(Hated)changing somenthing to be more "progressive" ends up being a bad thing

[u/Morr4Seiya]

Now to be clear,i am not one of these "anti-woke" losers that complain some people exist,and i am also not the type to complain about changing somenthing in a new version or adaptation,however there are cases where it did ended up being a bad idea.

-In the anime of Cowboy Bebop there is the character Gren,despite being short lived the character is very memorable specially thanks to his tragic story.Basically his story was that he was a soldier from the titan war who was a great friend with Vicious(the main bad guy)after the war he was emprisioned thanks to Vicious who testified against him and he was forced to take a experimental drug that caused him hormonal problems,giving him a feminine appearence and even breasts.

In the Netflix live action,for some reasons they decided Gren was going to be non-binary,which wouldn't be a problem(some people believe he was gay in the anime)if it wasn't for the fact that they also removed all the nuances and complexities that made the character memorable and interesting,instead of a tragic war veteran that was betrayed and had his body changed against his will,Gren is just kinda there.

-The original Rugrats cartoon had the couple Betty and Howard,Betty was a big and masculine woman while Howard was a smaller and nervous man,it was a genuine interesting relationship that stood out from the other couples who were the standard straight couple.

In the new series however they replaced Howard with a woman named Trish,two things,first off why?What was the problem with having a woman being the stronger in a straight relationship?Second why does Hollywood seem to think that every tomboy or masculine woman is a lesbian?

Overall not the worst thing but it is jarring that they had a gender reverse roled that was progressive and decided that wasn't enough.

-Oh man,this one pisses me off the most so i am gonna have to break it down

So back in the late 80s and 90s there was this anime called Saint Seiya also knows as Knights of the zodiac,it tells the story of knights who fight for the Goddess Athena to protect earth,being divided in the golden,silver and bronze knights,the anime was a huge hit in latin america and Europe and while it floped in the US it still has a loyal fanbase.

Being a fan myself i can't recommend it enough,now granted the story does have a fair share of flaws,and that's because the author was honestly just making stuff up as he went along(also a lot of side characters are poorly used or even forgotten about)still it is a great story you should check out

But then a couple of years back Netflix got the rights and decided to a 3D reboot,in this reboot they decided to make the story more "american" to try to bring more american viewers,now i could go on and on a big rant about how that was a bad idea and the execution was so terrible that it made me want to strangle someone but this post is about one specific change.

So Saint Seiya has five main characters,those are Pegasus Seiya,Dragon Shiryu,Cygnus Hyoga,Phoenix Ikki and finally Andromeda Shun.

While the other four characters were the standard masculine and brute male characters who were always ready to throw punches,Shun was smaller,more sensitive and even feminine looking,a pacifist who didn't liked fighting,but don't mistake that for weakness because Shun was loyal to his friends and was extremely powerful.

Then Netflix decided to change Shun into a girl named Shaun.

So wait,you have a male character who goes against every male stereotype and you turn him into just another generic female character?

When asked about it,the showrunner Eugene Son said he made that change because there was no girl in the group and having a all boys group wouldn't be acceptable nowadays

First off that's not true because Athena was also part of the main cast,yeah she wasn't the fighting type but she still helped quite a lot in the story even saving the knights on several occasions,second if you wanted to add a girl to the main group why not use Marin or Shaina?Hell,if you were going to change the story anyway why not turn Seiya sister into a knight?

Thankfully this monstrosity was cancelled(so much for trying to bring more fans)

[u/ArcaneMadman]

Time to beat a dead horse, Netflix Devil May Cry

In Devil May Cry, demons are demons, creatures born from the Underworld which is a reality of darkness to our reality of light. They are magical beings that worship evil and power, with the strongest ruling over the weak while the weak serve until they can claim some more power and force their way up the ladder. They look down on humans both as food, since human blood powers them up, and as inferior beings for being weak. They fundamentally lack "heart" or the ability to love, so when one of them shows the capacity to care for another being it is a HUGE deal.

