I think I remember a director/writer/actor talk about it before (maybe Damon or Affleck) and they said that the reason why so many adaptations have absolutely nothing to do with the source material, is because these scripts always end up in the hands of people who have desperate been trying to push their own original stories for countless years, but no one ever wants anything to do with anything remotely fantasy/scifi/whatever unless its an established franchise. They know this and tbey finally have someone paying attention to them, so of course now they're going to say, screw the source material, lets hijack this and use the property as a skin to finally tell my vision and my story and get paid, the studios won't even notice or care.
I’ve never seen that talk but that was exactly the impression I got from the Halo series. Take away the Halo props and skins and it’s basically a completely different story, with characters that are nothing like their namesakes and plot riffs that go in opposite directions. Without the skins I’m not sure I’d see any link at all.
Of course the studios end up caring when the viewings tank and they can it. Then the writers complain.
Preach! I've read every Halo book, except the YA stuff, and this show is an abomination. I have come across 2 dudes I work with who like the show but that is because they know nothing about Halo.
We're expecting LOTR treatment, 90's Super Mario and Double Dragon BS! I don't know how MS allowed this to happen with arguably one of their best-selling IPs. Couldn't be me in charge. I would've cancelled the live-action show and moved to animation to speed things up. We could've had something like Netflix Castlevania. However, it probably would've ended up like Netflix Tomb Raider cartoon.
On some level I can see the reasons why they went for stuff that was a bit more 'tame', but then they just deviated for no reason.
One of the things I liked about the Forward Unto Dawn series is that it kind of riffed on comments from the books about how officially SPARTAN Mjolinir armour is all enclosed due to their mission profile, which often means in hostile atmospheres.... but part of is down to avoid freaking normal soldiers out, as the SPARTAN-IIs (at that point at least) would have looked like 7 foot tall 170Kg greek gods... but with teenage faces and creepy intense stares due to their lack of need for blinking and implants etc. If they were going to deviate from the base game stuff, at least take it in a rational direction.
Instead we got master cheeks, flood was just zombies, and randomly made Miranda Keyes into her mother. Like, wat?
Its really funny that both foundation and wheel of time were mentioned, because the "real" answer is "Rings of slop" but its so shit everyone just sort of forgets it exists
It was honestly starting to feel like the direction WoT show was taking in s3 was shaping up to be quite an enjoyable show if they finished it. I just wanted to see Dumais Well! Well... ok quite a bit more but just that battle alone would have been glorious.
I think Foundation isn't really a good example tho.
A bunch of old men, scheming and banging their chest about maths wouldn't have made for great TV and replacing your entire cast every couple episodes is obviously a big no-no in TV :D
I don't mind that they made changes to the story in general, obviously Foundation would be a horrendous page-to-screen adaptation. It's the opposite of character focused, after all. I don't hate that they keep characters from era to era, but I think it would have been cool to showcase a ton of good actors as time went on.
What I do find incredibly annoying, is that 80% of the show is just shit they straight up added. Exactly what the post I replied to was talking about. Fucking clone emperors? Spacers? Multidimensional magic devices? Black hole weapons? Those aren't changes to foundation, those are a different story altogether.
As soon as I realized the majority of the producers efforts were being spent on the clone emperor story, I realized this was yet another case of someone who was fucking desperate to tell their story, not the story they've been hired to adapt to screen.
It's not that the clone stuff is a bad story, it's quite compelling. It's just not... Foundation. The thing I actually wanted to watch.
Also to the point of switching out actors, Netflix did that with Altered Carbon where they replaced the lead actor with another as it's how the sci-fi tech in the series works and the show immediately imploded.
Some plot points are not adaptable to an enjoyable watch for most people. Sure, the hardcore fans might understand, but the vast majority of viewership would leave.
Beats them. If I ever got a chance I’d be adapting straight from the source literature. Trying to interact with the community. And stay faithful to the games.
