Notes to writers and producers.
IF👏 YOU👏 MAKE👏 AN👏 ADAPTATION👏 THAT👏 IS👏 FAITHFUL👏 TO👏 THE👏 ORIGINAL,👏 YOU👏 WILL👏 MAKE👏 LOTS👏 OF👏 MONEY.👏
Witcher died when they started changing things
Rings of Power died when they started changing things
Game of Thrones died when they ran out of source material
Halo died when they started changing things
It has nothing to do with race, or gender, or whatever bullshit you hide behind for your ego trips. Take your ego out of the equation. Stop thinking “I can improve on this”. No, you can’t. People love this. Just write this. Stop thinking “oh, this would be so much better if I added–” NOPE. Stop. Even if you’re extending the canon, consult the original authors. And if the original authors say “this doesn’t really match the tone”, then FUCKING REWRITE IT UNTIL IT MATCHES THE TONE.
There are exceptions. The Boys, for instance, succeeded due to it not being a faithful adaptation.
Don’t get me wrong, the books are fine for what they are, but the only people who’d enjoy (or even tolerate for more than a couple episodes without getting physically sick) a faithfully adapted Garth Ennis book are probably the same that think Homelander is the good guy, who thankfully seem to be a minority.
Or another one: I very much doubt a faithfully adapted Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep film could have achieved the cult classic status of Blade Runner; as much of a staple of science fiction as Philip K. Dick is, he’s a bit of an acquired taste, and most viewers would probably fall asleep halfway through a faithful adaptation, long after having lost any trace of the plot…
First of all, I agree with everything you said.
PS: spoiler warning for Thee Body Problem, so just skip that paragraph.
However, I think that deviating from the source, or adding stuff, etc, wouldn’t be so destructive, if the writing was actually good.
Three Body Problem adapted by D&D, still felt a bit meh, because they made a bunch of changes that were just terrible writing. They didn’t understand the source material, so they made the VR stuff alien tech. They made the stars blink, not the cosmic background radiation. The dimension folding fuck up leading to a giant eye over… Earth?.. Why did they think that made any sense? It happened on Trisolaris, and it was such a goosebump inducing thing… Did D&D just think it might look cool, and… Since you cannot easily show it without showing the aliens… They kinda went “let’s just do it on earth”, even though it made no fucking sense whatsoever, because, they wouldn’t have any reason to play a fucking prank on earth. Shits and giggles weren’t their thing… Gah.
The Witcher suffered because the writing was actually quite bad at times.
Game of Thrones… I mean… I don’t know why Dumb and Dumber get their hands on any work whatsoever. They have shown they know nothing of the world and systems they write for, nor characters or development. It’s just embarrassing.
Halo, I haven’t watched. And Fallout, I just know that Nolan and Joy are absolutely amazing writers. The only concern I had was to what extent people like Tod could fuck things up.
I think what I’m trying to add is that: Good writers can tell very engaging adaptations within the existing constraints of lore, world and rules, but it doesn’t need to be existing canon. You can always tell new stories, as long as it sticks to the established rules and world building people expect. Bad writers fail at that, and often need to add contemporary trends where it doesn’t belong. The fundamental issue might just be a skill issue.
Good writing is hard. It requires a lot of effort. You need to be congruent with the world and rules you’ve built so far. Not everyone will notice everything that deviates. Noticing bad writing is catching a lie given the presented imagined premise. Some suspension of belief is of course necessary, or risk being an annoying pedant. But, don’t pretend someone is a level headed strategist, who then sends half their army out of a defensive fortification… to fight an enemy who is known to make dead soldiers fight for them. So which is it, do the people in charge know what castles are for, or did they suddenly become dumb as bread to suit some contrived narrative, or perhaps lack thereof?.. Gah…
J. J. Abrams didn’t deviate all that much from lore. But my God what a grade A moron he is when it comes to plots points. Thousands of extremely talented master craftsmen, all coming together to tell a story… that only works if you don’t think about it at all. And you might wonder which franchise in particular I’m referring to, as both apply.
