Your work's been adapted. What's likely to be glossed over/missing?

I would hate to sound pretentious by suggesting that Hollywood would screw up my story and characters a lot, because it's not as if it's high art ...

But Hollywood would screw up a lot.

• Lennik, a bombastic, arrogant Anti-Hero who fights bad guys so he can steal their treasure and is mostly motivated by self-interest, would be turned into either a brooding and wimpy dork who just wants to be normal and struggles with basic self-confidence, or some total boyscout who jumps at the chance to save the world for its own sake.
• Crendis, an actual brooding kid struggling with self-confidence, who has to learn how to accept himself before he can really grow, will either be cut entirely or have his personal growth trimmed down and condensed into some romance-induced character development shortcut.
• Vala, main competitive rival to Lennik and also one of the most powerful mages in the setting, and who just happens to have Belligerent Sexual Tension with her aforementioned rival, but who also struggles with a Superpower Meltdown and guilt over accidentally causing her mother's death, would be turned into a cliche Love Interest who frowns all the time until the hero who she doesn't like at first can win her over with "funny" antics. Like some shitty Adam Sandler movie.
• Takon, a knight from a remote village and Lennik's very critical, stoic, and unlikely best friend, would probably be cut. Or worse, inexplicably gender-swapped into a Love Interest like the female lead in Patch Adams.

Yeah, fuck Hollywood.

edited 25th Mar '16 9:12:16 PM by Lennik

I have a feeling Hollywood would dumb down a lot of the species names, the rumma (a sort of rabbit-lizard creature) would get re-named to space rabbits, for example.

Talava Valok-an androgynous character, would become completely male.

Kalla's more caring side would be overshadowed by his blunt honesty and fighter sides.

I expect Hollywood to give many species Non-Mammal Mammaries because heaven forbid an (alien!) female not have boobs.

By "completely male", I suppose you mean "gains inexplicable amounts of muscle, a more rectangular face, a 5 o'clock shadow, and other male biological features"?

Maybe you can put a lampshade on the Non-Mammal Mammaries? Have the aliens wear literal balloons on their chests because "you humans are dumb and won't stop misgendering us unless we have chest sacs like your females".

Okay, maybe that's too silly, depending on the genre. Just throwing out ideas.

Pretty much any of my works would go from Everybody Smokes to pretty much no one smokes and anyone that does will get all of two puffs on a cigarette before being the recipient of numerous Anvilicious speeches on the evils of smoking.

They won't be depicted as smoking again for the entire film but other characters will go on about how they're "always smoking" then at the end of the movie they'll announce that they're giving up smoking - which will be deemed sufficient Character Development.

The director will, of course, see absolutely nothing hypocritical, or any Values Dissonance, in having the characters react to stressful situations by hitting the booze cabinet like there's no tomorrow.

Any references in my works to cigarettes will be converted to "beer" - like in the movie version of John Dies At The End c.f. the book version (because alcohol is a completely safe drug with no societal repercussions at all and has caused no deaths)

edited 26th Mar '16 1:51:16 AM by Wolf1066

@hellomoto: Well, Talava isn't human, but his species does have a degree of sexual dimorphism, Talava sort of falls in the middle, but I suspect that Hollywood would make him look more like a male.

No I think that is a funny little idea. Or something like "Humans claim we have bizzare anatomies, but the females of their species have eyes in their chests. At least I think they do, as that's where the males are always looking while talking to them."

My story will have to be scaled down considerably — given that the characters number in the hundreds it will be impossible to fit them all in a movie. Even the amount of plot important characters will be too much and will have to be Demoted to Extra, or worse Adapted Out. In addition, the sexual and violent aspects will likely be toned down.