Sliding Scale of Adaptation Modification

When creating an adaptation of a story already well-known in another medium, those making it are often faced with a crippling dilemma. How true can we stay to the source material without risking a financial or critical bomb? It can be a very hard call for a director. On the one hand, if the changes are done poorly or without rhyme or reason, fans will complain that They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, and he may find himself a victim of the fandom's ire from then on. On the other hand, not changing a thing can result in either a very poorly-made adaptation or one that relies so heavily on the source material that people unfamiliar with the work will be completely lost.

The scale runs something like this:

• Identical Adaptation: An adaptation in which next to nothing is changed.
• Near-Identical Adaptation: An adaptation that changes the material just enough to gain a specific rating or be of reasonable length. Sometimes re-released with a Director's Cut.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Probably the ideal rating in most cases. An adaptation that manages to capture the spirit of the original work, while at the same time, embracing the new medium. These are often big hits.
• Recognizable Adaptation: Contains many deviations, but still bears enough resemblance to its source material that it can be realized as an adaptation. May involve a Setting Update.
• In Name Only: Shares only the name and possibly the main characters. It likely could have stood on its own as an original work otherwise.

The scale, however, is not set in stone, and often times there is overlap. Also, Tropes Are Tools as any adaptation in any of these categories can become a great success. However, the further an adaptation falls from the center, the less likely that is.

This trope is usually applied to movie adaptations — The Film of the Book especially — although it can be applied to adaptations from movies as well, since other formats (books, comics, television series, video games) have room for more material. See also The Problem with Licensed Games for the video game equivalent.

Examples:

Level 5: Identical

• Black Butler season 3 and "Book of Murder" OVA
• First two seasons of the Black Lagoon anime, although the Roberta's Blood Trail OVA is a Level 3.
• March Comes in Like a Lion: the anime’s only deviation is a minor rearrangement of chapters at the end and the addition of one brief scene. Otherwise the content is a word for word duplicate.
• The Maxx animated series
• Monster: The anime changed very little from the manga.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi OVA
• Rosemary's Baby
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (the 1990 film adaptation)
• Sin City
• Many film adaptations of stage musicals; examples include:
  • My Fair Lady
  • The Phantom of the Opera
  • The Producers (2005 version)