The Expanse TV adaptation is a master class in doing everything right. TV is a different medium, and you cannot tell the story in the same exact way. But the changes they did, still told the same story, and most changes just suited visual medium better. They even had to off a character because of real life reasons, which was a little bit abrupt, but even so, they managed to adapt to that just fine.
Wheel of Time… weird additions and focus on romantic relationships that detracted from the magnitude and seriousness of the story itself. Maybe I was just a bit too young when I read the books, but I certainly didn’t remember it like that, and it made the characters feel weird, and… immature. Also, somewhat intellectually insulting. Personal sacrifice, and love (? I’m looking for a better word…) for someone, doesn’t require romantic interest.
I’m rambling.
TL;DR: Good writing good. Bad writing bad. Bad writing != not 100% aligned with source material. Contemporary tropes for no good reason = bad writing. JJ, please stick to directing. D&D… Maybe take up painting? Pretty please?
I was to about to say the same in less eloquent way. It is worth noting though that The Expanse had both writers of the books heavily involved in the adaptation. You could also see that they drew from Game of Thrones did things, especially with consolidating characters.
I also wouldn’t be so fast to judge some series that are far from being over like Rings of Power and Wheel of Time. First one is meh but not offensive. WoT needed heavy cuts to the story because of how long it is but it’s still very watchable.
Ah, I loved Wheel of Time. I’m making an effort to forget about it so I’m suddenly surprised by season 3 being done. The deviations from the books didn’t ruin it for me, like it seems it did for many. I just found it unnecessary, and mentioned it more as an example of bad writing, and did not mean to imply that all of it was bad. Far from it. Great actors all around, and amazing visual direction, oh, and costume designers! The forsaken, especially Ishamael… the clothing. It’s so good, I want to figure out who worked in it. And I don’t even care much about that stuff either, usually. They did so many things, absolutely brilliantly. Ending of S1 was very anticlimactic, so I get why that that in particular put people off.
I havent watched Rings of Power. Maybe I should, based on what you’re saying.
I didn’t understand what you meant by drawing on GoT for consolidating characters. Apologies.
PS: In case I gave the impression of being a miserable piece:
- I loved S1 of the Witcher, and largely enjoyed S2 and even S3, though that took concerted effort.
- 3BP was fine, and entertaining enough. It has the potential to be great, but not with the lack of… insight from D&D.
- The Expance is one of the best sci-fi series made, and anyone remotely interested should see it, and also keep watching even if the first season isn’t entirely convincing. OK to call it quits if S2 isn’t.
- GoT went down hill already from S5. The torture porn thing was just… unnecessary and… two dimensional evil that requires a telling lack of imagination.
- Arcane is a masterclass in… pretty much everything. Especially character development, and as a counterpoint to the above: nuanced “evil”.
- The Gentlemen TV series by G. Ritchie is a fun time, and imo underrated.
- Everything JJ has written is vapid shit.
Idk who wrote Fringe, but JJ was involved and that show was great
Hm. He did have a part in it, but I don’t know how much. I haven’t seen it. I suppose I was too bombastic, and should correct it to “everything JJ has written, that I’ve seen, has been vapid shit”.
Last time I ranted about JJ, someone mentioned that he had made Person of Interest. So, I watched all of it. It was largely pretty good, except for the very weird filler episodes every season, that very much worked against the overarching plot. In any case, turned out that Jonathan Nolan wrote it, who is pretty good at that stuff. JJ is a decent director, so I don’t mind that part.
I guess it’s entirely possible that there’s just an epidemic of bad writing.
When there’s an existing beloved IP, it already had good writing. Being faithful to that = good writing. Not YOUR writing, but good writing.
It’s theoretically possible to deviate from that existing good IP and still have good writing…it’s just not very likely. Don’t bet on it. Stick to the existing good writing.
I think you’re right.
It also annoys me that the explanation for how common bad writing is, is that it still makes a lot of money. JJ can jump on to any beloved franchise,
shit on every established rule and character, make the dumbest imaginable plot points that serve no other purpose than to move you from one visually pleasing trailer snippet location to the next… and people will go see it, and it’ll make a pile of money. So, why should they care?
