[HATED] Adaptations done intentionally without help from the source

[u/Chill0000]

Halo TV show: Before the show came out, the writers were praising their decision to not look to the games for inspiration when making the show

God Of War TV show: Chris Judge, the actor of Kratos in the games from 2018-Now, spoke up about his dislike on the show not hiring anyone who worked on any of the previous games. One of the original creators of Kratos also spoke up about them not having faith in the adaptation.

Supergirl 2026 film: the director for the film not only said he decided to not read Woman Of Tomorrow, the comic the film is adapting, because he wanted to do his own thing, he also didn’t look at comic art for inspiration to design Lobo and instead used an AI image generator to design Lobo’s look for the film

[u/mbrocks3527]

What’s funny is that Fallout, a series that did actually give a damn about its source material and created a fun new storyline out of it, is generally well received and will keep going and making everyone money.

But for some reason Witcher and Halo just get twisted beyond all recognition.

Look theater kids; I know you want to put your stamp on the work. But what you are trying to do, ie, high culture adaptations of well known plays, assume everyone knows the classic story.

The amazing Richard III adaptation where they had the trappings of a fascist state assumed you knew the story. So when it moved away from it it was a deliberate artistic choice. When Carmen has a more modern feminist interpretation, the entire audience still expects Los Toreadors.

Even modern adaptations know how to do this. GoT had 6 seasons where deviations from the books were deliberate choices by creators who knew what they were doing and distilled the story. Same with Denis Villenueve with Dune.

[u/MariachiBoyBand → u/mbrocks3527]

Fallout doesn’t have a central character lore and makes it easy to pull threads around the story because of it. Witcher and Halo are very focused on their central character so it’s hard to deviate or tell new stories.

[u/JRCSalter → u/mbrocks3527]

Messing with stories that have been adapted hundreds of times is perfectly fine, as there's always another out there that people can enjoy if they dislike the new one.

But many of these films and shows are big budget affairs that may never be adapted again in our lifetime, so for them to be a completely different story is rather insulting.

[u/mbrocks3527 → u/JRCSalter]

Agree. That’s why I said that there are good adaptations out there because they distill the inherent story. I couldn’t give a damn about Villenueve’s changes to Dune because he knew what he was working with and had a genuine artistic vision; Lauren Hissrich fundamentally didn’t understand hers and her changes make no sense.

Andor is a fascinating study in good adaptations. Tony Gilroy wasn’t a fan, but he understood in his bones what Star Wars was about. And so the series is a slow burn political thriller, but one which is fundamentally Star Wars (in fact, better than the source material.)

[u/Jarvis_The_Dense → u/mbrocks3527]

Judging by how Todd Howard himself was able to speak on what he liked about season 1 of the show at season 2's premiere, specifically getting into how he felt it nailed Fallout's mix of black comedy with genuinely grim subject matter, I think a big part of what made the show go right was just that the people who make the games were directly invested in the show doing them justice.

Microsoft hasn't cared about Halo's identity in years, no one from Xbox actually had emotional stakes in the show adapting the games in a fitting way. CD Project Red does care about their IPs, but they clearly didn't think the show was much of their concern.

With Fallout on the other hand, it sounds like the studio's CEO just actually wanted a good Fallout show, and so there was probably more oversight and focus on doing the games justice, rather than just letting the showrunners do whatever they wanted and hoping it would give them passive income.

[u/EmbarrassedMonk2589 → u/mbrocks3527]

The best thing about the witcher universe is the witcher 2 and 3 which don't give a single fuck about the source material.

[u/Ayotha → u/[deleted]]

Ah ignorance and media illiteracy