What do you look for in an adaption? Adaptions of books, visual novels and other long form media can almost never be one for one in a tv or movie format. Trying to do so inenvitably leads to failure. Instead, an adaption has to condense the plot, but beyond that is has to make other decisions about what to focus on. Because an adaption can't be a recreation of the original most of the time, it's usually better for it to focus heavily on a few things, either from the source material, or something of its own. As many characters as need be can be cut out and more than half of the plot thrown out the bin, if this is done well and the adaption stands well on its own. However, adapations can pick bad things to focus on. I feel this is when things are dumbed down for accessibility and spectacle, usually though action. Lord of the Rings is a good example of this. I watched the movies first and later read the books. I didn't think the books would be the kind of thing i'd be interested in, but I was blown away by how compelling they were. It was more of a page turner than anything I've read before actually. It felt written with intelligence. The movies changed the personalities of multiple characters, added in a horribly idiotic, cliche conflict between two of the main characters which was not in the book, and spent most of the run time on battles, which was definitely not what was most important to the book author. Many things were taken out, but they were not replaced by something of equal value. When subtely and nuance are stripped, rather than replaced with other subtleties and nuance, I think that's a downgrade.Post edited on 14th Jun 2020, 5:41am
>>35309 Considering how most big budget adaptations are and how disastrous The Hobbit was, I think Lotr went pretty well, particularly the first one. Cast was almost perfect (until Faramir appeared) and there was some effort into doing things physically and with attention to detail and not a full cgi-shitfest (until the third movie). You have to think that even if Tolkien and other artists made some drawings there wasn't that much of a clear image of lots of aspects of Lotr, how orcs, or hobbits, Gollum, should look. We had D&D but it doesn't have to be the same thing. You only have to look at how some old Lotr covers and ilustrated editions were, or the animation movie, but they took the right references and art for the movie, doing a great work in my opinion. Problem with Tolkien's work is it was never appreciated by the literary critic. I have heard "it doesn't have any sex" as a "serious" critic of the books, so you can figure. So when someone adapts it it feels in the need to "improve it" by adding the most awful things. If the adaptations were made today they would try to turn it into some sort of Game of Thrones or something worse.
>>35310 The problem wasn't with the visuals or how much smut there was. Stuff like removing Saruman's actual motivation, making him a hypnotist instead of an extremely convincing manipulator, castrating and lobotomizing Frodo, that idiotic conflict between Sam and Frodo, adding in a million "saved at the last moment" scenes for manufactured tension and insinuating that using the ring wouldn't actually "work" cheapens the story and weakens the themes. There's not new themes, they're just weakened. On it's own, the movies are just a generic action fantasy film with high budget. Anything of intrigue in there was taken from the books. i think the Shining is an example of an adaption which successfully does its own thing. I'd love to see a more direct, dialogue heavy, full length show adaption of Lotr, especially animated.
>>35313 A big production need to follow the formula to a certain degree, that means you need a certain pace and way to do things. You couldn't do something slow with length descriptions like the book because most of the public doesn't like that and there's money invested to be recovered. It's just the medium and how it always have been. Now considering that I don't think they are far away from the best hollywood Lotr movies we could get, there was like a 90% of chances we would have got something worse.
>>35314 There's no point in big production hollywood movies then artistically speaking. If they necessitate a overall dumbing down and completely unnecessary things being added for the sake of a formula. I'm surprised though that more people who have both read the books and watched the movie don't seem to feel the same way considering how egregious some of the additions and changes are. Do you like it as a piece of art, or as a hollywood movie? I remember the movies as mostly a mess of identical fight scenes with most of what's between taken out. I watched the extended version too.
>>35313 An animated TV adaptation of LOTR would be really nice, assuming it isn't also the "manufactured tension" crap. The episodic format would give way to being able to adapt more than a strict feature-length movie would be able to as well. I think there actually was an animated adaptation of LOTR at one point though I've never watched it. (Also I'd love if Hobbits/Halflings were properly done as monstergirls. Always seems like nips are confused as to what to do with them and dwarves, so you have a lot of different versions that aren't quite as good as your pic.)
>>35316 There was the Bakshi movie, then after that some less known sequel and a Hobbit adaptation, both for TV. The first movie (the only one I watched) isn't great, it's rotoscoped, it looks weird and the characters designs aren't particularly nice. Like most of Bakshi works is a mixed bag, not particularly well animated and maybe with some interesting ideas, problem is his syle worked a lot better with underground stuff than with something classic like Lotr. Still, it had the best cover art ever and I wouldn't say it's awful or anything. If something I would have liked to see some OVA adaptation, Lodoss War or Wizardry style, I think the first 90's were a good time in anime for classic fantasy settings.
I wish literature was adapted into visual novel format. Solaris for instance would be a great pick. I liked the book quite a bit. The soviet movie gets a lot of praise, but I think I'd hate what they did with the visuals and atmosphere compared to what was in my head. Solaris had depressing romantic elements, but it definitely was not a romance. A VN would capture the feeling I'd like very well and contain all the interesting technical parts that would be cut out of any other format. A one to one adaption would be possible, as in every single line in the book being in the VN, just with pictures and music added. Bram Stocker's Dracula would also be a good choice. I wonder why this idea hasn't caught on?
>>35415 >I wonder why this idea hasn't caught on? I like it but VNs are already something niche. Lack of h-scenes may turn away even more people
View catalog