When the broader audience ignores poorly done fantasy adaptations, the executives conclude fantasy adaptations are not financially viable and give up on the genre completely. If you think they'll ever come to the conclusion that it's a bad idea to hire a creative team that hates and mocks the IP, then I have to talk to you about this bridge I've inherited. You should really buy it!
@LoreGeist A fool's hope in my opinion. Executives make studio decisions based on what "trend" a business consultant can invent and sell to them, not on any creative merit. Back in the day, there were stars that drew audiences to cinemas and a studio was open to doing whatever the star wanted to, banking on the star's fanbase showing up to buy tickets. Same for star film directors like Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, De Palma, and many others. Nowadays...whatever the business consultants (who have no experience in making movies or any other media) say should go over like hotcakes will be made, all creative critiques and feedback be damned.
I think it’s because creativity is dying in Hollywood. All the good writers that can make and adapt great stories have been pushed out for online activist and the checkbox mentality. Where you’re restricted to write only one type of character character and can never challenge yourself with characters different from you.
It doesn't matter what the writers want to write (I'm not one, btw). As has long been the truth, accountants are the ones who decide what will be 'created', or rather recreated. It was popular before, try it again! There's a reason left-field creations came out of the blue and did it good (the public's wants and feelings), but then their ideas were swallowed up and regurgitated ad nauseam by the big, smooth ones. Not my problem, the last one I watched was the Lion King while drunk on a ferry in the 90's some time... Good one, though! I even recognize some pictures here and there.
It's a frustrating thing as a fantasy and sci-fi fan to see studios drop the ball so stupidly on this. Jackson proved with Lord of the Rings and the folks at Warner proved with Harry Potter that these stories, as expensive as they are to make, can become HUGE cultural phenomena that (as Warner and Universal continue to see) can make the studios that make them a TON of money - and be a consistent source of income for DECADES. But they keep handling these various properties so badly - and it's hard to say how much of it is incompetence and how much of it is because the people who end up in charge of these stories actually seem to actively despise these stories and their fans. The people who made the Witcher and Rings of Power stated their desire to "fix" these stories. You don't determine to "fix" something unless you think it's broken and in need of repair. Well, if they're getting to make a franchise X series or movie and they think the original story/world needs "fixing" they WILL NOT be able to make a good franchise X show, because you can already see they don't understand what made that franchise appeal to people in the first place.
Yeah, I also don’t get the thought process of “we want to adapt this work because it’s successful and good, but we also want to fix it”. The work is already good by itself. The only fixing it needs should be the ones related to adapting the material to the new visual medium. 🤷♂️
@LoreGeist I mean I could understand if the work is dated, and the studio is removing elements of it that are iffy, but even doing that is inconsistent. Sometimes they even go the other way
Henry Cavill has confirmed that he's done a deal with Amazon for W40K. Stung by the Rings Of Power's poor ratings and reception, Amazon might stick to the source material rather than their version of events.
Good omens was done brilliantly. But it's one of very few. And I definitely don't consider Harry Potter one of the good ones. The plot was a mess and most of the characters got Flanderised if not destroyed altogether. I think it's also a pity that the few times they choose to adapt a fantasy series with a female main character, it's practically always Young Adult. I'd much rather see Kate Daniels on tv. That series has a world that would work very well visually and has a great balance between action, lore, romance and fantasy.
I love good omens as well. And I thought it would be impossible to properly adapt Terry Pratchett but I was wrong 😅. With Harry Potter, it’s definitely not perfect. Ron and Hermione’s characterisation was flanderised in some movies like you said for sure, specially Ron. But movies like Prisoner of Azkaban genuinely do a great job at summarising the source material for a movie length.
My takes are that they are often a bit on the cheap side,and they then make unnecessary changes, sometimes because the writer feels they could do better, sometimes because of DEI or the "modern audience" but it always makes it worse
The budget factor is also pretty big tbh. Epic fantasy has so many settings, also special effects, the studio needs to simplify the story for money reasons alone.
@LoreGeist I think a lot of series would be better adapted in animated forms. Like the Wheel of Time. Finding good quality actors that meet the character descriptions would be nigh impossible for live action. Let alone the special effects for the huge battles. But for some stuff, there's no excuse, like unnecessary plot changes, huge deviations from character descriptions, not using the right costumes etc, especially when the book costumes etc.
Now witg regards to the Ri gs of Power aource material or House of the Dragon those come from loosely written books and are somewhat open to interpretation. Wheel of Time focuses too much on the magic system and rushes the character development with minor pandering.
