- Location
- United States
Adapting materials into new forms of media has been a pretty long-standing practice, with lots of failures and successes. Over the last few years there have been several adaptations of books, comics, and other sources into television and cinema, with Game of Thrones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe being two prominent examples.
What needs to be done for an adaptation to be considered worthy in your eyes, or even superior to the original? What examples can you offer? Mostly geared towards book-to-film adaptations, for the sake of convenience.
I find the director's cut of Watchmen to be an adaptation that I enjoy as much as the source graphic novel, if not slightly more. The reason is its unique visual style, inspired casting for each of the main characters, and pragmatic trimming or alterations of certain elements of the story. Framing Dr. Manhattan is a hell of a lot more plausible than the hare-brained "aliens are invading" ploy that Ozymandias pulls in the comic, and characters like Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II feel a lot more like people instead of objects.
Add to that the excellent soundtrack and you've got an adaptation that, if not perfectly "faithful", still captures what I felt was the spirit of the comic. In many ways it felt like a deconstruction of comic book movies, like the graphic novel was a deconstruction of comic books.
What needs to be done for an adaptation to be considered worthy in your eyes, or even superior to the original? What examples can you offer? Mostly geared towards book-to-film adaptations, for the sake of convenience.
I find the director's cut of Watchmen to be an adaptation that I enjoy as much as the source graphic novel, if not slightly more. The reason is its unique visual style, inspired casting for each of the main characters, and pragmatic trimming or alterations of certain elements of the story. Framing Dr. Manhattan is a hell of a lot more plausible than the hare-brained "aliens are invading" ploy that Ozymandias pulls in the comic, and characters like Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II feel a lot more like people instead of objects.
Add to that the excellent soundtrack and you've got an adaptation that, if not perfectly "faithful", still captures what I felt was the spirit of the comic. In many ways it felt like a deconstruction of comic book movies, like the graphic novel was a deconstruction of comic books.