Level 4: Near-Identical

• 300, which like Sin City above tries even to look like the comics.
• 1776: The film adaptation is nearly identical except for Richard Henry Lee mounting a horse during his song and the removal of "Cool, Considerate Men" due to literal Presidential levels of Executive Meddling. Rises to Type 5 on the DVD release, which restores the cut number.
• Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017) is sometimes seen as a Tropes Are Not Good example, with some arguing that it's too similar to the original, except for some minor changes that don't affect anything even if they should.
• The Blue Bird (1976 film)
• Brokeback Mountain
• The Butter Battle Book (the Ralph Bakshi animated adaptation): Almost a 5. It follows the art style, story and tone of the book to the letter, but also sandwiches in some new stuff.
• The Cat in the Hat (1971)
• The Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z anime series follow the manga pretty closely, but it's broken up with a lot of Filler that wasn't in the manga. Also gives Goku Adaptational Heroism compared to the manga.
• Fences had a screenplay written by the original playwright, and all that really was changed was the location of a few scenes (the play took place entirely in a backyard).
• Fiddler on the Roof cuts a few musical numbers, but is otherwise identical.
• Fight Club most drastically changes the ending from the book, which the author actually preferred to his own.
• The Fly (1958)'s main changes to the short story are giving it a Bittersweet Ending rather than the original short story's Downer Ending and fleshing out a few secondary characters.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which was explicitly made to be this in contrast to the 2003 anime adaptation, which deviated from the source material in the second half due to overtaking the manga. Brotherhood is even criticized by some fans for speeding through material that the first show had already depicted in order to get to the un-adapted content faster.
• Season 1 of Game of Thrones tightly adapts nearly all of the major and minor events of the first novel with only mostly small changes to fit time, budget, and clarity constraints of the new medium, with some time left over for some Adaptation Expansion. The series strays lower down the scale as it progresses, the books get more convoluted, and eventually stop existing, with some fans hoping the last season will fall into Canon Discontinuity.
• The Godfather
• The first two Harry Potter films, Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, are the most faithful adaptations of the series, only trimming out some of the less important details and other relatively minor changes. In part it was because they were adapting from the two shortest novels and could comfortably fit most of it into a film.
• Animal Farm: Both the 1954 and 1999 film adaptations stick fairly loyal to the original book besides some minor character changes or omissions. The Downer Ending of the original book however is expanded in both takes to have the pigs get their comeuppance, likely to mirror the gradual downfall of the Soviet Union they were based on after the book was written.
• The animated version of The Hobbit.
• Chuck Jones' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; there's some Adaptation Expansion like a longer sleigh ride sequence and several new songs, but the plot is nigh-identical, as is most of the narration and (minimal) dialogue.
  • His version of Horton Hears a Who!, too. The only real difference from the book is that the mayor is downgraded to a science professor named Dr. Hoovey and a subplot is added involving the townspeople ridiculing his claims about there being life beyond Whoville and being an outcast as a result.
• Hogfather
• Holes
• The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and both parts of Mockingjay
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's anime adaptation is extremely faithful, to the point that stills from the series are often near-identical to the original manga panels, but it does cut some minor scenes while adding a few of its own. The fourth season also swaps around the order of certain chapters in order to improve the pacing, but this doesn't really change the overarching plot.
• K-On! just made Adaptation Expansions to the Story Arc of protagonists' senior year, but otherwise the overall trajectory of the story remains untouched.
• Kick-Ass
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Kim's Convenience's first season is a Type 4, with some scenes being a Type 5. It follows the plot of the play almost beat for beat while introducing all-new characters and showing several scenes outside the convenience store, allowing for the expanded running time from a one-act play into a 13-episode sitcom.
• Life of Pi
• The Little Prince (1974 film musical)
• The Lord of the Rings (Ralph Bakshi's adaptation) is a very faithful adaptation of the source material, with nearly all the differences being the result of cutting things out of the existing story and most of the dialogue being completely unchanged. That said, the process of cutting things down to fit a two-hour runtime means that so much is missing (such as segments of conversation) that it's rather difficult to follow unless you know the books.
• The Martian
• The Maze Runner
• National Lampoon's Vacation changes some names and gives the story a mostly-happy ending.
• Peter Pan: Although very little of the original dialogue is the same, the storyline is quite faithful to Barrie's stageplay.
• The Princess Bride
• Sailor Moon Crystal
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
• The Shawshank Redemption: As an adaptation of a shorter work, it had to add parts in, but otherwise adheres almost verbatim to what is in the book.
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Thunderball, as the original book was even an expansion of a proposed television movie\episode.
• The 2020 animated Toldi mini series, which is basically the original poem's text being read verbatim and visualized. Some verses are only animated but not read out, a few non-narrated scenes are added for pacing and atmospheric reasons, and slight corrections are made for the benefit of the story and historical accuracy. Even all of the poem's metaphors are made literal, adding a thick surreal layer to the otherwise mostly grounded story.
• Tower of God first season anime: Some details of scenes changed, some elements of the story expanded and others given less space, but otherwise amounts to pretty much the same thing with the same story.
• Vampire Academy is mostly loyal to the first novel of the Vampire Academy series. The differences are generally minor. Three characters receive name changes, one character is younger and more attractive than her book counterpart, three characters are of different age than their book counterparts, two characters who survive the original novel are killed in the film, Natalie Dashkov kills a different person than the one she killed in the novel (Ray instead of Mr. Nagy), Lissa does not practice Self-Harm, and some minor book characters do not appear at all in the films. The most obvious change comes from the style of clothes the characters wear. In the books, the students of the Academy wear regular street clothes. It is a sore spot for Rose that she can't afford decent clothing, at one point wearing clothes she received from the Salvation Army. In the films, both Moroi and dhampir students wear school uniforms. Rose wears a relatively stylish uniform.
• Variable Geo: The anime adaptation of Advanced V.G. is mostly faithful to the original source material, despite making several major changes, such as Miranda Jahana already being dead^note canonically, Miranda doesn't die until the end of Advanced V.G. II. In the OVA version, she's deceased before the series even begins. Likewise, the OVA casts Satomi as its deuteragonist^note in Advanced V.G., she's a minor character and has no involvement with the Jahana Group. by making her the target of the Jahana Group, instead of Yuka.
• Watchmen. The most notable change is the squid being replaced by a city-disintegrating explosion.
• When the Wind Blows: Aside from remaining true to the text, there are a few lines omitted from the comic. One, in particular, being Jim's passage about the British Empire rising from the aftermath of the war. He also never says "Stupid Bitch" in the comic, and instead uses the words "Stupid Fool" with Hilda still berating him for it just before they duck and cover. The intro, attack and ending sequences are also more drawn out, and there are a few imagine-spots added in. Without these changes, it goes up to a type 5.
• The Falcon's Malteser: the screenplay for the film adaptation, Just Ask for Diamond, was written by the book's author Anthony Horowitz, and simplified one action sequence (Nick's escape from a flat he's being held prisoner in) and dropped another (Nick goes back to the scene of the crime and is attacked by the Big Bad) altogether, both for logistical reasons. Apart from that, the two versions are near-identical, and there are long stretches of dialogue in the film that are word-for-word the same as the book.
• The Last of Us (2023): The story beats are largely similar to the game, but the series provides more worldbuilding, such as on the Cordyceps outbreak. There's less action overall, with many episodes (especially Episode 3) having more emphasis on character interactions and while Joel and Ellie kill hundreds of enemies over the course of the game, their body count is a more reasonable level- no more than a few dozen- in the series.