It’s interesting that people are saying that this is so faithful, considering that they totally messed up the history of the California region. >!The series basically took place in NCR, but they just lazily disregarded the whole rebuilt NCR civilization and turned it into the east coast Bethesda wasteland. So what, did the NCR collapse back into wasteland in a decade or so too? Give me a break.!<
It’s literally canonical.
It put Shady Sands in LA.
The series is canon within the Fallout continuity. Howard wanted an original story, instead of an adaptation of the games,[10] though the series discreetly continues game storylines and factions, such as the Brotherhood of Steel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(American_TV_series)
https://www.gamesradar.com/is-the-fallout-tv-show-canon-bethesda-games-todd-howard/
Being canon is not the same as being faithful. Bethesda Fallout games have not been faithful to the original games despite now being canon. The show, despite being relatively good, can be canon and also can not be faithful to the first 2 games.
The Bethesda games are the series now. They’re exponentially more popular than the first two.
The Bethesda games are the series now.
And? It doesn’t make the older games disappear. Bethesda choosing to go their own way instead of being faithful to the original games does not invalidate the fact that Bethesda, and by extension the show, is not faithful to the original and breaks lore continuity. As for my personal opinion on the matter I’ve accepted since Fallout 3 that the lore is fucked and doesn’t really matter anymore.
They’re exponentially more popular than the first two.
This doesn’t really shouldn’t even need addressing. This is something people say when they have no actual arguments. You’re comparing games that are literally a decade apart. No shit modern Fallout games are more popular than Fallout 1 and 2. Gaming in general is exponentially more popular than what it was back in the 90s. Diablo 2 is considered one of the best looters ever, it sold over a million units in the first few weeks and got a Guinness world record for it. Fallout 3 sold 4 times as many units in the first week. That should give insight into how unbelievably pointless your comparison is.
And popularity doesn’t mean good. COD is one of the most popular franchises in the world, nobody is singing praises of COD (at least not since the 1, 2 and Modern Warfare).
Rings of Power died when they started changing things
Died? It barely got one season.
Game of Thrones died when they ran out of source material
The best season of the TV show was season 6, when the writers could finally start paying plot lines off rather than stringing people along.
They started with an already well detailed, quite deep, world (including already having various stories), which already had quite a number of fans (thanks to it being in a series of Role Playing Games - which is pretty much the kind of games closest to a TV Series or Movie), didn’t fuck it up by writting a bad script, didn’t fuck it up by getting bad actors and didn’t fuck it up by being cheap on FX.
It’s not exactly surprising that it was a success…
It’s maybe a little optimist at this point to expect at least 5 seasons - mainly because that’s plenty of time to fuck it up, especially around the point when the initial story either wraps up or gets boring, which is were plenty of great TV Series turn to shit - but yeah, so far so good.
I wish for the Horizon (Zero Dawn) series to have that kind of luck with good story/writing, acting, and FX… then I always remember that it’s Netflix making it and get disappointed every time.
Make 5 seasons then end it. Nothing worse than shows that go on too long then start to become shit.
I would be more worried that they give it the Westworld treatment.
coughSupernaturalcough
Better than Green Arrow by a country mile
i’unno, never seen green arrow.
Have they fucked up their power scaling so bad that they had to make god himself the enemy, and invent a being stronger than god to defeat him?
Less power scaling than retreading the same “flashback to that time I was trapped on an island” about three seasons past it’s expiration date.
I feel like they really only had 2 great seasons. Now we’ll have 4 mid ones instead. Greed fucking sucks
If the other seasons are as good as the first season I’m all for this. Adaptations of game franchises can be hit or miss but this was really well done.
Almost no show needs to go past 3 seasons. It’s almost always a bad idea.
This is like when the show runner for The Handmaid’s Tale said he’d love for it to be 10 seasons long when it stopped being good after one.
They’ll fall into the trap of never creating a proper ending aren’t they?
This series would be ripe for new plot and characters every season Fargo style. Too bad they’ll never do it.
Well it is a fallout show
If they could commit to just five seasons it could be a really good show, but if they plan to try to keep it going and milk it, it’ll be complete garbage by season 3
It really depends. If they go more of an anthology route it will be easier to not tank it. (Not saying they wouldn’t still manage to.)