In the Netflix show, they instead make it that demons are just aliens from another dimension that just like humans can be good or evil, and makes an entire lower caste of people that look like normal humans that live in the demon world that act as an allegory for middle eastern refugees from the Iran war, and makes the american government invade the demon world for its resources and abuse these innocent demons. Unfortunately it still wants Dante to kill demons guilt free, so it makes it so that there are still evil demons that act like they do in the games, eating humans and looking like monsters. Oh, and demons are biologically more aggressive and violent. So the allegories for arabic refugees of war are cannibalistic and biologically violent, and the only ones you can trust are the ones that look "normal". Which is so much more racist than it needed to be and echoes dangerous rhetoric about immigrants and refugees, but what did you expect from a showrunner cozying up to Trump?

[u/SuperSaiyanTrunks → u/ArcaneMadman]

Why cant anyone just stick to the source material? Its like these directors take something awesome and beloved and think hmmm im going to do something COMPLETELY different. Surely the fans wont take issue!

[u/audiodudedmc → u/SuperSaiyanTrunks]

I blame superiority complex, I think hollywood script writers think they are better than people who write video game scripts, even when said video game stories are more beloved and successful than anything that they have done in their entire careers.

[u/MiseryGyro → u/audiodudedmc]

Nah I will defend writers. When you do an adaptation you do have to make it your own thing. You cannot just recreate what happened before. It would bore people already familiar with the material.

Adi Shankar just sucks and his shows suck

[u/amaROenuZ → u/MiseryGyro]

Nah I will defend writers. When you do an adaptation you do have to make it your own thing. You cannot just recreate what happened before. It would bore people already familiar with the material.

I disagree strenuously. Some of the best films ever made are faithful, by the numbers adaptations of the source material. Lord of the Rings, the Godfather, the Wizard of Oz, the Princess Bride, No Country for Old Men, the Shining, Silence of the Lambs, they're all good precisely because they refrained from trying to "make it your own thing", and instead preserved the plots, themes, and settings that people came to the theatre to see. Your job when adapting a book, a game, a play, a comic book, is to make the adjustments needed to translate mediums, not to use the original work as a costume for the story you pitched and got shot down on.

[u/blkbullnyc → u/amaROenuZ]

In the case of The Princess Bride, it helps when the guy who wrote the book also wrote the screenplay.

[u/MiseryGyro → u/amaROenuZ]

I'm assuming you mean Jackson's Lord of the Rings films? Because those famously cut a lot from the books and changed the character arc of Aragorn.

Book Frodo is 50 when he leaves the Shire.

You are dead wrong about your very first example. And a number of your examples. They all famously divert from the books in some way. Except for No Country for Old Men. Edit: McCarthy wrote the script for No Country first then wrote it as a book so it would get made I believe

Stephen King famously hates the Shining film because Jack Torrance is his negative self insert. And in the novel Jack is given a small redemption at the end.

[u/HarrisonTheBarbarian → u/MiseryGyro]

I'm assuming you mean Jackson's Lord of the Rings films? Because those famously cut a lot from the books. Book Frodo is 50 when he leaves the Shire.

Hence the "adjust for the medium". Why waste time in an already massive movie trilogy when you can cut to the chase. Quite frankly, it's a small change and certainly doesn't "do it's own thing".

And the movie Trilogy famously has a lot of content CUT from the final cuts played in theater. Everytime there's a new one we learn that there's apparently even more cut scenes.

[u/MiseryGyro → u/HarrisonTheBarbarian]

Jackson's films fundamentally change Aragorn as a character. They needed to give the trilogy a character in the B plot that goes through a hero's journey.

Elrond is changed to be antagonistic to Aragorn in that story. In the books he loves him.

If I was to explain all the work Peter Jackson did to "adjust to the medium" I would be here all day.

And that work is my point. It was a substantial task to translate these books to film and it required creative decisions from Jackson. And writing from him and Fran Walsh when they veered from Tolkien.