Level 3: Pragmatic Adaptation

• 101 Dalmatians
• 2001: A Space Odyssey: Very unusually, both the book and its film version were written in tandem by their respective authors.
• AKIRA; though the fact the author\director was still finishing the manga also contributed for the story changes.
• Alita: Battle Angel
• Annie (both the 1982 and 1999 versions)
• Studio Ghibli's Arrietty, to the original novel by Mary Norton, making it the most faithful film or TV adaptation of the original books to date.
• Being There
• Black Butler: Season 1 (arguably a 2.5 for the anime-original ending, but it's still very close in tone and theme to the manga and the previous 3/4 of the anime are very faithful to the manga).
• Bokurano: The anime adaptation hits most of the same story beats as the original manga, but while the ending is largely similar, the story diverges from the manga after Maki's battle. The show also has more of an ensemble cast, unlike the manga, which had a focus on the characters or each arc.
• Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is in essentials an adaptation of the first four books, but thrown into a blender first, so the timeline of events is presented very differently, and a few characters/situations differ from the books.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It would have scored a similar adaptation if their massively changed Willy Wonka didn't impact the story so greatly.
• The Chronicles of Narnia is somewhere between 3 and 4. The first film is probably a 4 while the other two films are closer to 3.
• The Colour of Magic
• Coraline, with Neil Gaiman's support.
• Death Note: The main story beats are the same, but some material is cut out, especially the post Time Skip arc. The ending is mostly the same, save for a character who Dies Differently in Adaptation, and the epilogue is removed.
• The first Divergent film is about a 3.5, as it's compressed from the book in some places and omits certain supporting characters, but it is otherwise a fairly faithful adaptation. The second film, Insurgent, is about a 2.5, as it's even more compressed from its source novel and has some notable deviations in the storyline (such as the five-sided box with the simulation trials, which was not in the original novel). However, it otherwise follows some of the same general plot beats, and is still a more faithful adaptation than the third film, Allegiant.
• Ender's Game
• The Expanse
• Fantastic Mr. Fox: Most of the incidents from the original novel remain (though not all in the same order), but the heavy amount of Adaptation Expansion alters the nature of the film to a fair degree.
• Season 2-4 of Game of Thrones. While 10 episodes was ideal for closely adapting the first novel, the greater scope of later novels and an increase in Adaptation Expansion required more distillation to fit the same time constraints while still mostly keeping the spirit of the original.
• Ghost in the Shell (2017)
• The Giver
• The Godfather Part II
• Going Postal is somewhere between 3 and 2.
• Goldfinger
• Green Eggs and Ham (2019): Adds more/expands on existing characters and tells an original storyline, but remembers the book's spirit and aesop.
• Hangman's Curse: The story is the same but the background is dramatically different.
• The Harry Potter films from the third installment, Prisoner of Azkaban, and onward. In part because the novels were getting much longer, leading to more details being removed, and sometimes entire characters and subplots. However, the films also began to make other changes of their own, while occasionally expanding on certain aspects from the books, although by and large they were still faithful to the overall storyline. Deathly Hallows is about a 3.5; being spread across two films, they cover the final novel more thoroughly and faithfully than the previous films, while still condensing certain details and taking creative liberties here and there.
• The Hobbit (Peter Jackson's adaptations): Similar to the Fantastic Mr. Fox example in that the major events and characters of the original novel are kept intact, but the films also feature a lot of Adaptation Expansion, including adding characters not part of the novel's narrative. Some of it is taken from The Lord of the Rings' appendices, while some of it is original content.
• House of the Dragon, based on Fire & Blood. While an identical adaptation would probably have been impossible due to the nature of the original work (an in-universe history text that summarizes the events rather than showing them through POV), it includes close adaptations of tons of the original material, while simultaneously including enough changes (such as the restructured timeline) to prevent it from being near-identical.
• The first Jurassic Park movie
• Koi Kaze: The anime is clearly recognizable as the same story and characters, but some events are cut out or happen in a different order to better fit the constraints of a 13-episode series. Notably, the controversial themes of the story are not softened in any way—if anything, it's more serious by taking out some of the more lighthearted moments.
• The Last Unicorn, adapted by the original author.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992) is a solid Type 3. The story hews close to the plot of the video game, with a few surprises:
  • Agahnim and Ganon are explicitly shown to be different beings, communicating between worlds in one scene. (The Agahnim in Ganon's Castle, however, is just a glamour used by Ganon himself.)
  • Link cannot travel freely between worlds and is trapped in the Dark World once Agahnim transports him there. He maintains his form in the Dark World by controlling his emotions, whereas in the game the Moon Pearl is needed to keep human form.
  • The events of the Dark World are heavily abridged, and Link only saves two maidens before finding Zelda; though Link visits Misery Mire and the Ice Palace, no maidens are imprisoned there.
  • The Wizzrobe impersonating Zelda is an obvious riff on Blind the Thief. Rather than revert to his true form in sunlight, he waits for Link to sidle up before doing a creepy Face-Revealing Turn.
  • The collection of items vital to the game's completion are either changed (the "Bird") or excised entirely, with only the Book of Mudora appearing in the same capacity.
  • Interestingly, the Eastern Temple more resembles the game's Great Pyramid. In exchange, Ganon's lair has been modified into an alien-looking orb.
• The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson's adaptations)
• Macross: Do You Remember Love?, for the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
• Misery: The excerpts from the new Misery novel Paul is writing are dropped and Annie's violence is toned down.
• Mr. Mercedes: The first season of the show is a fairly faithful adaptation of the Stephen King novel (and more so than subsequent seasons adapted the rest of the trilogy). Differences include the setting of the climactic showdown, the introduction of a Canon Foreigner and the protagonist and antagonist talking via video conference (which works better on TV).
• The first NeverEnding Story film
• Orphan Black: 7 Genes is a somewhat Lighter and Softer Japanese remake of the Canadian series of the same name. But other than a few character traits and fates as well as plot points from the original being reworked, the overall trajectory of story remains the same.
• Ouran High School Host Club
• Requiem for a Dream
• The Novelization of Revenge of the Sith
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) (Post-Super Genesis Wave)
• Sonic Rebound (external link) starts out as a 5, really trying its hardest to very faithfully retell the Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) in animated format, up to replicating the same scenes exactly and emulating the original artist's art style. It then goes down to 3 with the crossover with the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) universe, which was never anywhere in the original comic.
• Sonic X (though the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2-based arcs could go up to a 4)
• Space Battleship Yamato, due to character changes
• Star Trek (2009) brings back the tone of Star Trek: The Original Series at many points while the Actionization nearly makes it a close to the show. However, the Alternate Timeline setting allows it to establish its own canon and justifies the drastically updated effects for modern audiences.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• The Walking Dead has the same overall plot as it’s comic counterpart, however, some plot lines have been expanded on or outright added to the show while others may have been condensed or removed. As for the characters, some of them have lived in the show where they died in the comics and vise versa and others have been killed earlier or later in the show. Also, some of the characters in the show may take traits from those in the comics. In addition, there have been several Canon Foreigners in the show and a few that have been Adapted Out or at least debuted at a different time than they did in the comics.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
• The World God Only Knows anime
• The first two episodes of the live-action drama based on Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches. Also the anime which follows the overall plot of the first 90 chapters of the manga fairly closely, but is forced to have a ridiculously fast pacing due to compressing 90 chapters in only 12 episodes; as such, many scenes are skipped or rushed through.

