Post by goldensandslash on May 19, 2017 21:03:33 GMT
"Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
Long ago, the TV show lived in harmony.
Then, everything changed when M. Night Shyamalan attacked!"
-- Random YouTube Comment
TL;DR: YES!
So, adaptations. They're a thing in media. Something that gets presented in one form gets turned into another. And every time it happens, you hear outcries of "the book was better than the movie!" and so forth. It gets to the point where people question whether adaptations should even be made. Heck, in some cases, the adaptations end up hurting the original work. Some claim that this isn't the case. The original work is still just as good, if you ignore the adaptation. I'd like to examine whether that's true or not.
One quick note before I get started. Under a strict definition, EVERYTHING is an adaptation. Whatever comment that you are writing to leave in this thread right now is technically an adaptation of the idea of the comment that formed in your head. That's not the type of adaptation that I'm talking about, but I just wanted to make that clear before some smart-ass calls me out on it. Okay, now let's get started.
First of all, from a financial standpoint, a bad adaptation can hurt a product. The best example that I can think of for this is the Wayside School book series. For those who are unaware of it, it's a trilogy of children's chapter books. They have really stood the test of time and are brilliant in every regard. Guess how many copies they've sold? Six million. That sounds like a lot, and it would be, if they came out in the 1990s, like everyone thinks they did. But no, the series actually started in the 1970s. They're still relatively obscure compared to, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Matilda. And yes, they are just as good. Why haven't they done as well? Well, I blame that on the really REALLY bad cartoon show that came out about it. People saw the show, saw that it sucked, assumed the books sucked, and then never bothered buying them. It seems as though the only fans of the books are ones who read them before the TV show even existed. And for books that are this good, yes, that annoys me.
On the flip side of the coin, there's Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. While it's true that the books were very popular before the movies got made, it was only after the adaptation that they really took off and became a part of mainstream culture. A good adaptation can cause that to happen. So, from a financial perspective, yes, adaptations do matter.
In addition to money, though, it's about respect. The best example of this is The Legend of Korra. When that show was airing, it was constantly given the worst possible time slots, no advertising whatsoever, Nickelodeon tried everything to get it over with as quickly as possible, they cut budgets out of nowhere, and then randomly decided on a whim to take it off of television and force viewers to watch it online. Why would they do that!? Well, to put it bluntly, they don't respect the Avatar franchise after the disaster that was The Last Airbender. But, hypothetically, if The Last Airbender had been a good adaptation, it's possible that The Legend of Korra would have been treated better and we probably would have gotten a better product for it. Heck, if the adaptation was REALLY good, like The Hunger Games, it's possible that the Avatar universe would be as mainstream as The Hunger Games currently is. Wouldn't that be something?
Next point, audience. To attract a new audience, it is important that your work be easy to get into. Books, quite frankly, are not. It's not that people don't read books anymore, but it's just that to read a book requires a lot more commitment than to watch a movie. To use a metaphor, imagine your creations as a swimming pool. Books require that you get into the water in order to enjoy. A movie requires you only to dip your toes in. As such, to someone on the outside who is curious about jumping into the pool, but not sure whether they fully want to, they'd rather go for the movie. It's not that people don't read books - it's that they don't read them first.
Generally, the hierarchy is that it is easier to see a movie than anything else. Below that, we have TV shows. Below that is graphic novels. And then books are at the bottom. Obviously, it is different for every person, but generally speaking, that's the order from least amount of work required to most amount of work required. Don't believe me? Here's a list of book-to-film adaptations: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, The Shining, Rambo, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Neverending Story, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. How many of those were films that you saw before reading the book? Heck, how many of those did you never read the book for? Heck, how many of them were you COMPLETELY UNAWARE were ever books at all?
Yeah, adaptations can affect the audience that you attract. And a bad adaptation will result in fewer people wanting to experience your franchise. Even if the original work is still just as good as it was before the adaptation came out.
What's worse is that it not only affects public perceptions of your work, but studio executive's perceptions as well. Here's the thing. The Wayside School trilogy is BEGGING to be made into an animated cartoon. All the stories are self-contained, there's plenty of stories to draw from, and the tone of the books is very "cartoon-esque", the whacky physics and logic of the world were also cartoony, and the characters were all well-developed. Even better, the stories have no sense of chronology and could have taken place in any decade, making this series timeless. But I guarantee you that no studio will want to try to make it into a cartoon again, because the first one failed so hard. So even if you have an idea to make it not suck, good luck getting a network to air it. They'll see it as an unnecessary risk. Heck, you might not even be able to get the original author to sign off on the idea, because he was so badly burned by doing it the first time. So, yes, a bad adaptation can ruin a work.
Now, granted, an adaptation can be so abysmally awful that it wraps around to helping the original work. When people saw The Last Airbender, they said "You know, the original cartoon can't POSSIBLY be this bad" and so they checked it out. When people saw Silent Hill, which was only mediocre, they said "Wow, that movie sucked. I'm never gonna check out the video game that this is based on." However, it takes a special level of awfulness in order to get to that point. For the most part, people just don't check out the original work, and then the studio executives think that it doesn't have an audience.
The other thing is that adaptations don't necessarily have to stick to the original story. The best example of this is The Shining. It was a book that was made into a 1980 movie and then made into a 1997 movie as well. The 1997 version is closer to the book, but the 1980 version is the much better film. The director made choices that compromised the original work in order to deliver a better product because he knew what had to be done in order to get this to succeed on the screen, and knew that these choices would be different than trying to make it succeed on the page.
Overall, yes, adaptations do make a difference. They matter. And they can affect the original work. When a bad adaptation comes out, it ought to be reviled and not just ignored. Saying that the original is still good despite the adaptation simply isn't true. Because the adaptation's very existence damages the original work as a result.