Amazon butchered wheel of time worse than even rings of power. And what’s worse, is that the books should have all the diversity and girl power they could want but they still warped the characters beyond recognition and forced more diversity where it doesn’t make sense like Two rivers and backwoods homogenous towns with the same group of people not commingling for generations with other societies. Also, of all people to blackwash, why eaman valda? The man is literally the closest thing the book has to K word that youtube would delete if I typed.
No more adaptations. None. Let good books stay good books, good cartoons stay good cartoons, good vintage TV shows stay good vintage TV shows. It’s just not worth it anymore. I recently finished the Mistborn trilogy for the first time and realized-I don’t want to see a movie version. 11/10 chance it’ll just be ruined. I’d rather see someone in a mistcloak at a con and know they’ve also read the books, rather than watched a super-abridged film version.
In mistborn’s case I actually see a world where the movie would be better and more streamlined than the source material 😅 there’s a lot of page real state in the books that serve no purpose and could be ignored in the movies
@LoreGeist I will freely admit a lot of the court balls and drama could have been cut. I remember texting the friend who recommended the series “why are they spending chapter after chapter on The Princess Diaries???” 😂 Still, for a visual medium of Mistborn I’d prefer a comic or _maybe_ animation. I don’t trust Hollywood to do justice to a live-action version.
Let’s take The Rings of Power as an example. Sure, it’s unfaithful to the books, completely misunderstands the characters, and includes diversity where it doesn’t make sense (seriously, a fat, middle-aged elf woman?!). But even if you set all that aside, it fails because the writing is terrible, the directing is awful, the acting is bad (except for Sauron-he was great), and the whole thing is just plain stupid. The most important thing is good writing, directing, and acting. Everything else is a bonus. But why adapt something if you’re going to be unfaithful to the source material? Just write something else instead.
They only fail because they completely disregard the source material like WoT and RoP have done. Or they're too CW-esque YA novel-ish. And of course, by unironically going "woke" with all the "for modern audiences" sort of writing, example: turning Numenorean plotlines to be about "they're taking er jerbs!!!" and "oh dad, I got into my dream college!!! I don't need a man!!!" and writing that unironically.
And the annoying thing is: it is unlikely now that another WoT adaptation that is closer to the source material will be done in the near future, so it ruins the franchise for everyone
I am probably in the minority in that I prefer the Hobbit movies over the book. The book felt rushed and shallow to me and quite frankly boring. The movies had more depth and character and I would go so far that it depicted the Orcs as way more competent and dangerous than the Lord of the Rings did.
Because they needed to add some more “meat” to the story to make a whole trilogy, I guess adding some new elements was necessary. Some character addition were actually good.
@LoreGeist for a trilogy, they needed more, true. But the book was also not something fitting for one movie. 2 maybe. Even way, I do think a word for word adaptation like many apparently preferred would not have worked as then you would have gone from one event to the other or stick with "and they had many more advantures" like when Bilbo had left the dwarves in the barrels for 1.5 days. I still wonder how they can still be alive after that. Also, some stuff had to be changed to make it fit with LOTR, or you wonder why the elves ran away from some dwarves and did nothing about monstrious spiders in their forest. Also, I found that Azog's depiction fit what Tolkien wrote about the powerful orc chieftains that arose after Sauron's first fall, especially in the East.
I used to be obessed with marvel but then thor love and thunder happened and I instantly lost interest. That movie was boring I demanded a refund at the cinema. The marvels was boring too; Theres nothing fun about watching 3 mary sues beat up aliens. What was Disney thinking 😢.
Any recent adaptations you thought were particularly successful?
Denise Villanuave's Dune was pretty darn good.
Narnia
@@liljenborg2517 yeah, Dune is pretty solid
@@katsandall3673 is the Narnia reboot from the Barbie director out already? 😳
@@katsandall3673 is the Narnia reboot from the Barbie director out already? 😳
When the broader audience ignores poorly done fantasy adaptations, the executives conclude fantasy adaptations are not financially viable and give up on the genre completely.
If you think they'll ever come to the conclusion that it's a bad idea to hire a creative team that hates and mocks the IP, then I have to talk to you about this bridge I've inherited. You should really buy it!
Very pessimistic take, let’s hope that reality is not that drastic 😅
@LoreGeist A fool's hope in my opinion. Executives make studio decisions based on what "trend" a business consultant can invent and sell to them, not on any creative merit.
Back in the day, there were stars that drew audiences to cinemas and a studio was open to doing whatever the star wanted to, banking on the star's fanbase showing up to buy tickets.