Level 2: Recognizable Adaptation

(aka Adaptation Inspiration)

• 80 Days is about a 1.5: same characters, includes much of the plot and various supporting characters in certain routes, but in a substantially changed world, and most of the other routes are completely original.
• The 100
• Battlestar Galactica remake
• BIONICLE the game and Bionicle Heroes
• Casino Royale (2006) A 21st century adaptation of the very first 007 book by Ian Fleming, from 1953. Needlessly to say, there were no cellphones, GPS or even the country of Montenegro when the book was written. Even the game played in the casino is changed from Baccarat (that used to be popular among European Aristocrats) to Poker, more familiar to present-day audiences. The producers followed the usual Bond movie formula of adapting for the time period the movie is produced and released instead of making a period piece, maintaining only a similar structure and a few names and roles. And it worked: Casino Royale was a box-office and critic success, still widely-regarded as one of the best movies of the franchise, not many fans cared at all about the many deviations from the original book.
• The Cat in the Hat
• Cirque Du Freak, based on the Saga of Darren Shan books
• Many films in the Disney Animated Canon fall into this category, by virtue of their Disneyfication:
  • Aladdin
  • Beauty and the Beast
  • Big Hero 6
  • The Little Mermaid
  • Pinocchio deleted many of the characters and challenges of the original book.
• Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the Alternate Continuity remakes of the first two Dalek serials from Doctor Who.
• Dragonball Evolution (possibly a 1.5, since once you change the names of all characters and replace the dragon balls with any other MacGuffin, there's only some vague resemblance to the original)
• Dresden Files: The TV show to the books.
• Elementary
• Eragon keeps the basics of the characters and plots, but changes practically every other detail, to the point where it gained a reputation of being In Name Only—even if it strictly speaking isn't.
• End of Watch, the third book in Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy, was adapted in season 2 of Mr. Mercedes. It broadly follows the novel's before greatly deviating in the second half, as well as omitting anything that wouldn't make sense out of order, such as obviously, Bill Hodges' death, which is left entirely out of the show and not just moved to season 3.
• Finders Keepers' TV adaptation (see above) follows the novel's plot through to the end, but makes some major changes, including eliminating the dual timelines, introducing a significant Canon Foreigner and devoting a sizeable portion of the runtime to a storyline exclusive to the show that began in the previous season.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). It starts off as a 3, but deviates further and further from the manga as it progresses. It deviates further still with the follow-up movie, The Conqueror of Shamballa, bringing it to about a 1.5
• Seasons 5-8 of Game of Thrones, partially because the show simply Overtook the Manga but also because the show-runners began increasingly covering even published material with heavily-altered or entirely original content and even adding Not His Sled twists.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
• Hannibal
• Heart of Darkness (1958): Scenes are cut out, the critique of colonialism is pushed to the background, relationships are altered, the ending is changed to a happy one, and it's implied that part of the story was a Vision Quest. But the basic movement of the story remains intact (Marlow goes to Darkest Africa in search of Kurtz, finds him, and is appalled) and several minor elements, such as secondary characters and lines of dialogue, are retained in recognizable form.
• Horatio Hornblower (film)
• Horatio Hornblower (series)
• Howl's Moving Castle keeps the core plot, the characters' roles in it and the castle as described in the novel, but everything around that plot is changed drastically, as is the setting.
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
• How to Train Your Dragon: All three films. One of the few cases of an unfaithful adaption doing better than its source material.
• The King and I (animated film)
• The Last Airbender
• Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole directed by Zack Snyder
• Legend of the Seeker, based on the Sword of Truth series. The general plot structure covers the same basic events as the books, but most of the actual episodes are purely Adaptation Expansion, actual book plotlines are either heavily compressed or entirely omitted, and even the most faithful episodes feature plenty of changes.
• Les Misérables, the musical
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power covers the Second Age of Middle-earth, and took a lot of freedoms from the source. Amazon paid the Tolkien Estate $200 million to secure the TV rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit which are mainly set in the Third Age, but not other books/writings directly (except for a case to case basis for permission to use stuff published elsewhere), and the show expands upon the appendices of LOTR and other background lore that mainly can be found in those two main books for their depiction of Middle-earth, as opposed to the writings directly about said topics. The Estate gave Amazon plenty of creative freedom for new characters and plots, including significant time compression, but they were not allowed to contradict or change anything about the Second Age in which the original story takes place.
  "It is impossible to change the boundaries which Tolkien has created, it is necessary to remain 'tolkienian,'" — Token scholar Tom Shippey
• Maken-ki!: The anime adaptation borders on Type 1, since only its first season has anything to do with the manga. The characters and setting are still recognizable, though there are significant changes in how they're portrayed. Season 2 deviates from the manga altogether.
• The Man Who Fell to Earth
• Masters of Sex, based on Real Life
• Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
• The Name of the Rose
• The Neverending Story 2: The Next Chapter
• Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
• The Power of One movie
• The 2011 Live-Action Adaptation of Ranma ˝
• The animated version of The Return of the King
• Sailor Moon includes Adaptation Personality Change, Adaptation Relationship Overhaul, Adaptation Explanation Extrication, Adaptational Context Change, Adaptational Backstory Change, Adaptational Comic Relief, Adaptational Sexuality (Kunzite and Zoisite), Adaptational Superpower Change, Adaptational Wimp, Ascended Extra, Demoted to Extra, Character Exaggeration, Canon Foreigner, Lighter and Softer, Denser and Wackier, Dies Differently in Adaptation, Halfway Plot Switch, Promoted to Love Interest, Spared by the Adaptation, Age Lift (some characters, especially villains), and, especially in the last two seasons, Adapted Out.
• Sands of Destruction was made into a game, anime, and manga with very different plots.
• The Secret of NIMH
• Seventh Son, the movie adaptation of The Wardstone Chronicles
• Sherlock
• Silent Hill, the plot is heavily changed (resembling the original only broadly) and so is much of the characters, with some of them being Adapted Out, but the atmosphere, the basic premise, some concepts, and monsters of the original were kept intact.
• Most adaptations of Sonic the Hedgehog fall under this category:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) (Pre-Super Genesis Wave), which builds off the lore from Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) mentioned below.
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, a Denser and Wackier take on Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), a Darker and Edgier interpretation of the franchise with a strong emphasis on Ascended Fridge Horror. Teeters on the edge of In Name Only, due to how vastly it departs from the colorful setting of the games.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, which takes the animated cutscenes of Sonic CD and expands greatly on them.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) uses the largely original setting and lore of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) (itself a Type 1) but adapts it to the plot of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles with elements of Sonic Adventure sprinkled in.
• The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie has a lot of changes to how certain characters and power-ups work in the games, but is overall accurate to the series.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)
• Tenchi Universe
• Thunderbirds, dramatic change in premise and mood
• The Michael Bay Transformers films seem to have started life as an adaptation of the franchise's initial "Generation 1" incarnation, with far more elements being taken from there than every other series combined. If that is to be taken as the source, then many characters have had their names changed or their personalities altered, the aesthetic is far different from any prior series, with quite a few characters being unrecognizable in appearance, and many concepts and characters are entirely invented. Consequently, though G1 has its fair share of divergent continuities, the franchise as a whole considers the films to be their own "branch."
• Trigun (anime), though it occasionally goes up to 3
• Wayside
• The Wheel of Time (2021): Like The Witcher mentioned below, it's most similar to the source material in the first few episodes, with the changes to every part of the story and characters quickly mounting up with each new episode, some even having more added or expanded material than storylines actually adapted from the books.
• At least the first entry of the Wild Rescuers series by Stacy Plays, Guardians of the Taiga, considering how the series calls itself a Minecraft-inspired series (it's specifically an adaptation of StacyPlays's Dogcraft Let's Play series). While there are elements of Minecraft, such as lava in an abandoned mineshaft and features such as a village, ravine, and the forest of perpetual darkness (aka dark forest in Minecraft), it's still far removed from Minecraft, being set in a realistic setting without any zombies, Creepers, or Endermen, that it reads as closer to 1, especially to non-players.
• The Wizard of Oz (1939). Almost a 3, but not quite
• The Witcher (2019) starts somewhat similarly to the books, but further into episodes, the plot of the books is only distinctly adapted; the show also adds a lot of changes into the characters of the novels
• All but the first two episodes of the live-action drama of Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches.

