a huge hit, it probably made sense for the company to do the substitute version years later, in hopes that it would be a similar success.
- And because Travers made it quite clear they weren't going to get to do a sequel.
- When Poppins was later adapted as a stage musical, director Richard Eyre wisely threw out any elements which would not translate from the film to the stage and replaced them with ideas taken from the original book — e.g., the anachronistic dancing penguins out, dancing living statues in.
I just removed the
Mary Poppins example, because apparently it isn't too different.
- I've not read the poem, but that just seems like the sort of changes necessary to make it filmable: cutting minor characters, tweaking a few things to give a little more dramatic conflict in the early sections, and compressing timescales a bit. Unless you're holding out on us a bit, I don't think this comes anywhere near the other items here.
- That works for the stage production, but the film version has no justification for the "first degree sunburn" they tried to pass off as a horrific deformity. Heck, even the Wishbone version did a better job.
- Look up "giallo movie" and "Dario Argento" on Wikipedia, and you'll understand the changes.
- Well, in the original book, Mike was obsessed with TV Westerns. I'm willing to write off the change to violent video games as a necessary change to avoid anachronism.
- Dahl did write an early draft of the script for the first movie, sticking very closely to the book, but it was rejected on the grounds that none of the characters (not even Charlie) were sympathetic.
- Dune is one of those "if you've never read the book(s), you'll love the movie" things. Even moreso, as it's common for those who've seen the film before reading the books to later read the books and toss them aside as boring and slow-paced. Meanwhile, those who read the books first almost always hate the movie with a burning fire that never ends.
- However the Kubrick version is as with many cases of his adaptations: His own version of it. Kubrick is known to use the general idea and making the rest his own.
- If I recall correctly from one of the novellas in Four Past Midnight, King regarded Kubrick's The Shining as exactly that: Kubrick's, and he has a character refer to some of the characteristic camera work in it. So The Shining is an actual movie in King's Multi Verse. Whether it is about a schoolteacher-wannabe-writer wintering over with his family in Colorado, I don't know.
- I never read the book, but when I was forced into watching the movie I was appalled by the outlandish amount of casual racism interspersed throughout — not just having inept and/or oppressive Britishers, but having the fuck-up fairy as the above-mentioned soul sister or the best friend who turns to alcoholism at the end as the only asian character...
- Please, if you love the book, DON'T WATCH THAT VERSION! Watch either the one with Colin Firth or that other good one. You can watch the old B&W one for laughs—the one with the carriage-chase scene.
- In fairness, a movie is good for about 80-110 pages of details, and the books are 300-500 pages long. Something has to be cut out. Personally I think that while they cut a lot out, what is left in is remarkably close to the original.
- One particular thing that was planned to be changed in the Order of the Phoenix movie was that many of the house-elves were going to be consolidated into one character. J.K. Rowling told them "Trust me. Don't do that. It will cause you horrible problems down the line." It's a good thing they listened to her, because one house-elf that they were planning to cut was Kreacher.
- Although, to be fair, Rowling has said that Prisoner of Azkaban is her favourite film thusfar. PoA is the one film with the most discrepancies between the books and the previous films, even unto the director (Alfonso Cuaron) employing child actors from ethnic minorities to help Hogwarts seem more diverse (these actors were not invited back into the next films by following directors) and initially suggsting to scrap CGI monsters in favour of traditional puppetry.
- And due to its PG rating, the sixth film deserves a special mention here; this troper even half expected it to be rated R!
I was initially really excited when I heard about the HBO adaptation of
A Song Of Ice And Fire, but after the way they mauled the Sookie Stakhouse books, I absolutely cringe to think what they might do to Westeros. If they wanted a series full of gratuitous, disgusting, PWP sex, why didn't they start with the ninth Anita Blake book?
- I think they should have done an Anita Blake book!! But I thought that SV was a sort of sexy romance series of books? they really have no sex in them?
- Hell, ASOIAF has a lot of sex in it, all of it squickier than anything in True Blood (well if you don't count technical necrophilia). A 13-year-girl in an arranged marriage, not to mention Twincest, and the whole Sansa thing... If anything they will be making the sex more palatable, not less, as they are aging up Dany. Plus George RR Martin is involved and will be writing an episode per season. A far greater danger is that HBO will be too foolish enough to pick it up, rather than changing it to fit their style, as the books already have a great deal of sex, violence and cursing in it.
- Is that so much worse then Claudia in Interview with a vampire tho?
- What, you mean the Negative Space Wedgie? I was so busy waiting for the robot to show up, I must have missed it! Oh, and the once awesome Silver Surfer gets weaksauced in this, relegated to destroying the Space Wedgie and doing a lot of moping.
- The original author directed it... you can't say they didn't try.