Same for star film directors like Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, De Palma, and many others.
Nowadays...whatever the business consultants (who have no experience in making movies or any other media) say should go over like hotcakes will be made, all creative critiques and feedback be damned.
I think it’s because creativity is dying in Hollywood. All the good writers that can make and adapt great stories have been pushed out for online activist and the checkbox mentality. Where you’re restricted to write only one type of character character and can never challenge yourself with characters different from you.
It doesn't matter what the writers want to write (I'm not one, btw). As has long been the truth, accountants are the ones who decide what will be 'created', or rather recreated. It was popular before, try it again!
There's a reason left-field creations came out of the blue and did it good (the public's wants and feelings), but then their ideas were swallowed up and regurgitated ad nauseam by the big, smooth ones.
Not my problem, the last one I watched was the Lion King while drunk on a ferry in the 90's some time... Good one, though! I even recognize some pictures here and there.
It's a frustrating thing as a fantasy and sci-fi fan to see studios drop the ball so stupidly on this. Jackson proved with Lord of the Rings and the folks at Warner proved with Harry Potter that these stories, as expensive as they are to make, can become HUGE cultural phenomena that (as Warner and Universal continue to see) can make the studios that make them a TON of money - and be a consistent source of income for DECADES.
But they keep handling these various properties so badly - and it's hard to say how much of it is incompetence and how much of it is because the people who end up in charge of these stories actually seem to actively despise these stories and their fans. The people who made the Witcher and Rings of Power stated their desire to "fix" these stories. You don't determine to "fix" something unless you think it's broken and in need of repair. Well, if they're getting to make a franchise X series or movie and they think the original story/world needs "fixing" they WILL NOT be able to make a good franchise X show, because you can already see they don't understand what made that franchise appeal to people in the first place.
Yeah, I also don’t get the thought process of “we want to adapt this work because it’s successful and good, but we also want to fix it”. The work is already good by itself. The only fixing it needs should be the ones related to adapting the material to the new visual medium. 🤷♂️
@LoreGeist I mean I could understand if the work is dated, and the studio is removing elements of it that are iffy, but even doing that is inconsistent. Sometimes they even go the other way
Studios : "Wait. People prefer good script to big effects? But what about all the cash we spent for this"
And the funny thing is: a good script is often cheaper than crazy ott effects 🤷♂️
Because they don’t adapt it. They “update it for a modern audience”
Sometimes they can't even manage to actually do that much. Sometimes they do the reverse of that instead
Henry Cavill has confirmed that he's done a deal with Amazon for W40K. Stung by the Rings Of Power's poor ratings and reception, Amazon might stick to the source material rather than their version of events.
I heard about Henry Cavill having a creative credit with W40k. Sounds awesome. It’s a sign things may be going in the right direction 🙌🏼
Lying to the fans about the adaptation they are waiting for. is in my opinion not a good strategy.
If you think Rings of Power was fine… like The Hobbit was fine… ok, good bye and good life to you
I do 😊 bye 👋
What decline? It has been like this ever since the 70's at least. We just had a short burst of success recently that was unusual.
Good omens was done brilliantly. But it's one of very few. And I definitely don't consider Harry Potter one of the good ones. The plot was a mess and most of the characters got Flanderised if not destroyed altogether. I think it's also a pity that the few times they choose to adapt a fantasy series with a female main character, it's practically always Young Adult. I'd much rather see Kate Daniels on tv. That series has a world that would work very well visually and has a great balance between action, lore, romance and fantasy.
I love good omens as well. And I thought it would be impossible to properly adapt Terry Pratchett but I was wrong 😅.
With Harry Potter, it’s definitely not perfect. Ron and Hermione’s characterisation was flanderised in some movies like you said for sure, specially Ron. But movies like Prisoner of Azkaban genuinely do a great job at summarising the source material for a movie length.
Stick to the source material. It really comes down to that sentence, or the lack thereoff lately.
My takes are that they are often a bit on the cheap side,and they then make unnecessary changes, sometimes because the writer feels they could do better, sometimes because of DEI or the "modern audience" but it always makes it worse
The budget factor is also pretty big tbh.
Epic fantasy has so many settings, also special effects, the studio needs to simplify the story for money reasons alone.
@LoreGeist I think a lot of series would be better adapted in animated forms. Like the Wheel of Time. Finding good quality actors that meet the character descriptions would be nigh impossible for live action. Let alone the special effects for the huge battles. But for some stuff, there's no excuse, like unnecessary plot changes, huge deviations from character descriptions, not using the right costumes etc, especially when the book costumes etc.
