Most of the examples are bad: Playing Hamlet

Playing Hamlet is supposed to be "When a character's age -IN STORY- is pushed up to accomodate the actor playing him"

For example, Prince Caspian is 13 in the book. 17 in the film to accomodate for 25 years old Ben Barnes.

Most of the examples on Playing Hamlet however are bad, because they simply lists actors that are older than their characters, with no mention of how that age was changed (if it was). If the age is not mentioned, then that's pretty much just Hollywood Old / Dawson Casting

edited 25th Feb '11 12:12:13 AM by Ghilz

Maybe narrow down and merge Playing Hamlet & Playing Gertrude, moving the leftovers to Dawson Casting and Hollywood Old?

In the narrow definition, Hamlet and Gertrude can't exist without each other. There can be no too old son without a too young mother, and vice versa. So it would make more sense to merge them.

The non-narrow part is simply gender-specific and generally messy versions of the far more clear (and also gender neutral) tropes Dawson Casting and Hollywood Old. So we can just move those examples to those tropes.

What should we call the merged trope? Hamlet And Gertrude or the longer but more to the point Old Hamlet And Young Gertrude? Maybe Parent Hardly Older Than The Child?

Seems Absurdly Youthful Mother has a similar problem. They are talking about splitting it, and the first type should probably go together with a merger of Hamlet and Gertrude.

Absurdly Youthful Mother is a tad bit wider since it can involve time-warping thingamajicks or plain old teenage pregnancy. I think we should merge these and make it a subtrope of that one.

IMO, the merged trope should be gender neutral.

These two should be merged, there is no reason for this trope to be split across gender.

Also, the name is unclear. While Hamlet is a famous name, its primary connotation really isn't "character who is older in the film than in the book". Gertrude isn't even a famous name.

Support merge and purging of Shakespeare reference.

There is now a redirect called "Adaptational Aging" which gets the point across without the Shakespeare reference. Also, several of the examples that look like pure Dawson Casting having been purged.

If anything, the Playing Gertrude seems more like the opposite of Dawson Casting.

I don't see why these two should be merged. They seem like two distinct tropes to me. It is not simply splitting a trope across gender, they are two separate phenomenons. Playing Hamlet is when the story is changed so that the character will fit the actor's age. Playing Gertrude is more like a subtrope of Hollywood Old, when an actor is much younger than the character and that actor is close in age to the actor that plays the character's child. Also, neither trope is gender specific. Playing Hamlet tends to be done with male characters and Playing Gertrude tends to be done with female characters but both tropes contain examples from both genders.

One thing I'm unclear about is how much territory Dawson Casting covers. I've read in some places that it is specific to older actors playing teenagers, while I've also read that it covers an situation where the actor is significantly older than the character, for example if a 35-year-old played a 25-year-old.

There is now a page action crowner for this trope here.

I am not sure if there are other options to consider aside from either renaming the trope or merging it with Playing Gertrude. I think narrowing down the description could be an option as well though or just part of a possible merge.

I think people take it as implied. If Sean Connery is playing Romeo, I don't think they have to explicitly say he's not 15.

Bump. So let's come up with a nice new name.

Whoa, no merge. These are unrelated tropes that we happened to name after after characters in Hamlet.

Playing Gertrude: Movies cast actresses much younger than the characters they play due to popular standards of beauty.

Playing Hamlet: Movies raise a character's age to suit that of the actor/actress playing them.

Those are very related. The merged trope is going to be:

• A character plays a role that is meant to be a much different age than their own.

Ah, but it's kinda different in the way that if we do merge it, we must still note the difference in flavour.

They're unrelated tropes, and can't be merged! Playing Hamlet is about changing the age of the character to more closely match the actor! It can only happen in adaptations, because otherwise the character doesn't have a predefined age to change.

Playing Gertrude, on the other hand, looks like the opposite of Dawson Casting. It's about having an actor too young for the role, like Dawson is about having an actor too old. Those two are closely related to each other, and have nothing to do with adaptations, and thus nothing to do with Playing Hamlet. They are all three about ages, but the similarity ends there.

Given the support for a rename, there is now an alternative titles crowner for this trope here. Feel free to add names as you see fit.

This might not be a deal-breaker but I would find it a bit odd if it ends up being called Adaptational Aging, yet the trope is present in the canonical text for Hamlet.

edited 9th Oct '11 11:24:15 PM by Camacan

Adaptational Aging feels clumsy. How about Age Lift, as an analogy to Race Lift?

Could also be specified as Actor Induced Age Lift.

Edit: Added options to the crowner.

edited 10th Oct '11 3:30:04 AM by LordGro

I like Age Lift.

Playing Hamlet and Adaptational Aging are now redirects for Age Lift, the wicks should be fixed, the old laconic page for Playing Hamlet is now on the cutlist and there is a new one for Age Lift. There are also notes about the change on the Renamed Tropes page and in the renamed tropes thread. I also sent a report to move the archived discussion found here.

There are a few issues that I would like some input on before this topic is locked though. First, while I went through the wicks and tried to correct ones that did not seem to fit, I may have made some mistakes, so I think it is worth checking my work there. Second, I changed the laconic to "Characters ages are changed in an adaption to accommodate older actors" and I wanted to know if that description seemed alright to everyone else. Third, should the part of the description about Hamlet be kept or is it no longer necessary now that the name has been changed?

edited 17th Nov '11 12:22:30 PM by LouieW

Discussion moved.

The New Laconic is good, and I'd say the whole section about Hamlet can be moved to the Theatre section as a general example, with some of the more notable specifics listed (Laurence Olivier was 41 in 1948, Mel Gibson was 34 in 1990, Richard Burton was 40 in 1964, Derek Jacobi was 42 in 1980, Kevin Kline was 43 in 1990, Kenneth Branagh was 36 in 1996.)