- Hey now, the manga is so different from the movie that it's hardly fair to compare the two. The movie is fine if you take it at face value, rather than coming to it with preconceptions — this troper saw the movie before reading the manga, and had/has no problem with it as a result.
- Given that the movie is Otomo's work as well, this troper tends to think the Akira movie is more a case of Alternate Continuity than an adaptation, much like the movie version of Revolutionary Girl Utena.
- In the manga it happened between the introductions of Yuki and Mikuru. The anime (and maybe the novels) have it happen after both are introduced.
- And Mikuru starts wearing that pink waitress outfit (which apparently the illustrator decided to "improve" on, If You Know What I Mean), Haruhi gets a computer, Mikuru is left at the computer club for some time wearing the outfit, and then Haruhi asks for "the newest model". Can we say the order of events got mixed up again?
- And Haruhi seems more
villainous like a Jerkass in the manga.
- To be fair, the original anime movie (English dub notwithstanding) can be considered more of a Pragmatic Adaptation than a straight one. The movie, when judged by its own merits, is pretty decent, and most of the characters that had their roles changed like Heart, Colonel and Jackal were one-bit villains that were never really major players in the manga to begin with, so their change in roles don't affect the main storyline at all. And you have admit that the battle between Raoh's army and the Fang Clan was pretty cool.
- The live-action movie, on the other hand, shall remain undiscussed...
- That's because the cartoon series is a sequel for the movie. You know, the one with Robert Patrick and Mark Dacascos?
- Although there was a fighting game based on the cartoon, the Western developed Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, most fans don't even acknowledge the game as part of the Double Dragon canon (not that Double Dragon has much of a canon).
- In the first Zelda game, Link does really shoot laser beams from his sword (albeit at full health only). It's one thing the cartoon got right.
- This particular troper always felt that the anime was worse. I consider both manga to be Pragmatic Adaptations, especially in the case of the Disgaea 2 manga since some scenes such as Etna's drop to level 1 wouldn't have been handled as well during the transition to manga. And while we do miss out on half the game, everything else that was lacking in the game has been improved immensely See Adell's Crowning Moment of Awesome.
- To be fair, though, the second manga does fall into Adaptation Decay by having Rozalin break down and cry a little often than she should be. The lack of her as the real Overlord doesn't help.
- "Baron von Bonner"? Is it supposed to be Baron von Blubba/Skel-Monsta the Invincible Minor Minion or Grumple Grommit/Super Drunk the Final Boss?
- A person who relies on this comic alone for background will be surprised that the protagonists and girlfriends are human. They should know that by now.
- This caused a Plot Tumor for the DS games Revolution and Double Shot in which it is evident that Bub and Bob and supporting characters have been living as bubble dragons in the first place.
Non-examples
- The film version of Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers completely removed the philosophical questions of the book while transforming the all-male power-armored Mobile Infantry who go to extreme lengths to recover their own wounded and dead into a co-ed showering Redshirt Army who see nothing wrong with ''killing'' their own wounded. Director Paul Verhoeven subverted the entire book, seemingly in order to satirize what he (and a great many other readers) felt to be Heinlein's fascistic tendencies. Whether adaptations that parody their source material really count as Adaptation Decay is a question for another day.
- Verhoeven admits that he never got more than a few chapters into the book, which raises the question of whether lazy adaptation can count as parody.
- The reason Verhoeven never bothered to read much of the book is that the film wasn't intended to be an adaptation or parody of Starship Troopers itself, but instead a satire of that kind of gung-ho militarist Sci-Fi. The studio optioned the rights to Starship Troopers and made Verhoeven change character names.
- Important to note the character names were not changed to the names in the book, at least the first names. John was a nickname Anglos gave Juan Rico. You can grasp some of this with the producers keeping part of Denise Richard's Carmencita Ibanez as Carmen Ibanez. Made worse by another Race Lift with the Japanese Sgt. Zim becoming a caucasian was well.
- The main enemy, the "Arachnids", were, in the book, a highly technical race. In the movie, they are just bugs who breed into missile throwing mutants. It's never quite explained how they manage to be a real threat to humanity; how a planet-based species manages to send asteroids across light years to hit Earth without technology is never explained. It's perhaps worth noting here that it's implied in the movie, however, that the bugs are merely scapegoats and it's in fact the humans who are the evil invading aliens.
- As for the all-male Mobile Infantry becoming co-ed in the movie, the book was published in 1959, an era where the idea of women being front-line combat soldiers in the United States was unheard of. In the book, while the Mobile Infantry was all male, all space pilots were female. The book explains that women, in general, have faster reflexes and handle g's better. Heinlein's later works had female soldiers (and male space pilots) and he would have likely approved of the Mobile Infantry becoming co-ed (while decrying the rest of the movie).