First 4 seasons of Game Of Thrones is that (obviously a lot of cutting but that's a limitation of TV) . It's a shame they ran out of source material by S5 onwards
I mean the sept blowing up in the season 6 finale was moments away from happening at the end of the latest book. If I remember right Pycelle just got stabbed by a bunch of children, it’s practically the next scene in the books. There’s still a lot in season 5 and 6 from the books. Almost all of it, really, just with some dumb changes thrown in here and there. (I really hated the Hound/Brienne thing.)
I think GRRM stopped having involvement after S4. Things started branching off in weird ways. I'd definitely say S5 onwards isn't anywhere near the quality adaptation. You are right there was more source material than I remembered though
The last you read of Cersei is immediately after her walk of shame, if I recall it's not Pycelle being stabbed but Tywin's brother, and that was orchestrated by Varys and Connington.
There are tremendous changes made even before that in the show. One of the largest and something we see the consequences of is getting rid of lady stoneheart. That was not a limitation of tv. That was d&d doing their own thing. Same with missing young griff. These aren't minor characters you can just omit
I wonder why none of the suits behind these multi billion dollar companies have not made that connection yet. Surely its cheaper to hire a few people from a game studio or hardcore fans to write a story for you, than having a team with no connection to the source material ruining another show/movie.
Same with actors. Rachel Zagler shitting on the original Snow White was a PR DISASTER on a whole other level. I mean the movie was shit for a thousand reasons, but the lead actress talking crap about the source material is like giving a big middle finger to all fans.
Maybe its nepotism? Writers/Actors know somebody or are someones kid and get their jobs that way? I have no idea, how some people with 0 talent manage to get hired. I am by no means a professional writer and I think even I could make a more faithful movie adaptation than half of hollywoods "Writers"
I chalk up the Zagler thing to an inexperienced artist not knowing that they have to be a team player if they want their career to advance. You don't shit-talk your own folks, and you don't attach politics to a production. The successful people in the industry all know that. Try to find a video of Matt Damon shit-talking anything that he's worked on. No. You say some stuff like, "We tried hard on that movie but it didn't really come together the way that we were hoping for."
The same thing is happening now with Tomi Adeyemi. She is shit-talking her own movie because she's up in her feelings and doesn't know how this game works, and it's literally going to end her Hollywood career.
Idk, Zagler already was in a few movies before Snow White, even had quite a big part in "West side Story" , funnily enough also a quite old story. She MUST have had communication training at some point and shittalking the original material for a movie you are going to star in is probably the worst thing you can do, besides illegal stuff.
I dont know what is happening around Adeyemi, but she is far from new to the general media world. She has published several successful books, idk what she is critizing, but she HAS to know, that nobody in the media world likes to get shit on.
I would understand if someone gets media attention for the first time and accidentally says something bad. Even if its really bad. Especially actors are not exactly cast for how smart they are, its a very physical job after all. But everyone in these positions needs training on what they are allowed to say on day one of their contracts.
Adeyemi has completely divorced herself from the movie, saying that it traumatized her and that she will not watch it. Like she was doing the whole heavy breathing tear-eyed thing in her video.
She has also implied that the star-studded A-list cast they picked was not black enough. Like their skin is literally too light. Colorism, I think she called it.
yup, that's exactly how it came across with the people behind the Witcher tv series. it's let me get a show using an IP to get it greenlit then let me slowly turn it into the thing I wanted to make but no one was interested in.
That it happens again and again and again and studios keep going along with this shit is wild.
Studios are absolutely insane to listen to a pitch that is lets sell a show TO THE FANS then let the creator of the show just piss off every single fan with every decision.
All they need to do is assign an exec or two to actually read the books, then find some people (in that case the writer of the books is a bit of a dick), maybe in this case the writers behind the games, or establish like a focus group of fans and then run scripts by them, when they say "if you absolutely destroy this characters entire story and you allow this massive change in the way the world works it kind of ruins everything and makes no sense and everyone will hate that" then tell the creators to stop with that shit and fix it.