[u/Slateboard → u/MiseryGyro]

It really seems like 'making it your own thing' is what has people upset over many adaptations.

Making pre-existing work your own thing sounds more like fanfiction.

Or am I misunderstanding your words?

[u/MiseryGyro → u/Slateboard]

A lot of you all seem to think "make it your own" means "change it completely"

Let's look at Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson had to make a film. He only has so much time an audience can sit down to watch his movie.

Inherently he cannot fit all of Tolkien's work in that time frame. So he fits what he can. To be economical with time he does something like remove Glorifindel and gives Arwen more prominence.

That is not Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, it's now Peter Jackson's adaptation. His own thing.

If you are adapting anything you have to start asking yourself what can stay and what must be cut

[u/Verraise-Mage → u/MiseryGyro]

There's a difference between removing side characters from one chapter, and doing a 180 on the story, characters, and lore, especially considering DMC was already voiced visual media.

Lord of the Rings characters spoke unsubtitled Elvish, referenced the Silmarillion, relied on in-universe information, and lots of lines are written in Tolkien's style or just make zero sense unless you read the books ("Fourth Eorlingus!").

[u/MiseryGyro → u/Verraise-Mage]

Glorifindel was one example I chose of many from Jackson's Lord of the Rings. My father has been complaining about the lack of Tom Bombadil for almost 30 years.

Jaws and Jurassic Park are good examples of Stephen Spielburg knowing what subplots to cut and what characters to change.

When it's done well, none of us care. We only care when it's bad.

[u/ERedfieldh → u/MiseryGyro]

The Wheel of Time.

That's all I'm gonna say.

[u/bigtiddieslover → u/MiseryGyro]

Make their own thing but sadly they suck at that

[u/Godzillagamer15777 → u/MiseryGyro]

Monster adaption

[u/mega153 → u/MiseryGyro]

People forget that adaptations and even translations are not good in 1 to 1 transitions to different media. Look at the Last Airbender live action for an attempt at directly copying the source.

[u/Bacon042302 → u/mega153]

Not really a good example as the issue people have is how much was changed

[u/RobertPham149 → u/MiseryGyro]

Yeah I am also of the opinion that writers adapting to the screen need to change it into its own thing that is fitting with the medium. However, what grinds my gear is that whatever you adapt, you must keep the thematic and emotional core intact, but showrunners consistently miss the mark on this.

[u/blkbullnyc → u/MiseryGyro]

I agree. An adaptation isnt supposed to copy. It's supposed to adapt. Imagine being a part of the fandom of the book The Orchid Thief and being excited because the movie version is coming out. Would they be mad because it wasnt exactly like the book? I can't imagine a writer/filmmaker just copying and pasting soemone else's work and expecting to be respected. I definitely wouldnt want to be considered a glorified Xerox machine.

[u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES → u/MiseryGyro]

Nearly every anime adaption in existence begs to differ

And the ones that actually followed your logic are wildly panned lol

[u/MiseryGyro → u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES]

Both Dragon Ball Z and One Piece are so infamously poorly paced that we got Kai and are getting The One Piece on Netflix.

[u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES → u/MiseryGyro]

Manga to anime. Not anime to new anime(which most often only exists because the first adaption didn't follow the manga)

[u/Misa_rosia → u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES]

FMA 2003 catching strays

[u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES → u/Misa_rosia]

I didn't want to name names but we all knew the guilty parties.

That horrid 3d Berserk too.

[u/TheGentleSenior → u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES]

FMA 2003 is still worlds above something like Berserk 2016 though. Even when it outpaced the manga and started doing its own thing, it was still pretty damn good.

[u/RaDiOaCtIvEpUnK → u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES]

The 3d Berserk was such a tease too. The first couple of minutes of it is done in really nice 2d that was really great. Then everything else was just wildly crap 3d. All it could do was make you wish the rest of it was in that 2d style, but no. Just tempting you with what could be.

And they even do this again at the start of season 2 just in case you forgot things could be better, but won’t. Such an ass thing to do.