Long ago, the TV show lived in harmony.
Then, everything changed when M. Night Shyamalan attacked!"
-- Random YouTube Comment
TL;DR: YES!
So, adaptations. They're a thing in media. Something that gets presented in one form gets turned into another. And every time it happens, you hear outcries of "the book was better than the movie!" and so forth. It gets to the point where people question whether adaptations should even be made. Heck, in some cases, the adaptations end up hurting the original work. Some claim that this isn't the case. The original work is still just as good, if you ignore the adaptation. I'd like to examine whether that's true or not.
One quick note before I get started. Under a strict definition, EVERYTHING is an adaptation. Whatever comment that you are writing to leave in this thread right now is technically an adaptation of the idea of the comment that formed in your head. That's not the type of adaptation that I'm talking about, but I just wanted to make that clear before some smart-ass calls me out on it. Okay, now let's get started.
First of all, from a financial standpoint, a bad adaptation can hurt a product. The best example that I can think of for this is the Wayside School book series. For those who are unaware of it, it's a trilogy of children's chapter books. They have really stood the test of time and are brilliant in every regard. Guess how many copies they've sold? Six million. That sounds like a lot, and it would be, if they came out in the 1990s, like everyone thinks they did. But no, the series actually started in the 1970s. They're still relatively obscure compared to, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Matilda. And yes, they are just as good. Why haven't they done as well? Well, I blame that on the really REALLY bad cartoon show that came out about it. People saw the show, saw that it sucked, assumed the books sucked, and then never bothered buying them. It seems as though the only fans of the books are ones who read them before the TV show even existed. And for books that are this good, yes, that annoys me.
On the flip side of the coin, there's Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. While it's true that the books were very popular before the movies got made, it was only after the adaptation that they really took off and became a part of mainstream culture. A good adaptation can cause that to happen. So, from a financial perspective, yes, adaptations do matter.
In addition to money, though, it's about respect. The best example of this is The Legend of Korra. When that show was airing, it was constantly given the worst possible time slots, no advertising whatsoever, Nickelodeon tried everything to get it over with as quickly as possible, they cut budgets out of nowhere, and then randomly decided on a whim to take it off of television and force viewers to watch it online. Why would they do that!? Well, to put it bluntly, they don't respect the Avatar franchise after the disaster that was The Last Airbender. But, hypothetically, if The Last Airbender had been a good adaptation, it's possible that The Legend of Korra would have been treated better and we probably would have gotten a better product for it. Heck, if the adaptation was REALLY good, like The Hunger Games, it's possible that the Avatar universe would be as mainstream as The Hunger Games currently is. Wouldn't that be something?
Next point, audience. To attract a new audience, it is important that your work be easy to get into. Books, quite frankly, are not. It's not that people don't read books anymore, but it's just that to read a book requires a lot more commitment than to watch a movie. To use a metaphor, imagine your creations as a swimming pool. Books require that you get into the water in order to enjoy. A movie requires you only to dip your toes in. As such, to someone on the outside who is curious about jumping into the pool, but not sure whether they fully want to, they'd rather go for the movie. It's not that people don't read books - it's that they don't read them first.
Generally, the hierarchy is that it is easier to see a movie than anything else. Below that, we have TV shows. Below that is graphic novels. And then books are at the bottom. Obviously, it is different for every person, but generally speaking, that's the order from least amount of work required to most amount of work required. Don't believe me? Here's a list of book-to-film adaptations: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, The Shining, Rambo, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Neverending Story, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. How many of those were films that you saw before reading the book? Heck, how many of those did you never read the book for? Heck, how many of them were you COMPLETELY UNAWARE were ever books at all?
Yeah, adaptations can affect the audience that you attract. And a bad adaptation will result in fewer people wanting to experience your franchise. Even if the original work is still just as good as it was before the adaptation came out.
What's worse is that it not only affects public perceptions of your work, but studio executive's perceptions as well. Here's the thing. The Wayside School trilogy is BEGGING to be made into an animated cartoon. All the stories are self-contained, there's plenty of stories to draw from, and the tone of the books is very "cartoon-esque", the whacky physics and logic of the world were also cartoony, and the characters were all well-developed. Even better, the stories have no sense of chronology and could have taken place in any decade, making this series timeless. But I guarantee you that no studio will want to try to make it into a cartoon again, because the first one failed so hard. So even if you have an idea to make it not suck, good luck getting a network to air it. They'll see it as an unnecessary risk. Heck, you might not even be able to get the original author to sign off on the idea, because he was so badly burned by doing it the first time. So, yes, a bad adaptation can ruin a work.
Now, granted, an adaptation can be so abysmally awful that it wraps around to helping the original work. When people saw The Last Airbender, they said "You know, the original cartoon can't POSSIBLY be this bad" and so they checked it out. When people saw Silent Hill, which was only mediocre, they said "Wow, that movie sucked. I'm never gonna check out the video game that this is based on." However, it takes a special level of awfulness in order to get to that point. For the most part, people just don't check out the original work, and then the studio executives think that it doesn't have an audience.
The other thing is that adaptations don't necessarily have to stick to the original story. The best example of this is The Shining. It was a book that was made into a 1980 movie and then made into a 1997 movie as well. The 1997 version is closer to the book, but the 1980 version is the much better film. The director made choices that compromised the original work in order to deliver a better product because he knew what had to be done in order to get this to succeed on the screen, and knew that these choices would be different than trying to make it succeed on the page.
Overall, yes, adaptations do make a difference. They matter. And they can affect the original work. When a bad adaptation comes out, it ought to be reviled and not just ignored. Saying that the original is still good despite the adaptation simply isn't true. Because the adaptation's very existence damages the original work as a result.