Level 1: In Name Only

• Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass
• Altered States
• Artemis Fowl
• Black Butler II: The entire season is anime-original, having no basis in the manga.
• Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040
• A Bug's Life from The Ant and the Grasshopper
• Carnosaur
• Catwoman (2004), outside of sharing an origin that was invented for Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in Batman Returns which was already quite different the comics, this version of Catwoman doesn't even make the lead Selina Kyle.
• Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)
• Clueless from Emma
• The third film in The Divergent Series, Allegiant, only retains the broad premise of the novel as well as most of the major characters. The rest of the story deviates quite heavily, with several elements added to the film that were not in the novel, including a completely changed climax and a cliffhanger ending.^note Whereas Allegiant was the final installment of the novel series and has a very definitive ending, the film leaves things open for what was planned to be either a fourth film, Ascendant, or else a TV series continuation, neither of which came to pass.
• Some of the more extreme departures from the source material in the Disney Animated Canon:
  • The Fox and the Hound
  • Frozen
  • Hercules is either a low 2 or a high 1—it doesn't really adapt any Hercules myth (though the climax is vaguely reminiscent of the Gigantomachy), and ends up being more a blend of the plots of Superman: The Movie and Rocky, taking place in a Purely Aesthetic Era version of ancient Greece. Hercules is only similar to his mythical self in that he's Zeus's son and he's very strong and heroic, the Twelve Labors, the most famous myth, is largely glossed over in a single montage, and the Greek pantheon is Hijacked by Jesus, with Hades (a marginal and largely benevolent character in the original myth) being bumped up to main antagonist status, displacing Hera.
  • The Jungle Book
  • The Princess and the Frog
  • Tangled
• Edge of Tomorrow, adapted from the light novel All You Need Is Kill
• Ella Enchanted
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The film is this relative to the book that it's inspired by. While the book is reference material about the titular fantastic beasts, the movie is a narrative about that reference book's author and an adventure he had before completing his book.
• The Fly (1986) compared to the short story and previous film adaptation thereof (see Type 4 above). The basic premise of a scientist's Teleporter Accident is there, but that's about all. The original Charles Edward Pogue draft of this screenplay was similar, but David Cronenberg's rewrite nigh-obliterated that. (Both scripts, plus the original short story, can be read on the Collector's Edition/Blu-Ray releases.)
• Gulliver's Travels (the 1939 animated adaptation by Fleischer Studios)
• Godzilla (1998); the director stated outright it was intended to be In Name Only.
• While the film version of Hair keeps most of the songs and the character names from the stage version, the plot is completely rewritten.
• The Gene Dietch adaptation of The Hobbit is around a 1.5, with the broadest strokes of the plot being the same, as well as a handful of character names, and everything else being changed or cut. Much of it comes down to it being a severely Compressed Adaptation (it's about twelve minutes long), but even then, there are enough deviations that can't be credited to the runtime for it to end up here.
• Jem and the Holograms (2015)
• Jumper
• The Lawnmower Man, so much that Stephen King took legal action to remove his association with the film
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries from Pride and Prejudice
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park
• The Mighty Thor: To Norse Mythology; the plot doesn't really utilize any myths and the canon foreigners outnumber the characters from the myths. Makes liberal use of Related in the Adaptation, Promoted to Love Interest, Unrelated in the Adaptation, Adaptational Backstory Change, and Adaptation Personality Change, among others. Depending on the Writer, Continuity Snarl, and crossovers have not helped.
• Moonraker
• The Neverending Story 3: Escape From Fantasia
• The Nutcracker in 3D, to both the book and ballet
• Prom Night (2008)
• Most of the Resident Evil Film Series, though the rejected George A. Romero script treatment would have been a 3
• Rosario + Vampire: The second season is this, completely ignoring the manga to create anime-original content focused solely on fanservice. Many fans weren't pleased.
• The Running Man
• Scrabble (Scrabble Showdown edged closer to a 2)
• The Shaggy Dog remake
• Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
• Sonic Underground: For starters, Sonic from the games (or any other adaptation) is not blood-related to royalty, doesn't have siblings, and doesn't fight against evil with The Power of Rock.
• Enforced with The Spy Who Loved Me. Ian Fleming hated his original novel so much that he only sold the rights to the title, ensuring that the film that took the name would not be an adaptation of the book.
• Starship Troopers
• Stuart Little
• The Super Mario Bros. (1993) movie and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
• Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea
• The Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films
• The Universal and Hammer Horror takes on Dracula and Frankenstein (shading a bit into Type 2 for the Universal version of Dracula).
• Wanted
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Though it overlaps with Level 3 in some aspects.
• Wicked
• Wonder Woman is to Classical Mythology what The Mighty Thor is to the Norse myths. For one thing, the Amazons were descendants of Ares, not his enemies, and Diana is a Latin name, so finding it on a Greek character makes it Sadly Mythtaken.
• World War Z: Max Brooks himself stated that the film adaptation had so little in common with his novel that he ironically was able to enjoy it since it didn't ruin any of his characters or stories, due to them never appearing.
• Arrowverse: Most of the shows and their versions of many characters tend to bare little in common with the comics, and grow even further as time goes on. The shows mostly started off as an early-days/semi-prequel story, taking liberties to fit a 'CW formula', but as they go on the changes they made are focused on while the comic roots are pushed aside.
  • Arrow to Green Arrow: Is about a rich white guy named Oliver Queen who survived being shipwrecked on an island in the Chinese sea before returning home and using the survival skills he learnt to fight crime. That's about it. The show at least starts as almost a Type 2^note (Oliver's targets are rich capitalistic Corrupt Corporate Executive types, but he's not motivated by socialist beliefs and die-hard liberalism so much as his father left him a list of people who were responsible for the corruption in the city and/or connected with the conspiracy that caused their disappearance; also, rather than working with his adopted ward Roy Harper-a white kid raised by Native Americans, he works with an ex-marine and later a quirky computer hacker, and his love interest and frequent Battle Couple partner Black Canary is instead a civilian lawyer, and rather than meeting over their superhero work she's his ex-girlfriend from before he was shipwrecked), but decays into Type 1 as Oliver's Adaptation Personality Change settles and the few characters from the comics are pushed out in favour of Canon Foreigner types.
  • The Flash (2014) to The Flash: It's about a man named Barry Allen who gains Super-Speed after being hit by lightning in his lab and fights crime in a red suit. At first the show is a Type 2, almost a Type 3, to the The New 52 rebooted version of the character (itself a Type 2 to the comics proceeding it), but it delves further down as it introduces characters from the earlier Wally West era of comics, but each one is increasingly In Name Only. Each season is almost recognizably lifting from a Wally West storyline, but makes such heavy changes to the story and characters (such as Zoom, Jesse Quick, Savitar, and others), not to mention the fact they're re-written to work around Barry Allen instead of Wally West, while Wally himself is pushed out of the show without ever graduating out of the Kid Flash mantle, never mind the fact he was heavily retooled in the first place. The show similarly adds a 'team' around Barry, using Vibe and Killer Frost (and later, Elongated Man), but who (with the exception of Elongated Man) have no prior history working with the Flash and in the show have their personalities, backstories, and even their powers changed and altered. They also make Barry the foster brother of his love interest Iris West and created a completely different character as her father to act as a Parental Substitute to Barry.

