The original post: /r/television by /u/Classic_Bass_1824 on 2024-07-19 13:09:14.
I’m willing to admit that this is less of a well reasoned point and more just me rambling after seeing the news of the Halo show being shut down, that got me thinking about why adaptions are usually judged by fans on how truthfully they stick to the original source, and any straying creative license that is taken by the people adapting are usually met with huge swathes of criticism. There are clear cases where this warranted, like when HBO’s Game of Thrones quality immediately nosedived after Benioff and Weiss ran out of RRM’s book material, but a lot of the time I see this scathing feedback and can’t fully agree with it.
I’ll use video game adaptations as an example. For my money the best ones follow the similar trend of basing their world building and general themes of the games but in terms of actual storytelling narrative they take their own direction; Fallout, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, and Arcane, and it’s reversely the reason I couldn’t fully connect to the Last of Us, as bar from episode 3 and some character alterations it, is the same beat-for-beat plot. Now clearly that makes more sense as the Last of Us game is story driven and while it doesn’t sideline gameplay elements, most people who play it, end up appreciating the story it tells more than anything. But that original satisfaction from the story being told through a video game medium - where you are in direct control, are immersed in the story as you literally have to progress to see it play out - can’t be replicated in a less-involved experience for the viewer like in TV. HBO and Craig Mazin are good, but they aren’t “replicating the same experience as a video game where the actions of Joel feel like reflections of you as the ones making that decision” good.
The scenes that stick with me most from the show are the ones written for the show, with my favourite probably being the opening where the scientist explains the haunting prospect of what a fungus virus could mean for the world. It’s one of those moments in the series that doesn’t feel like blatant key-jangling for franchise lovers saying “Look, we’re presenting just as it was in the game!” I get that in a purely satisfying sense this is rewarding for people who’ve played the game, but I don’t think it works as effectively in strait-laced storytelling. Maybe this is just a poor bias I have but video game works deliver their narratives too separately from TV and film for direct translations that “fully honour the original” to have any kind of impact.
In an opposite vein, I’ll use last year’s Netflix miniseries Fall of the House of Usher to demonstrate what I think looser and more liberated adaptations can lead to. I’m not saying House of Usher is peak fiction, but I do think it’s the most impressive work from Mike Flanagan as an adaptation it blends the works of Edgar Allan Poe into a contemporary setting that over the course of the episodes become really coherent. Some of the characters repeating the poems verbatim can come off as hokey, sure, plus I don’t find as emotionally resonating as Haunting of Hill House, still Flanagan’s magnum opus, but the point I’m trying to convey is that adaptation works that can pleasantly surprise you even if you’re intimately familiar with the original stuff is going to be more affecting and memorable than just a straight “like-for-like” lift from one fiction medium to another.
P.S. I’ll happily admit that this is an entirely different issue when it comes to adapting books for the screen, as it’s turning the written word into pure visual, I just felt video games were more fitting as they have more imagery you can take and retool on set.