As a huge Fallout fan since the aughts, I was pleasantly surprised. The show is faithful to it source material and nails tone the games are known for. Some cameos helped the with dark humor. Story was interesting too, especially the b plot about the vaults.
Nobody uses aughts the way they ought to anymore.
Edit: Apparently I have not used Ought to the way I should have. TIL
I wonder how many creators are taking less money to get better support at outlets other than cancel-happy HBO and Netflix? Five seasons is a great deal if it works out for them.
I can’t be bothered to watch any series on netflix that are not finished with a proper ending for this exact reason. Fuck them for not giving shows actual endings and just cancelling them.
I though the writing was so bad. Only the franchise carried it over being forgettable. I mean the black main character is so badly written, most of what he does doesn’t make sense if you look further then some very flat character development. I hope they can improve and remove some of the cringe elements. I love Fallout, but it has a diffent humor, the show didn’t manage to replicate much.
I watched 40% of the second episode, holy shit was that writing just awful. I stopped watching after they get attacked in the cave. One of the worst directed scenes I’ve ever watched. The tone is just all over the place, is it funny? Is it scary? What the fuck is the acolyte doing? What does he want?
That whole episode (up until I stopped watching) was just such a disaster. I don’t know what any of the characters want or why I should care about them.
Classic. Downvoted comment expressing dislike of popular thing with no comments responding.
I’ve only watched one episode but I thought it was ok. There were multiple badly written cringe moments and I thought the director really dropped the ball by not focusing on Lucy in order to end the episode with the wasteland reveal. Cutting to the brotherhood half way through her story was a terrible decision in my opinion. The tension of what’s waiting for Lucy in the wasteland is completely deflated before we get there because we’ve already seen that a society of some sort exists.
Overall there was a lot that I liked and I thought it could have been a lot worse. I like the opening even though I thought it was a bit overindulgent. I liked the casual inclusion of a non-binary character (made me reflect on Fallout’s representation as a whole which I feel like is pretty bad in that department?). I appreciated the attention to detail, I don’t really give a fuck if they stick to any established lore, I just want to that a lot of care and attention went into the world building. And I liked the fact that the violence was a good balance of cartoony and serious.
Anyways, fanpeople gonna fanpeep. People fucking hate when you dislike something they see as above criticsm. For example; Rogue One is a bad movie, Arcane is mid, BotW is mid. :^)
What is your sperm count?
Watched the first season before Amazon added ads to their streaming. It was pretty decent. Not decent enough to watch ads or pay more.
I have Amazon prime and I watched it pirated anyways to dodge the ads. Service issue.
More than decent enough to watch it for free, though.
It’s not like Amazon and Bethesda / Microsoft are going to miss the money… 🤷♂️
Wait people are actually watching this I thought it was just getting morbbed
It’s a pretty good TV adaptation of the games.
That fact they made the show about a pretty girl that just wants some dick instead of a show about the numerous tragic themes that fallout has instantly told me that they will milk this production for every last drop of money.
This is being produced be the real life Vault-Tek after all. Fucking Amazon.
That fact they made the show about a pretty girl that just wants some dick instead of a show about the numerous tragic themes that fallout has …
I legitimate cannot even fathom the basement dweller type of mental gymnastics needed to come to this conclusion after watching the show. lmao
incel intensifies
Has Amazon released anything that’s made it a full five seasons?
Isn’t Expanse 5 seasons?
Though they didn’t start that project so maybe it doesn’t count there.
Syfy produced 36 episodes over 3 seasons. Amazon bought the show from Syfy and produced 26 episodes over what was functionally 2.5 seasons. I might have been willing to give Bezos more credit if he hadn’t nixed the show in its final arc.
Everything except the last episode was awesome
The entire show outside of Walter Goggins was acted like it was a fanfic project shot and uploaded to 2011 YouTube.
I liked the protagonist, except how she turned in the last episode
I saw that shit coming a mile away
The Ghoul is like crafted in a lab to activate every female “I don’t like bad boys but…” hormone. It would have been extremely unrealistic if she stayed with Maximus.
Amen
