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…
To be an exception, you need to know what you are doing. The Boys adaptation works because it is consistent with the world they built. The writers took the material, said “this is neat” threw it in a blender and made something amazing.
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 stopped watching three body problem after the “universe blinking” nonsense. Watch the chinese version – mich more faithful (except the cultural revolution and anything bad about china)
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?Everyone sees it the first time, but they tarnish the brand. Game of Thrones is the obvious example, but look at Star Wars. No one is clamoring to see the next Star Wars movie. If your outlook is the next 3 years, sure, bad writing will have a good opening day, but only because you’re leeching off the corpse of the previous good releases. If your outlook is to preserve the brand, it’s a terminal viewpoint.
You can take bad writing and even if it bombs in America, you can throw it at China and they’ll eat it up because they don’t know any better. But once a brand is dead, it’s dead. China is not coming up with new plot lines. Hollywood and streaming studios are strip-mining the IP of the past because there’s an industrywide lack of writing talent, for reasons that I’m too far removed to understand.
Luckily, we’re still spoiled for choice. Or, I feel like I am. There are more quality TV shows and movies, than I have time to watch these days.
I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss Chinese media industry. They have made some amazing films. Infernal Affairs, comes to mind. But, I’m the wrong person to come up with examples. I’m sure there are plenty.
Other than that, I agree with you. It’s the enshitification equivalent in Hollywood. It’s just a bit less engulfing, since good movies and shows can still be made, in spite of some of the watered down drivel and ruined franchises for short term profit margins.
JJ Abrams shits on every established rule and character?
It’s more the opposite. He gets to the core of what a franchise is. It’s just that the hardcore fanbase builds up these things in their minds to be something they really aren’t.
Star Trek was always at it’s strongest as a TV series. The best the movies could ever do was take a page from Star Wars and be fun action adventure movies. Star Trek II was about a villain with a super-weapon seeking revenge. First Contact was basically Aliens. Star Trek IV was more of a parody of Star Trek than anything else.
But from the success of Star Trek IV, the exec became willing to put money into a new Star Trek show, and so we got TNG which was better than any of the movies. Similarly the success of JJ Abrams Star Trek meant new Trek shows are being made. Sure the shows are suffering from prequelitis. but new Trek shows are being made and if Star Trek Legacy gets made we might actually have a good Star Trek show on TV again, which is where Trek is at it’s strongest.
JJ Abrams made the two best Star Wars movies outside of the OT. Of course the bar is pretty low with Star Wars movies, but still he did better than anyone else in making new Star Wars movies, better than even George Lucas at making new Star Wars. And the ST had interesting things to say about our relationship to the past. But to people that don’t really like what Star Wars really is and want it to be something else got really angry about that. And people that have a warped view of the past hate it, but they hate anything new.
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.
TLoU is changing a lot but it’s excellent
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.
Witcher lead left. Still getting 2 more seasons.
Rings of power is about to have a second season.
Got started to suck because D and D rushed 2 seasons to try to work for Disney, which was pulled.
Fallout is popular because it’s good. All of the above changed a ton from the source. Only niche fanboys care how accurate something is and they don’t move the needle on popularity.
Game of Thrones didn’t suck because D&D rushed things. It started to go downhill as early as season 5, when they ran out of source material. People overlooked it initially because Game of Thrones had such a strong hype train. The last two seasons were just so blatantly bad that no one could ignore it anymore.
GoT had problems before that. They didn’t just run out of source material, they deliberately skipped a lot of it, mostly magic related.
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).
Make 5 seasons then end it. Nothing worse than shows that go on too long then start to become shit.
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 would be more worried that they give it the Westworld treatment.
I feel like they really only had 2 great seasons. Now we’ll have 4 mid ones instead. Greed fucking sucks
They’ll fall into the trap of never creating a proper ending aren’t they?
Well it is a fallout show
The horse will be pâté.