- And of course the animated series based on the movie weirded it up again, focusing a lot more on the whole fighting giant bugs in space thing by combining all the awesome military things — powered armour, explosive CGI firefights — and throwing about half the philosophical social commentary out the window. Surprisingly, the series was still quite good. Unfortunately, the studio ran out of funding.
- I don't agree, the movie catches the Heinlein's philosophy of service and camaraderie very well. It expresses that in a different way from the book to keep from being boring as hell and updating some of the role expectations for women, and of course the plot is different, but on the whole the moods are very, very similar.
- Worst example of decay: In the book, a soldier asks the drill sergeant why they are training with knives when their side is armed with nukes, and you can win by just "pushing a button". The drill sergeant asks, "Would you housebreak a puppy by chopping off its head?" and elaborates that the MI is there to provide measured force. In the movie, a soldier asks the same question, and the drill sergeant throws a knife through the soldier's hand and quips, "Your enemy cannot push a button if his hand is disabled. Medic!"
This movie was a case of
In Name Only.
- In the anime, Hellsing is isn't a person so much as an entire organization devoted to killing monsters (although there is a Hellsing family at its core related to Stoker's doctor).
- Hellsing is more of a far-in-the-future sequel than an adaptation of the novel. It's implied that all the events in Dracula happened more or less the way described in the book, except for Dracula´s death. The Hellsing organization was founded by Van Helsing himself, probably after the end of the affair, to prepare England for future vampire attacks and was continued after his death by his descendants.
Hellsing isn't an adaptation of
Dracula, it's...something else.
- It is an adaptation of Dracula. Its a story based on that one. Its just a very, very separate one. Just like Van Helsing is an adaptation of Dracula. And Clue is an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. I think they are. But cool thought.
- The ultimate example is The Lawnmower Man, which isn't so much Adaptation Decay as Adaptation Disintegration. The movie has not even the slightest element whatsoever in common with Stephen King's original short story apart from a man being run down by a lawnmower. That New Line Cinema thought they could get away with calling it Stephen King's the Lawnmower Man (King had to sue them to have his name disassociated from it — and even then, they ignored multiple court rulings directing them to do so!) simply beggars belief. The film originally started out as an original project called "Cyber God" until New Line decided to shove a lawnmower into it and cash in on King's fame.
Once again,
In Name Only.
- The Temperance Brennan novel series by Kathy Reichs features a worldly, recovering alcoholic, single mother as the main character who splits her time between teaching in North Carolina and serving as the forensic anthropologist for the province of Quebec, in Canada. Bones features a Tempe Brennan who's at least ten years younger and an almost textbook TV Genius who has no concept of how to operate in society. Oh, and she works out of Washington, teamed up with a bunch of CSI lab rat clones and a ridiculous magic crime-solving holodeck.
- This troper, a native of Washington, D.C., has her own complaints about
CSI-DC Bones, which is (except for a few aerial shots of the National Mall at night) set not in Washington, but very clearly in the United States of Generica.
The
Bones TV series ins't based on the books; it's
Inspired By the
author's life.
- This troper, being a sci-fi geek, was appalled upon watching the I, Robot movie for the first time. It bore no resemblance to the actual collection of short stories, or anything by Isaac Asimov, for that matter. ( The fact that the robots manage to break the Three Laws and rebel against humanity completely ignore that Asimov hated the idea of evil robots, and created the unbreakable Three Laws solely so such a thing would be avoided.)
- That's because it wasn't supposed to be an adaptation.
- Asimov did come up with the zeroth law, a concept very similar to the one that makes the robots rebel in the movie. Still, he avoided that conclusion because he hated the idea of evil robots.
- There exists an unfilmed (and very likely never-to-be-filmed) script for I, Robot, liberally but respectfully adapted by no less than Harlan Ellison. Try and find its serialization in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, then read it and weep for the great movie that will never be made. (It's also been published in book form.)
This was another case of
In Name Only.
- How on earth has the 1931 version of Frankenstein not been mentioned here?!
- Or, really, any adaptation of Frankenstein since then that's portrayed the monster as a slow-witted, misunderstood Gentle Giant instead of a ruthless, vengeful and cunning adversary.
Yeah, I've read the book, and the monster
is a dull-witted, misunderstood gentle giant.
- Adaptation manages to mix Adaptation Decay with a big whopping dose of lampshade decorating — the movie claims to be an adaptation of "The Orchid Thief" by Susan Orlean in the credits, but is really about the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, attempting to write a movie adaptation of "The Orchid Thief" while trying to stay true to the source material so as not to introduce Adaptation Decay, saying that he doesn't want to "cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know... or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end". Eventually he gives up, and the movie starts having sex and guns and a car chase, as well as characters learning profound life lessons and growing and coming to like each other and overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end.
Sounds like it's not
actually an adaptation so much as a movie
about adaptations.
