History Main / CompressedAdaptation

The third season and fourth of ThomasTheTankEngine suffer from this, with many plot elements and full episodes never being adapted. This could be partially due to ExecutiveMeddling, though.

** And now ''DeathlyHallows'' is being made into two films. A joke going around is that they made it in two parts to fill in all the important plot points [[ChekovsGun (that didn't seem all that important at the time)]] that they cut out in the previous movies.

[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]

[[AC: Comic Books]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC: {{Music}}]]

[[AC: Theater]]

** And now ''DeathlyHallows'' is being made into two films.

* This is sadly the case with many anime that are based off of visual novels, [[TropesAreNotGood some]][[TropesAreNotBad times]]. The [[{{Hentai}} ero-OVA series]], ''MoonlightLady'' did this, and ultimately suffers for it, as the plot was riddled with more holes than you could shake a stick at.
* Done with ''{{Amagami}}''. Fortunately, every character is given their own arc in the anime. [[YourMileageMayVary Whether or not it was well done is up to the viewer]].
* ''[[{{Tsukihime}} Lunar Legend Tsukihime]]'' went through this treatment. [[AdaptationDecay Fans weren't too happy with the results]], particularly the massive, massive plot-holes.

** The book and the movie are VERY different, one of the primary differences is that, in the book, Tristran is gone for the better part of a year; whereas in the movie, Tristan (not a typo, they changed his name for the movie) he's gone for about a week. Also, of the entire cast, correct if this is wrong, only Yvainne, the immediate faerie royal family and Ditchwater Sal's names were NOT changed.
* ''{{Lord of the Rings}}''. And it's still 11 hours long.

*** The [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Animated/TheReturnOfTheKing Rankin-Bass version]] of ''Return of the King'' handled it by focusing entirely on Frodo and Sam, with everything else basically in the background to give a sense of importance to the quest. Every other main character but Gandalf, a bit of Aragorn, and the other hobbits was cut entirely.
* The film version of ''[[AvatarTheLastAirbender Avatar]]'', ''Film/TheLastAirbender'', was already expected to suffer from this before its release, with fans assuming that it would be impossible to squeeze three seasons of the cartoon into three movies. Judging by the first film, it looks like the fans' fears were dead-on, as characters in the movie will spout endless amounts of exposition, line after line, in an effort to compress an entire season into an hour and a half of film.
* ''AmericanPsycho.'' To be fair, many of the longest scenes in the books are for all practical purposes [[{{squick}} unfilmable.]]

** Of course you have to consider the [[ShowWithinAShow comic-within-a-comic]] became a separate movie.
*** The Director's cut ran just about three hours and the Ultimate Cut, containing the Tales film was just a little under four hours.
** I wouldn't say so. I read the whole book in about three hours. The story involving Tale of The Black Freighter books had nothing to do with the mystery plot. [[spoiler: However, Walter Kovacs, AKA Rorscach, did have some brief interaction with the guy who sold the comics, and The Tales of The Black Freighter story itself could have been symbolic of some other plot element.]]

[[AC: Live Action TV]]
* While R.L.Stine's paticular style of [[YourMileageMayVary "Horror"]] may or may not [[NightmareRetardant scare you]], [[spoiler: You think something scarey is about to happen, nothing happens, repeat 10 or 20 times, then the monster dies]] taking TWO books with 90 minutes worth of plot each and craming both of them into a half hour show minus commercials is [[WallBanger just...]] Even if Stine's [[strike: horror]] suspense '''worked''', it wouldn't. ("The Demon Mask" was better though, as it was actually long enough to cover an entire book, preserving Stine's horror/suspense

** A lot of the first game made it in, but once they got through with that, they winged it and pretty much revamped the plot from there on. It wasn't all bad, though. The big fight between [[spoiler:B-st form Haseo and Ovan]] was badass and the HaseoxAtoli scenes were very cute (the main reason why this troper liked the movie). Although admitedly the big Avatar battle with [[spoiler:Cubia]] would've been AWESOME to see.

* The (1st) anime adaptation of ''MahouSenseiNegima'' had only 26 episodes and a very half-assed ending which, to be honest, could concievably have been true from what had come out so far...if they never consulted the author. The manga is currently at 200+ chapters, with more on the way. Supposedly it's planned to end at around 400 or so.
** Never mind the GenreShift...
** The first adaptation managed to combine Compression with ''{{Filler}}''. They managed to stick a good half-dozen episodes between the end of the manga's third volume and the beginning of the fourth, then compressed the entire events of the next three volumes into ''two episodes''.