Now witg regards to the Ri gs of Power aource material or House of the Dragon those come from loosely written books and are somewhat open to interpretation. Wheel of Time focuses too much on the magic system and rushes the character development with minor pandering.
You mean the books or the series when you talk about wheel of time?
@LoreGeist series
Amazon butchered wheel of time worse than even rings of power.
And what’s worse, is that the books should have all the diversity and girl power they could want but they still warped the characters beyond recognition and forced more diversity where it doesn’t make sense like Two rivers and backwoods homogenous towns with the same group of people not commingling for generations with other societies.
Also, of all people to blackwash, why eaman valda? The man is literally the closest thing the book has to K word that youtube would delete if I typed.
Guy keeps saying "season 8"... Go back and watch series 5 - the faecal matter accumulated from then onwards
Yep. It went down hill after season 5. to me the ranking of shit seasons is 6 > 7 > 5 > 8
No more adaptations. None. Let good books stay good books, good cartoons stay good cartoons, good vintage TV shows stay good vintage TV shows. It’s just not worth it anymore. I recently finished the Mistborn trilogy for the first time and realized-I don’t want to see a movie version. 11/10 chance it’ll just be ruined. I’d rather see someone in a mistcloak at a con and know they’ve also read the books, rather than watched a super-abridged film version.
In mistborn’s case I actually see a world where the movie would be better and more streamlined than the source material 😅 there’s a lot of page real state in the books that serve no purpose and could be ignored in the movies
@LoreGeist I will freely admit a lot of the court balls and drama could have been cut. I remember texting the friend who recommended the series “why are they spending chapter after chapter on The Princess Diaries???” 😂
Still, for a visual medium of Mistborn I’d prefer a comic or _maybe_ animation. I don’t trust Hollywood to do justice to a live-action version.
Got was great and fumbled the bag so badly
May be because of wokism ?
Girl bossism ?
Cf War of the Rohirrim...
It’s way more than that 🤷♂️
Let’s take The Rings of Power as an example. Sure, it’s unfaithful to the books, completely misunderstands the characters, and includes diversity where it doesn’t make sense (seriously, a fat, middle-aged elf woman?!). But even if you set all that aside, it fails because the writing is terrible, the directing is awful, the acting is bad (except for Sauron-he was great), and the whole thing is just plain stupid.
The most important thing is good writing, directing, and acting. Everything else is a bonus. But why adapt something if you’re going to be unfaithful to the source material? Just write something else instead.
I guess they’re trying to bank on the franchise’s name to attract viewers
They only fail because they completely disregard the source material like WoT and RoP have done. Or they're too CW-esque YA novel-ish. And of course, by unironically going "woke" with all the "for modern audiences" sort of writing, example: turning Numenorean plotlines to be about "they're taking er jerbs!!!" and "oh dad, I got into my dream college!!! I don't need a man!!!" and writing that unironically.
And the annoying thing is: it is unlikely now that another WoT adaptation that is closer to the source material will be done in the near future, so it ruins the franchise for everyone
I am probably in the minority in that I prefer the Hobbit movies over the book. The book felt rushed and shallow to me and quite frankly boring. The movies had more depth and character and I would go so far that it depicted the Orcs as way more competent and dangerous than the Lord of the Rings did.
Because they needed to add some more “meat” to the story to make a whole trilogy, I guess adding some new elements was necessary. Some character addition were actually good.
@LoreGeist for a trilogy, they needed more, true. But the book was also not something fitting for one movie. 2 maybe. Even way, I do think a word for word adaptation like many apparently preferred would not have worked as then you would have gone from one event to the other or stick with "and they had many more advantures" like when Bilbo had left the dwarves in the barrels for 1.5 days. I still wonder how they can still be alive after that. Also, some stuff had to be changed to make it fit with LOTR, or you wonder why the elves ran away from some dwarves and did nothing about monstrious spiders in their forest. Also, I found that Azog's depiction fit what Tolkien wrote about the powerful orc chieftains that arose after Sauron's first fall, especially in the East.
I used to be obessed with marvel but then thor love and thunder happened and I instantly lost interest. That movie was boring I demanded a refund at the cinema. The marvels was boring too; Theres nothing fun about watching 3 mary sues beat up aliens. What was Disney thinking 😢.
Marvel is a good example of adaptations following a formula to the point of over saturation. Maybe there’s also a superhero fatigue happening.