Heavy and Light Adaptation
I am writing this article in advance, so there should be a lot more news about my main examples by now. I’ll try to edit accordingly, but if I fail to do so please drop some corrections in the comments.
Screen adaptation is difficult. There are basically two main kinds, as I see it. For one, you have a heavy adaptation. In that case the target audience is not expected to have consumed the original source material. The creators of the adaptation have a great deal of freedom to change characters, plotlines, and even themes without any consequence because -to the audience- this is all new. They don’t enter with any expectations. This was generally how adaptation was done in the past. Things like Fight Club (pretty much anything Fincher), classic Disney films, or Jurassic Park for instance, were adapted with the intent to create something new. The source material is used as a springboard, and the concept is reincarnated into a new form.
Personally, I think that’s great. It’s a bit strange to expect a team of artists to just recreate something that already existed without making it their own. That’s quite the soulless endeavor. Unfortunately, that is essentially the expectation these days, and I think that is an issue with media literacy, and I will get into that, but primarily it is a problem of management. The studios have locked themselves into an environment where they are only interested in making things with a high likelyhood of financial success. The way the system is designed -by those same studios, don’t forget- all the money is made on the front end, by marketing. Even with the decline of theatres, you don’t pay for a streaming service because you already like the media they are selling (‘cept you, Peacock, livin’ in the past). You pay for it because their marketing made you interested in what’s upcoming. That creates a dynamic wherein all that really matters is who you can hook into buying, not the opinion of the finished product.
So, if you’re a studio, would you rather:
Spend extra money on marketing to get people to care about the product
-OR-
Just sell something they already want
I don’t know how to break that cycle. For that to change either the audience needs to abandon the big studios (unlikely) or the studios need to abandon this path (less likely), so for now we seem to be stuck with it. So that leaves us with type 2: light adaptation.
In this case, the original source material is known, beloved even. Often it’s a reboot of an existing screen IP, arguably the laziest choice on the part of the studio, but even moreso is the Nerdy Intellectual Property Sources, or NIPS for short. Hollywood’s most prominent NIPS, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, are the obvious subject of discussion here. Personally, I love marvel movies. I think they’re a fun watch and, when that’s the goal, I don’t see a problem. It is worth noting that the MCU is willing to change things relative to the comics, which helps, but that’s where we run into the media literacy problem. You have fans that are expecting the exact same thing as they know it from the comics. I always find that really annoying, but the moment has arrived where I am the annoying one.
In short, I don’t think a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender needs to happen. Truthfully, though, that is because of my own infatuation with the original. I don’t think it needs to be changed. And that is the issue with these soft adaptations. I think I would feel differently if they really changed a lot, or made a spinoff, or whatever. Some real separation between the two versions. If it’s going to be so close, then I don’t see why you would diverge from the main themes. All of that frustration, by the way, is exactly what I make fun of marvel comics fans for complaining about in the movies. So I’m a hypocrite. Long story short, don’t tweak the NIPS, just make new content. Something that sounds great in theory, but realistically won’t happen. So the real answer is this: If the studios keep burning you, then you gotta not watch it. I am not going to be able to enjoy an adaptation of ATLA that, to me, skips over some of the most crucial character elements that support central themes. So I am probably not going to watch it. I’m not going to complain all over social media about how “wrong” the story is, because it’s not wrong. It’s an adaptation. Not to mention, the media buzz resulting from those tantrums just fuels the fire. People buy tickets or tune in just to see if you’re right, and those numbers are all the studio cares about.
This is a completely new work, and should be viewed as such. For people who don’t know ATLA, or for those who aren’t so committed to the original story, the show will probably be great. It’s a different interpretation, but I will be keeping my ear to the ground for criticisms that do not include the phrase, “in the original,” because those are likely the only ones worth paying attention to. The show should have started airing by the time this goes up, so let me know how wrong I am.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you in the next one.