* Some of the last ''DeathNote'' anime episodes suffer from this very heavily, with one episode equaling a ''whole volume'' of the manga in one occasion. It wasn't too bad, though, due to these parts of the manga being drawn out for a little too long (they wanted to make it exactly 108 chapters.)
** Entire subplots are cut out, like Mello using the Death Note to threaten the president (which ultimately results in the president's suicide and him being replaced with a somewhat spineless successor who decides to disband the SPK)- the aforementioned episode that jumps over 9 chapters. In another case, Mogi is temporarily held by Near when Demegawa's mob invades SPK headquarters, and is falsely said to have died, which helps lead to Aizawa cooperating with Near. The anime also significantly plays down the debate over the political and social implications of what Kira is doing

'''2 1/2''' hours is the standard limit that most filmmakers try to abide by, because if it's any longer than that, it's very likely that not many people will want to watch it (which means it will make less money for the producers, especially since you can't show it as often in the same theater). Let's face it: (and to quote in exact words what my most favorite English teacher ever once said) You just can't do in a two and a half hour long movie what you can in an 800 page novel.

* Happens to just about every version of ''LesMiserables.'' Les Mis doesn't even ''get'' the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink TV versions. The most famous example is, of course, the musical, which gets its own section. Seriously, is there a ''Les Miserables'' movie out there that keeps in The Bishop of Digne's backstory, Sister Simplice, and the Battle of Waterloo, and introduces all of the Friends of the ABC? Didn't think so.

* ''LesMiserables'' takes a fourteen hundred page book with LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and makes an two-and-three-quarter-hours-long musical with about ten principles and an ensemble of twenty-something. Granted, it ''works'' wonderfully, but even on stage it's very stylized to keep the action moving chop-chop-chop! It feels almost like a three-hour {{Montage}} covering almost all of the subtropes thereof (with added awesomeness).

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* ''LunarLegendTsukihime'' went through this treatment. [[AdaptationDecay Fans weren't too happy with the results]], particularly the massive, massive plot-holes.

** The Extended Edition does a better job of remaining faithful to the book. Still, it's more of an AdaptionDistillation and some major scenes are left out for plot and timing reasons.

* ''MahouSenseiNegima'' had only 26 episodes and a very half-assed ending which, to be honest, could concievably have been true from what had come out so far...if they never consulted the author. The manga is currently at 200+ chapters, with more on the way. Supposedly it's planned to end at around 400 or so.

'''2 1/2''' hours is the standard limit that most filmmakers try to abide by, because if it's any longer than that, it's very likely that not many people will want to watch it (which means it will make less money for the producers). Let's face it: (and to quote in exact words what my most favorite English teacher ever once said) You just can't do in a two and a half hour long movie what you can in an 800 page novel.

** ''Wicked'' can't even be called an adaptation except InNameOnly. The {{Disneyfication}} committed by the show has gotta be pretty blatant when even the ''blurb'' of the book tells you that this novel is a little DarkerAndEdgier than that adorably happy musical you saw the other week.

* While R.L.Stine's paticular style of [[YourMileageMayVary "Horror"]] may or may not [[NightmareRetardant scare you]], [[spoiler: You think something scarey is about to happen, nothing happens, repeat 10 or 20 times, then the monster dies]] taking TWO books with 90 minutes worth of plot each and craming both of them into a half hour show minus commercials is [[WallBanger just...]] Even if Stine's [[strike: horror]] suspense '''worked''', it wouldn't. ("The Demon Mask" was better though, as it was actually long enough to cover an entire book, preserving Stine's horror/suspense style).
* ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents not only shoehorns three whole books into one movie, it moves plot points around, leaves out whole subplots, and creates new ones out of whole cloth.
** Very slightly justified by the fact that the series wasn't finished when the movie was made.

** To show how it's literal: this troper recently rewatched ''Goblet of Fire'' with the book by its side to compare. The first 30-40 minutes cover over ''250 pages'' of the book.

** The Ralph Bakshi animated version suffered even more from [[http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/bakshi/bakshi.htm "Tolkien's Greatest Hits"]] syndrome, and no wonder: it covers the same events as the first two films of the Peter Jackson trilogy, but in less than half the time.

** The Extended Edition does a better job of staying faithful to the book. Still, it's more of an AdaptionDistillation, and some major scenes are left out for plot and timing.
*** The Ralph Bakshi animated version suffered even more from [[http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/bakshi/bakshi.htm "Tolkien's Greatest Hits"]] syndrome, and no wonder: it covers the same events as the first two films of the Peter Jackson trilogy, but in less than half the time.

** The Ralph Bakshi animated version suffered even more from [[http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/bakshi/bakshi.htm "Tolkien's Greatest Hits"]] syndrome, and no wonder: it covers the same events as the first two films of the Peter Jackson trilogy, but in less than half the time.