Special Cases:

• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad: The Wind in the Willows segment scores a 2, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment scores about a 3.5 or 4.
• The first Shrek film is somewhere between a Type 1 and Type 3. The film borrows very few elements from the William Steig book save for Shrek himself and Donkey (who only appeared on one page), but a picture book does require some major Adaptation Expansion to make it viable for a feature length film.
• Film adaptations of Les Misérables run the gamut from Type 4 (1934, 1958, 1978) to Type 3 (1982) to Type 2 (1998, 2012) to borderline Type 1 (1935, 1948, 1952).
  • While the 1935 version is possibly the most unfaithful of all the adaptations, many people still consider it a classic in its own right because of great performances from Fredric March as Valjean and Charles Laughton as Javert, as well as the Grandfather Clause (it was made during The Hays Code era, so they couldn't get away with much).
• Matilda: Scores about a 3.5. Changing the setting to America leaves an impact on the film, but it's one of the more faithful adaptations of Dahl's works.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe. While most people would agree it's usually a 3, there are some movies that hit 4 (using a lot of elements from the comics as they were, e.g. the Super Soldier serum), with others that hit the 2 area (removing or heavily altering comic book elements, e.g. how Pym Particles work).
  • On the higher end of the scale, Thor: Ragnarok is a Type 4 that maybe slips into a Type 3; it adapts several storyarcs from The Mighty Thor canon that delve into Ragnarok and takes ideas from each one while condensed into a single story, while also throwing in Planet Hulk and a reworked backstory to Hela. Tone-wise, however, it's the closest to a genuine 80's comic and lifts entire scenes and sequences verbatim from Walt Simonson's run, arguably the most iconic Thor run published. Several ideas it uses also have roots and basis in Norse mythology and/or the history behind them^note for instance, Odin was originally the god of death of an older pagan religion before becoming the 'king of gods' of his own pantheon as stories evolved, fitting the reveal of Odin having been a genocidal monster in his youth who grew benevolent; meanwhile Hela is made into Odin's daughter, not Loki's, but it's believed from researchers that Loki and Odin were once the same figure that were splintered off into two distinct entities as stories evolved, making it strangely still accurate.
  • On the low-end of the scale, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a Type 2 that almost borders on the Type 1; it has Peter still as a young teen after Civil War (he was married and in his 20s when this happened in the comics), and he attends a charter school designed explicitly to nurture scientific minds when typically Peter attended a public school. He was bullied for his intelligence and had no friends in school originally, whereas here he's got several and is instead admired for his intelligence as he's a valued member of the school's academic team, while Flash Thompson, typically a popular jock archtype from an abusive household, is a spoiled rich kid academic, whose obnoxious behavior makes him the unpopular outcast. In the post-MCU Civil War world, Peter is a loyal sidekick to Iron Man and longs to join him in the Avengers, whereas in the comics Peter had cut ties with Tony out of disgust over what he did during the war as well as failure to protect his family. Vulture's backstory is similar to his comic counterpart (being a businessman screwed over by richer businessmen, in this case Tony Stark), but here he's upper-working class/lower-middle class who's more a leader than an inventor, whereas typically he was a well-off inventor and scientific genius but was too sociopathic to lead others.
• Adaptations of the Pokémon games fall all over the scale, though so far none have quite reached the extremes of 1 or 5. Of the more widely-known adaptations:
  • The original anime is a type 3 with heavy type 2 leanings, with exactly how heavy depending on the circumstances; most of the basics of the world of the games are there and the show adapts parts of the plots of the games to at least some extent suiting its format (collecting badges to face the League, fighting the evil teams of each generation), but there's a lot of Adaptation Expansion and the fine details of it all can get a fair bit different from the games.
  • Pokémon Adventures is very much a type 3, but has shades of Type 4 and Type 2 in its interpretation of certain aspects of the 'verse, certain characters, and certain plotlines (Type 2 for the latter two being more common early on.
  • Pokémon Origins is a blatant Type 4 (and deliberately designed as one) of the original pair of games. There are still several things preventing it from being a Type 5, however, the most notable being the franchise debut of Mega Charizard X.
  • Zigzagged by Pokémon Detective Pikachu. Compared to the original Detective Pikachu game, it's at least Pragmatic with the same cast of characters and basic premise. However, the game is a rather obscure spin-off. When placed side-by-side with media like the main game series and the anime which the general audience would be far more familiar with, it's In Name Only, with the only point of commonality being that it has Pokémon in it and passing mention of places from the games and anime.