- One character in Death Note, Matt, had his hair color changed from red to dark green in the translation from manga to anime. This was done because of the anime's stylistic way of identifying Light Yagami as Kira, namely changing his hair color from brown to red, which caused him to look too similar to Matt in full color.
Seriously, changing hair colours in the transition from black-and-white to colour? The anime follows the manga almost exactly, no decay there. The movie, on the other hand...
- The Doom comic deserves a mention on this page. It plays its franchise impossibly straight on one hand, but then makes the nameless marine protagonist completely psychotic gun-crazy. And it works.
We never find out about the marine's personality - it's entirely possible that this is correct.
Edited the entry relating to
Fullmetal Alchemist. The troper was using terms incorrectly (there is not a single
Canon Sue in the anime, regardless of its other flaws). Considering that the anime is a completely
Alternate Continuity, and that the characterization is justified within the context of that continuity, it isn't really accurate to say that there was
Character Exaggeration. It is an example of
Adaptation Decay, insofar as it is very different from the source upon which it is based, but I think that things like characterization should be assessed with respect to its internal continuity, and not with respect to the manga.
Someone Else's Post on Kanon:
Unfortunately, this is also the version where Mai's plot gets squashed and condensed, so when it's revealed that the monsters Mai battles at the school are manifestations of her own inner power but neither that power nor the fact that it left Mai ostracized her whole life with only Yuuichi and her now-dead mother knowing and accepting the truth is never explained. Mai's left without a reason to care about Yuuichi at all, making her last-ditch plea to keep Yuuichi from moving away by pretending the field they play in is being attacked by monsters look somewhat deranged. It all seems to imply that she literally drove herself crazy because she couldn't handle losing a childhood crush, and her relationship with Sayuri was one more aspect of self-denial. Considering she's also the closest thing in the series to an
Action Girl, there are so, SO many
Unfortunate Implications.
Asking for deletion - I thought it was really obvious that Mai was completely ostracized to her abilities, given that there is a scene showing nasty graffiti towards her and what not, and that Yuuichii was one of the few (if only) people who could accept her without fear. What do others say?
BritBllt: Okay Vampire Buddha, I don't know what book you've been reading, but it clearly wasn't Mary Shelly's
Frankenstein if you think the Monster was a slow, dim-witted gentle giant in it. Here's a random quote:
"I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends."
Putting the example back on the page.
What about the King Arthur stories? changes all the way from combining the sword in the stone, which is
Exactly What It Says On The Tin, with Exaclibur, which he got from the lady in the lake, and the adaptation decay in the TV show, {Merlin}, which includes, but is not limited to, Making Merlin have an age similar to that of King Arthur.
- Adaptation Decay means the adaptation is worse, or deeply different. Changing the details isn't what this is about.
Eponymous Kid: Look, all I'm saying is that I don't see what's wrong with an underwater adventure in Star Trek that can't be said about every underwater adventure ever. There's underwater shit in Star Wars. The Teen Titans go underwater sometimes without people complaining that the show isn't about water it's about superheroes.
I mean, come on. Next you're going to tell me any time they go down to the planet they're betraying the premise by not contantly trekking across the stars.
Matthew The Raven: You can take it out if you want to. Just don't bitch about it in
the trope description and mock the person who put it there.
Eponymous Kid: Right, sorry. Just, it's frustrating. Because, true fact: Most episodes of Star Trek, you're lucky to see fifteen total seconds of actual stars and little to no actual trekking, because episodes only happen when the ship's progress is impeded or a crisis occurs. So, oh shit, since TOS, there has been as little trekking or stars as possible on that show. Just saying.
Tsunde Ray: What about adaptations of a game from one platform to another that are decay, but aren't necessarily
Porting Disasters? As in, the port is still somewhat good, but it's missing some features from the source material?
Thunder Force II, for instance, got ported from the Sharp X68000 to the
Mega Drive, and lost a stage, some graphical effects, and the map feature in the process. For an example anyone might care about, there's the NES version of
Donkey Kong, which is missing the 75m sub-level.
Tnu1138:I’ve noticed some issues with the two page quotes here on this entry they seem to fit less in the field of Adaptation Decay and more along the lines of
Recursive Adaptation and
Character Derailment respectively
Doom Tay: I'm worried this will get applied to things where the source material has little plot to begin with. For example, say you wanted to make a film based on
Knights Of Cydonia or some other
Concept Video. You'd have to put a plot that originally spanned a few minutes into a two-hour film, and you have no other material to refer to. This means you
have to make stuff up to make the length, and as much as you want to, you most likely can't consult the original artist/video maker. So no matter
how much you care, you will have things that are not present in the source material, and people will still accuse the work with
Adaptation Decay. Anyone disagree?
Tnu1138: the concepts you mention seerm to be more befitting of
Adaptation Expansion and
Pragmatic Adaptation
