When is it Acceptable to Expand an Adaptation of a Story?
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Dec. 19, 2019, 9:08 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Often, when a film is adapted from a novel, content from the novel is removed from the film, for a number of reasons, the most common of which being that the film would simply be too great in duration if all the source material was kept, but also because not all material is directly related to the main plot, as happened with the 1939 adaptation of The Wizard of Oz or the Harry Potter films, all of which removed numerous subplots from the books. Then, there are times when a film adaptation is only a very loose adaptation of the novel, such as the film of Ready Player One, which kept the same basic premise of the novel, but changed many details of the plot.
However, on rare occasion, the opposite scenario occurs, in which a film adaptation actually adds material to the story that was not present in the original book, which may or may not be a good thing, depending upon the perspective of the audience. For example, the film adaptations of both Jumanji and The Polar Express added significant amounts of material that was original to the films, since the original novels were very short, and a direct adaptation of either would likely be barely a half-hour in duration.
Also, given the innumerable adaptions of Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology and of tales of King Arthur, it is practically inevitable that those adaptations shall expand upon certain details of the source material, with varying degrees of success.
A more controversial example is the Hobbit trilogy; the original novel is very short, shorter than any of the books in The Lord of the Rings, but expanding it into three films required great amounts of expansion. I personally did like the flashback at the beginning of the first film, showing Erebor in all its glory and Smaug attacking it, as well as giving Bard greater depth and development, but far too much else was completely unnecessary, in my mind, most notably the plot with the corrupt lord of Laketown and both Legolas and Tauriel, the former of whom was not yet conceived as a character when the book was written and the latter of whom exists only because there were no major female characters in the original book. I did like the scene of Gandalf and Radaghast visiting the tomb, but the scene in which Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, and Saruman fight Sauron at Dol Guldur was too much, since, at the time that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he had not yet fully conceived the character of Sauron, nor the one ring’s connection to him.
One other example that I have used before is in the Japanese manga and anime series Bleach, in which Ikkaku had a flashback about how he first met Kenpachi, which was only two or three pages in the original manga, but expanded into a full 30-minute episode in the anime, which was definitely one of the better examples of filler in that series.
What does everyone else say about this? When is it acceptable to expand an adaptation of a work of fiction? What are some good and some not-so-good examples of expanding a story beyond the source material?
So I always have to step back and view each property as it's own individual thing. Even though the movie or show may be an adaptation of another original property, I look at them in the same way I look at comic books changing writers/artists. Each will have their own unique take on the character and story and this could add to, subtract from, or change parts of the story as it was originally presented.
December 20, 2019 9:48 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #4
Boza, I enjoyed the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist series, but the ending, in which
FMA Spoilers Show
was a complete surprise that had no foreshadowing and felt very weird, and I personally believe that the writers could have written a better ending than that.
Boza says... #2
I think that adding to a story, as long as it serves the story and is not "filler", is okay. In regards to changing the story, it is okay if done faithfully and without being for "the sake of" something.
Examining the examples - you enjoyed the additions which expanded the character's stories, but disliked the parts that were in there because of LOTR and because there has to be a female lead "for the sake of" there being a female lead.
Bleach is notorious for having a bunch of filler, especially the kind that did not fit the overall story, but that is par for the course for anime that airing every week and running out of source material.
In the case of watchmen, while it changes the story, it was done faithfully and did not disrupt the story in a major way and kind of fit the character arc of Manhattan at the time.
A good example of "filler" that both changes and adds to it in anime is the original Fullmetal Alchemist - the original anime caught up to manga very quickly and about 60% of the 50-something episodes and the movie are completely anime original. However, it is expertly made, faithful the themes of the original manga series and expands the story in a logical way. A decade later, once the manga was complete, a new series FMA: Brotherhood was made that followed the manga's story.
To this day, I still think the original series has the more compelling story and better ending than the manga adaptation.
December 20, 2019 5:36 a.m.