• Hunter × Hunter has three separate anime adaptations, each one falling on a different part of the scale. The Jump Festa short film, produced shortly after the manga began, ranks as a Type 2 by adapting the introductory chapters more or less faithfully, but adding in battles against sea monsters that weren't in the original and are a tonal mismatch for the rest of the series. The 1999 anime is a straightforward Type 4, largely adapting the manga straightforwardly, but adding in multiple elements of Filler that either expand on existing elements of the manga or introduce new situations to lengthen the story, and giving some slight changes to Killua and Kurapika's personalities and demeanor. The 2011 anime is a borderline Type 5, adapting the manga near-identically (though a couple moments in the first few arcs suffer mild Bowdlerization due to the move to a daytime timeslot), with the only major story deviation being Gon's backstory with Kite being kept a secret until the beginning of the Chimera Ant arc.
• Power Rangers has varied in faithfulness to Super Sentai from season to season. They range from being as similar as a 4 (Wild Force, Samurai) to as different as a 1 (In Space, RPM).
• A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): The first three episodes (The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window) are all Type 4, while the fourth episode The Miserable Mill (which is the only episode so far not to be written by the original author, Daniel Handler) scores somewhere around a 2 or a 3. The rest of the series is a solid 3, with the changes present for the series carrying over across all the other parts of the story.
• Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining is interesting in that it starts out as a Type 4, but it gradually deviates further and further from the book until it becomes a Type 2. It stands out more as a special case in book adaptations in that while generally considered a must watch horror film for how it does its themes of madness and isolation, the original book's author Stephen King has made it well known he considers the film a betrayal of his work in how it handles themes and characters.
  • The Nutty Professor remake has a similar process. The first half ranges roughly between a 3.5-4, and the second half becomes a Type 1, but turns into a 4 again at the Climax.
• The Disney Silly Symphonies shorts adapted Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling twice—the 1931 short is a Type 1 (In Name Only) adaptation of the original story, while the 1939 short is a Type 4 that sticks much closer to the source material.
• Simon Birch, the film adaptation of A Prayer for Owen Meany, goes from Type 5 to Type 1 as the story progresses, passing through almost every type along the way.
• The Betty Boop cartoon Snow White (1933) starts off as Type 4, but drifts into Type 1 around the middle.
• Dragon Ball Super and its manga is an odd case - Neither the anime nor the manga are adaptations of each other, but rather based on a plot outline provided by franchise creator Akira Toriyama. Since the plot outline in question is evidentally rather loose, the anime and the manga vary wildly in different aspects - major plot points can be completely different and anime-exclusive transformations are commonplace, but random throwaway jokes appear in both formats. In practice, they're ultimately both a Level 2 to each other.
• The Abridged Series are all pragmatic and altered to at least some degree, but how much this is the case can vary. Some of the more faithful ones (Dragon Ball Z Abridged, most notably) go as high as a 3.5, most (such as Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series and Sword Art Online Abridged) lean towards a 2, and a few (Alternate Reality DBZ being one particularly glaring example) go as low as 1.5. However, reliance on the original footage means they can never really reach full In Name Only territory.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The first three books, radio show, TV version, and movie are pretty consistent — a 2 or even a 1; even the dialogue sometimes matches. But the episodic bits are often shown in different order. The movie added some new material.
• Son of the White Horse shifts between types 4 and 2, but mostly lands in 3. Being based on an ever-changing folk story, it slavishly lifts certain elements, lines and scenes full-cloth from different versions of said tale, but alters their meaning, combines their characters, expands them with material taken from unrelated myths, and mixes in plenty of original content. The visuals and added symbolism veer closer to type 2.
• Thomas & Friends started off a type 4 for its first two seasons, adapting The Railway Series stories near word-for-word besides some mild streamlining and certain stories being Out of Order. Seasons three and four took more liberties with the books, and also made some original stories, but still adapted a lot of events faithfully, keeping it roughly type 3. Afterwards the series stopped adapting anymore stories directly and took more liberties with the material, bringing it all the way down to type 1. A handful of stories were adapted in Season 20 as well as the first stories getting a retelling in The Adventure Begins, which are largely all a type 3 adaptation with occasional liberties and restructuring.
• Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 plays it safe by adapting only Volume 2, Section 5 of War and Peace, but it scores a solid 5 for that section.