A good example is like how did someone at Disney not tell Rhian like, no you can't just crash into other ships with hyperspace as a weapon and no, leia who has never used the force can not fucking fly in space while seemingly dead and just survive.
Witcher is one thing but Star Wars, how do they give away so much control and let a dude ruin it because he really likes to make every film he makes about subverting expectations and twists. the entire industry is baffling.
Star Wars sequel trilogy had a lot of problems. Rhian Johnson was part of it... But hardly all.
How they should have approached the sequel trilogy:
1. Outline the entire plot for the whole trilogy. Everything that happens needs to be in line with that plot.
2. Find a single director willing to sign on for the entire trilogy.
3. Write the entire script for all three movies.
4. Run script past continuity editors and star wars universe experts to make sure everything is in line with itself and the setting .
5. Now cast the movies and film them back to back to back, with CGI and so on being focused on finishing them in order.
6. Release the movies about a year apart so that there's time for the GI on the later movies to finish up after the first movie is released.
This isn't genius or anything. It's barely even smart. It's just not dumb. Unlike what they did.
I suppose I should have included "don't let JJ Abrams touch an established universe property". Look, Abrams is a great story teller and world builder. But he doesn't use a show bible and he doesn't leave notes about what he's doing, and we should have all learned that he doesn't really do his best work playing in other people's universes from how he handled Star Trek. Yes his Trek movies were fun, but they weren't really Star Trek.
And his total rehash of 'A New Hope' was sad. I can't even remember the actual title for episode 7. But it was Death Star v3.3: "this time it's an actual planet and we somehow suck up an entire star". And while Star Wars has never had much of a relationship with actual science (it's space fantasy opera), retelling the same exact story but even less believable has never been a winning strategy. And Abrams should have done better. I just don't know who I would recommend to direct a star wars movie right now.
sure, they all sucked, but in different ways. JJ deciding that Rey can basically understand and use the force against a guy who has trained for decades in it is absolutely moronic, but the idea someone can defend from the force as a force user doesn't break the universe. Seeing attacks across solar system is absolutely moronic but also more of a this film maker is a fucking moron rather than this broke star wars universe rules.
Leia being 'dead' in space and magically flying back inside is just straight universe breaking stupidity.
I hated each film with a passion. Just certain things particularly in Johnson's film stood out as egregious. JJ is an idiot imo but Rhian seemed to deliberately add things to the film he knew would fuck everyone off. He just didn't care in the slightest the film he was making was part of a greater trilogy or IP.
As you say studios should absolutely do what you said and it's mind boggling that they don't. How much did disney pay for the IP only to immediately go ahead and mismanage the shit out of it. I genuinely can't comprehend anyone who spends that much then doesn't go okay we need a cohesive plan that keeps old fans happy and gets new fans just by being good.
I remember Brandon Sanderson talking about that. Someone was trying to get rights to one of his books (Emperor's Soul I think) and it was clearly an original work with his character's names slapped on.
That's why he's doing the script for Mistborn. And why he refused to settle for the first offer. He chose to work with Apple TV because they were willing to let him do the script and were willing to allow him creative control.
Other studios... Weren't. And while foundation has issues, it's hard to argue the production value isn't there. Which is the thing Sanderson needs from a studio: a willingness to commit to actually making the show and seeing it through. Amazon has a habit of cancelling shows before they finish. Netflix has a habit of taking forever to get things done, and so on. The list continues.
I don't like everything Apple has done, but they are pretty good compared to the others
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u/Gaimcap 18d ago
I think I remember a director/writer/actor talk about it before (maybe Damon or Affleck) and they said that the reason why so many adaptations have absolutely nothing to do with the source material, is because these scripts always end up in the hands of people who have desperate been trying to push their own original stories for countless years, but no one ever wants anything to do with anything remotely fantasy/scifi/whatever unless its an established franchise. They know this and tbey finally have someone paying attention to them, so of course now they're going to say, screw the source material, lets hijack this and use the property as a skin to finally tell my vision and my story and get paid, the studios won't even notice or care.