Discussion Main / AdaptationalAttractiveness

Where does Baba Yaga from Ever After High fit into this? Because that version is much better looking than the one from Russian folklore.

Should "adaptation" really include real life examples?

It seems to me that the problem with the attractiveness issue in an adaptation is that very often the adaptation makes the character more attractive than he or she was described in the original, which is especially a problem if the character's plain appearance was an important aspect of the character's makeup or important to the storyline.

However, when it's just a case of a good-looking actor portraying a historical figure who was not as good-looking as the actor, I don't see that it suffers from this problem. This to me seems like a completely separate trope.

I'm not sure about a couple of Once Upon a Time examples.

• The Seven Dwarfs as well. In the Disney film, they're all short elderly men with long grey beards. Here they're all much younger and human-sized.

Well, yes, in Storybrooke, where Humanity Ensues for everyone who wasn't human to start with. Not so much in the Enchanted Forest, where the actors wear prosthetic noses and ears, and camera tricks are used to make them dwarf-sized. (Some of them are still younger, though, although Doc and Happy have white beards.)

• Same◊ with The Evil Queen

Pretty close to being a Zero Content Example. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but I don't think Disney's Evil Queen is meant to be unattractive the way, for instance, Malificent was. She seems to have been drawn as a Femme Fatale and was "the fairest of them all" until Snow White grew up.

I'm not sure what to make of these examples. Not only do they sound like they should go under inversions, but they also border on calling the actors ugly, which we don't want.

• Averted with Lady Catelyn Stark. Not to say that Michelle Fairley is ugly, but as all the characters were aged up, she arguably showed it the most. Book Catelyn is generally regarded as a strikingly beautiful woman and looks like this◊.
• Also averted with Lord Renly Baratheon and Ser Loras Tyrell. They are played by good-looking actors (Gethin Anthony is Tall, Dark, and Handsome while Finn Jones is a Pretty Boy), but they are not the Adonis as described in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels. Loras on the show is still viewed this way In-Universe, though.
• The actor playing Lord Mace Tyrell is far less aesthetically pleasing than his book counterpart, who is described as being fat, but still good-looking enough that one can easily see that he used to be a Hunk in his youth. When the casting of Roger Ashton-Griffiths was announced, some fans had a hard time believing that this unattractive Mace could be the father of the TV versions of Margaery and Loras. HBO's Mace is also balding, while book!Mace has a head full of hair.
• Averted with Joffrey. In the books, he's tall and handsome like his uncle/father Jaime (albeit Joffrey is more of a Pretty Boy), which is huge part of why Sansa is so head over heels over him during the beginning of the series.

Removed for some broken links:

• While Princess Peach is now depicted as looking like this◊, her sprite from the original Super Mario Bros. game, on the other hand, actually looked like this◊. Though her official art looks the same◊ since she debuted, so this is more due to hardware limitations.
  • Inverted with the Dic cartoons. Peach is still pretty, but not to the length of the games.
  • Pauline originally was a blond girl with '80s Hair, and while she was pretty she looked quite (and understandably) distressed. By the Game Boy remake of Donkey Kong, she had been completely revamped.
• Remake Adaptational Attractiveness happens in many Pokémon games. Blue◊ and Red◊ go from young boys to adorable Bishōnen's come their◊ remakes◊, upped to eleven in the Gold and Silver remakes. Several Gym Leaders became more attractive in both remakes.
• A relatively minor example, but compare Chell in-game◊ to Chell in the Lab Rat comic.◊ The change carries over to Portal 2◊.

I remember the first time I checked out this page, it compared the book version and movie version of Harry Potter's Severus Snape. I wonder where that image is now and if it could be linked into the Image Links page.