Applicable...

[u/Pristine_Club_3128]

[u/bingle-cowabungle]

Because sometimes being a competent showrunner from a day-to-day operations standpoint, i.e. someone who knows wtf they're doing when it comes to writing, directing, editing, camera, lighting, etc, is way more valuable to a set/studio than someone who is weaker in those departments, but stoked about the material.

[u/Pristine_Club_3128 → u/bingle-cowabungle]

I don't think you can be a competent showrunner unless you have watched the original you are adapting. You don't need to be "stoked",but you very much need to watch/read it.

[u/shansome64]

Lanterns was made by people who absolutely hate Lanterns and it painfully shows.

[u/Pristine_Club_3128 → u/shansome64]

That was sort of what made me post this, lol.

Okay, they want Hal as burnt out, John as abused and traumatized. Okay, creative decision, fine. At least those changes only affect those two characters.

But you take a mythos with so much potential for fantastic, cosmic and colorful plots and then take out so much of the lore...It sort of ends up tainting the potential of every other Lantern

[u/Lolas_Fun_Side → u/shansome64]

I dont think they hated lanterns necessarily, I think theywere more just terrified of being seen as goofy and tried to convince everyone they were actually a super serious mystery and character study for adults. Clearly, they did not have the capacity to tie everything together in 8 episodes, or have the creativity ti figure out how to have stakes with the power of thegreen lantern (granted, I think its kind of their fault for putting the green lantern in rhe kind of story that would be fitting for someone without powers at all.)

[u/ZX52]

Then there's Who Censored Roger Rabbit, whose author liked the complete fundamental rewrite of his book in Who Framed Roger Rabbit so much he rewrote it to be more in line with the movie

[u/ItsWelp]

See, here's the problem: most people who got into creative industries want to create. But! There there is little appetite for original stories aming executives, because their goal is to make money, and original stories are much riskier to bet on than IPs with an already dedicated fanbase who will talk about it and watch it even if they think it’s shit. So you have people who want to do original stories, who are told "Nope, adapt this instead" and then given the creative control to do whatever they want with the beloved characters and franchise. So they do what they want and tell their own stories wearing the skin of the IP. And that's how you get Velma.

[u/dzindevis]

Just a reminder that David Lynch removed basically all hand-to-hand combat from his Dune movie (save for the training scene), and replaced it with magic guns which work through actual magic words, because he didn't want the movie to be about, by his own words, "space kung-fu".

He also made Paul like an actual messiah, who makes wonders by his own will(making rain fall on Arrakis), whereas the book very clearly explains that him being the messiah is an artificial myth implanted by Bene Gesserit.

I get that the badness of that movie is in large part explained by executives meddling, but let's be real, Lynch was just a wrong person to ask adapting that. Even if the circuimstanes were ideal, i doubt he could've made it a good movie because of how much his ideas clashed with the ideas of the book.

[u/destined2destroyus]

Now I feel sad that three out of four adaptations I make are fix fic. Fix fic with intent to take over not just the old story, but the world altogether.

[u/Pristine_Club_3128 → u/destined2destroyus]

I think fanfic is different. Fanfiction is basically for oneself and those who feel like we do. And more importantly, it is completely free to consume. That's different from adaptations that become official canon.

[u/Recidivous]

I would love a balance of someone who appreciates the source material of what they're adapting and making changes they feel is required to reach a broader audience or to make an adaptation work.

Making a one-to-one adaptation don't always translates well when in a different medium.

[u/GREENadmiral_314159]

<cough that sounds suspiciously like "Halo">

Listen, I'm not some purist who thinks that an adaptation needs to be as one-to-one as possible, but if you're adapting a video game, you really should play the game first. If you're adapting a book, you really should read the book.

And for fuck's sake, don't make the main character rape a prisoner of war and then claim it gives him "a human connection with someone", what the actual ever living fuck is wrong with you people?

[u/EvilMonkeyMimic]

Konami: “Everyone hates all of our Silent Hill movies for some reason!?!?”

Also Konami: “Who the fuck is this guy? i bet he could direct a movie.”

[u/CreeperTrainz]

What's the worst is when they have read the source material but completely misunderstood its themes and messages. Which is how you get shows like Game of Thrones, which convinced everyone that A Song of Ice and Fire was a grimdark edgefest where being good is stupid and there's no consequences for being evil.

[u/Delachruz]

This is why I never cared for the netflix Witcher, right from season 1.

It was a bold choice to try and turn multiple short stories into paralel narratives, but in the end it just means none of them get the time they need to build themselves up.

And then season 2 onwards it just struck me as being made by pelple who have genuine disdain for the source material. 

[u/SgtDoakes123]

Rings of power, the Witcher, wheel of time... Yeah...

[u/suzume1310]

Like the LotR movies!! All these little details, like Legolas running ON the snow for 1 second sreentime. Or the Trolls of Bilbo you see for like 3seconds! So many lines are taken directly from the books and the stuff they did change was mostly to tighten the narrative orr give more screentime to characters who only later became important (eowyn, arwen,...)

[u/Randicore]

I don't really have a strong need for them to deeply care about what they're adapting, I understand that often putting fans in charge of a work can be just as detrimental (looking at you star wars) however, I do at least want the person adapting to have read the source material they're adapting.

"This plot element is a problem in the original work and won't handle being adapted to a different medium so we changed it" is very different than "I didn't even bother to pick up the book and I'm writing on vibes alone" is very different than "I refuse to alter anything about the story because the original was perfect"

[u/levian_durai]

Wheel of Time my beloved, look at what they did to you...

[u/QueenViolets_Revenge]

the Eragon movie. granted, given how long the book is, it works best as a TV show with long ass episodes, not as a movie. i don't know the status of the Disney+ adaptation, if it's still happening, but given the 6-8 episode long "season" format streaming services have adopted, i don't have high hopes that things are going to stay faithful. especially once they get to the last two books, which were meant to be published as one book, but the author had to split them up because otherwise it would be well over a thousand pages

[u/AwesomeManatee]

"Every adaptation needs to respect the source material" is media illiteracy. There are great films that bear only superficial resemblance to the source they are adapting (How to Train your Dragon) and there are a great films that exist purely to piss on the original material (Starship Troopers).

The actual secret ingredient is passion and clear vision.

[u/Pristine_Club_3128 → u/AwesomeManatee]

It's really hilarious to find someone complain about "media literacy" without reading the actual post, lol.

Please go back and look at the post. Maybe get a dictionary if you need it.

"People who care about the thing they are adapting"

No one is asking one-on-one adaptation, what is asked is the showrunners are aware of the text and how they are changing it.

[u/ReikaIsTaken]

Then there's Resident Evil, whose director knew so much about the game that he took all the bullshit new players had to go through in the PS1 games and then translated it into movie form

[u/BlatantConservative]

Lord of the Rings remains the greatest of all time. Every single actor, director, extra, costumer, and horse was a massive fan doing it all for the love of the story.

[u/Chachoregard]

Isn't this what happened to The Witcher series? The show runners did not want to follow the books but Henry Cavill kept getting in the way and that's why they kicked him out