What Do You Expect From Adaptations?

[Lumenskir]

So I'm finishing up reading the Ex Machina collection my friend gave me, and I decided to go on Wikipedia and TV Tropes to read up about it. Around the bottom of the description I see that the rights to the comic were optioned for a film. I was then dismayed. Thankfully, the option was tried for in 2005, so I'm assuming it'll probably languish in development hell (but at least the creators get some of that no-work-necessary option money every so often), but it was still a unwanted thought.

This prompted me to wonder just why the thought of an Ex Machina movie would be bad. While I'm not averse to seeing the comic done in live action, the core is more about day-to-day ordeals of the world's only superhero mayor, and a movie would by necessity have to either cram a lot of subplots into one offering or expand one of the smaller subplots beyond recognition (and would then probably have to choose one of the arcs with SUPER PROBLEMS) so that it loses the charm of the original. It's the same problem I assume the *shudder* Shia Lebouf starring adaptation of Y: The Last Man would have (you know, on top of the Lebouf problem).

Of course, I would have no problem if either of those became TV shows, because TV is just inherently better at showing incremental processes, which both of those comics are great at, and thus a show would be truer to the source material.* But then I remembered that I just recently, in this very forum, defended There Will Be Blood on being a great adaptation of Oil!, even though I acknowledged that the movie barely treats the book as an idea generator, let alone a thematic blueprint. And I will throw down to defend a bunch of other adaptations in varying states of 'trueness' to their original source.

So I've just decided to throw out a few reasons when I think adaptations do and do not work.

When They Can Competently Distill the Original - Probably what we usually hope the least for in adaptations: that they got the original and brought it over to a new format. I'm willing to forgive a lot of changes if the new work at least feels like something directly related to its source. For instance, even though lines and situations are being changed in the Scott Pilgrim movie, I'll probably still like it as long as it feels Scott Pilgrimmy.

When The Adaptation Actually Uses the New Medium - I don't really want to watch slavish recreations of comic panels, or have the words on page read aloud. If I did, I would just stick with the originals. If the new version actually demonstrates that it's something that could only be done within the new format, I won't mind radical departures from the source.

The Adapter Has a Great Time Doing The Adaptation - By most accounts, The Long Goodbye the film bears only passing similarities to the book of the same name. I still think it's a great adaptation, because Altman and the entire cast are having a ball transplanting the surface elements of the novel to the screen. An even more extreme example is Starship Troopers, an absolutely great film that somebody in this thread will probably deride as an adaptation that didn't get Heinlen's work and is shitty for it. I'll just say that I'd rather live in a world where a 100 bad adapters get to make shitty works as long as we get one or two that make great accomplishments of entertainment made from whatever misconstrued bits and pieces the new guys liked from the old work.

I'm sure there are other categories I could come up with, but this is long enough.

TL;DR - Answer the thread title.

*This is also my big problem with taking serial shows and trying to filmize them. Just as a present-ish example: the Last Airbender movie. Beyond however you feel about the casting and director and whatnot, the first season of the show works so well because it's able to be a ramshackle Adventure Town filled road trip that can stretch over 20 episodes as Aang comes to grips with how his world has changed and why he needs to step up and change with it. You can't capture the same theme in a 2 hour movie, especially when a disproportionate chunk of that has to be the final battle. And the second season would be even worse to try and cut down.

I have no qualms about a movie based on the third season. You can condense all of the parts about that season that actually matter into two hours, sure. But leave those perfect first two seasons alone, gosh darnit.