Patterns:

• The older and more established the original work is, and the more existing film adaptations that have been done with it, the less "need" new adaptations will feel to stick closely to the original, and the more likely it is that they will take their own approaches. This is especially true if the work is in the Public Domain, and that's why works by people like William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens get so many Setting Updates and reinterpretations.
  • Conversely, if the vast majority of preexisting film adaptations fall low on the scale, some filmmakers will feel a greater need for a future adaptation to stick closely to the original; if the earlier loose adaptations causes Adaptation Displacement, this can both incentivize and deincentivize a more faithful later take, depending on how the filmmakers and studio executives respond to it. This can also occur if a work only had a single adaptation (or at least a single high-profile one), but it was relatively loose in approach and old enough to fall into legacy status (e.g. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory vs. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 34 years later).
• Musicals and more recent plays that get film adaptations tend to be relatively faithfully adapted, other than for length. It helps that they're already adapted to a more similar medium (they have a script, they take into account the visual element in a way novels don't, etc.)
• Anime fall into some predictable patterns:
  • Manga and novel adaptations that are of finished works tend to be in the 3-5 range, unless they are very old and established works with previous adaptations, in which case they might fall lower on the scale.
  • Manga and novel adaptations of ongoing works vary based on what the original creator and the studio want them to do with it. If they just stop the story at a certain point (planning to animate more when there's more if the show does well enough), they're usually type 4-5. If they stall for time using "filler arcs" (see: Naruto and One Piece), the presence of those fits them into type 3. Series that get anime-original endings vary based on how early the ending is established, varying from type 2-3 depending on that.
  • Video game and Visual Novel adaptations necessarily have to make some changes to turn a branching story into a linear one, so they usually fall in the 2-3 range. In the case of some mobile or card game adaptations, they might have to make up a story from scratch where the original didn't have one, falling into type 1.

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