Adaptations, good thing or bad thing
 

Hey everybody

Todays subject is adaptations.
We've all seen plenty of adaptations, an original IP (intellectual property) is redeveloped into a story for a different medium or rebooted in the same one.

Now theres plenty of reasons someone would make an adaptation, built in audience, sense of nostalgia, a form of advertising (movie tie-in games come to mind), as some loving homage to the original work.

However, this isn't without its drawbacks, incredibly lackluster product can be put into production because its banking on the established audience, studio driven decisions can infect an artists vision (consider that Sony made Venom appear in the Spider-man 3 film because he was a fan favourite even when Sam Raimi didnt really know how to or want to write a part for him) and a market flooded with adaptations can make it difficult for an original IP to survive.

So what are your thoughts? Are adaptations a totally awesome way to re-experience old great stories? Would you prefer to live in some sort of bizarro universe where nothing is ever adapted? Is there a place for adaptations? Post your comments below.

Re: Adaptations, good thing or bad thing
 

I'm not against adaptations personally, but I know there is so much work involved.

You don't want to piss off fans and purists, but I don't think I've ever seen a straight one to one conversion from anywhere.

Its just a fact of life that a book doesn't function as a movie, a movie doesn't function as a game and a game doesn't function as a movie.

So liberties have to be taken.

Though I was thinking and maybe its just me, but you hardly ever see anyone mention a book adaptation (that is movie to book or game to book) that gets it wrong.

I don't know if its because there are few of those or because people don't read em

Re: Adaptations, good thing or bad thing
 

The case you argue in talking about adaptations is Spider-Man?

Of course adaptations are a good thing. So many of the best movies were books first.

Re: Adaptations, good thing or bad thing
 

@Dylflon: but some of the worst films, books, video games and comics are adaptations.

Re: Adaptations, good thing or bad thing
 

Yeah, but most of the worst are original sucky ideas.

The quality lay at the hands of those who are adapting the material, not the concept of adaptation itself.

You shouldn't argue against their existence because spiderman 3 was terrible. Furthermore, that was only an adaptation of characters and loosely of a few general plot points.

I'm going to start listing movies that are adaptations of books and are awesome until you stop thinking this way.


Lord of the Rings
The Shawshank Redemption
Apocalypse Now (based on Heart of Darkness)
The Shining
The Thing
Trainspotting
Fight Club
Forrest Gump
Full Metal Jacket
Dr. Strangelove
Casino
Minority Report
The Godfather
Schindler's List
Goodfellas
No Country for Old Men
The Road
Dances With Wolves
Children of Men
Stand by Me
Silence of the Lambs
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
A Clockwork Orange
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The list goes on.

Re: Adaptations, good thing or bad thing
 

Yeah, and think about how Disney came to be. They basically ripped off/adapted tons of old stories, but put their own creative twist and made tremendous films out of it. Copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig calls this "Disney creativity" We'd be nowhere without it.

The way I look at it...Almost every idea has been done before. Everything is kind of adapted from something else at this point from some kind of influence, whether directly or not.