This series would be ripe for new plot and characters every season Fargo style. Too bad they’ll never do it.
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.
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.
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. :^)
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.
What is your sperm count?
I don’t think you get a $153m budget without expecting it to be popular.
A big budget doesn’t guarantee success though. See LOTR series.
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.
I just hope it doesn’t overstay its welcome like just about every show these days.
Amazon will cut the budget every consecutive season.
overstay its* welcome
The really annoying thing is that my autocorrect changes its to it’s regardless of the context. It just loves apostrophes I guess
Freaking autocorrect and its bad habits!
*it’s bad habits… according to my phone 🙄
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.
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.
Sometimes it’s the enjoyment of what happens in a show that makes it enjoyable, or the just the actors giving a great performance with what they get, regardless of when executives want to cancel it cough firefly cough. I do agree it sucks but sometimes it’s still worth the watch is all. Maybe they’ll realize errors if enough people watch the better stuff even if unfinished in the future, but doubtful. Also I’m a Stephen King reader so used to not so great endings heh but the middle parts can be awesome at least.
Part of that is on the show runners and writers. Netflix makes decisions off of viewership and other metrics, it’s the show runners that decide to have seasons end on cliffhangers
Netflix could always tell the show they aren’t being renewed and give them the opportunity to wrap things up. Even if it’s just with a two hour movie. Traditional networks frequently do this with shows. It would also make better sense because if the back catalog of shows on a streamer don’t end properly, no one’s going to subscribe to watch them.
It’s been said many times before, but I would absolutely include an escape clause (?) in any contract with them, that sets aside a portion of the budget for a “wrap up” mini series/feature length episode/or straight up movie.
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.
When the dude wiped his dick on the curtains, I knew it truly was a fallout show.
Nobody uses aughts the way they ought to anymore.
Edit: Apparently I have not used Ought to the way I should have. TIL
Do the episodes get better after the first few, or is this just not for me?
I’m universally hated for this opinion on Lemmy, but the whole season is a solid “meh”. But it is a consistent “meh”. If you didn’t care about the characters and plot points in the first two episodes, they’re not gonna get any better. There are two or three outrageously bad scenes later in the season, like truly atrocious writing and awful acting, but they come and go very fast, you won’t notice if you are not paying attention, and they end up not affecting the plot ending.
Kinda figured that. It’s too bad, I’m a huge fan of fallout. I’m just not suited to modern drama.
It’s not a drama though, the drama is tacked on to fulfill the Amazon Prime Template and drive views from people unfamiliar with the IP. It’s mainly a comedy. It’s just, the jokes are a very mixed bag. They did nail the tone and background of Fallout, but I didn’t find it that funny overall, and when the jokes are bad, they are really bad (like middle school yard comedy level) and suck you out of engagement with the story, which the writers desperately want you to still care about. The thing is the drama is also mid. Often I would have to consciously ask myself “wait, are we on a drama beat or a comedic bit?” To adjust my expectation for the scene, as it can be quite the whiplash, they rarely transition smoothly from one to the other, and they have the same overall tone so they blur and you don’t actually know immediately.
I know it’s not actually a drama, but I meant more what you said much more eloquently: I don’t like current show Templates much.
So basically they never planned a proper ending for it? I think this is the post that makes me decide to skip it, sorry.
EDIT: Maybe they’ll structure it so the ending episodes call back to a problem from the start and all the seasons in between were just side quests, lol.
Wait people are actually watching this I thought it was just getting morbbed
It’s a pretty good TV adaptation of the games.
Maybe stop listening to rage baiters on YT.
I haven’t looked into it at all other than passing posts I don’t care about
What the hell is morbbed
when people like something as a meme but take it so far that it makes others mistake it for a genuine wave of appreciation. like Morbius
I genuinely loved Morbius, no cap, it gets a yearly rewatch
Wow someone who really liked morbius and the Halo show. You might have to worst taste I’ve ever heard of.
Watched the first season before Amazon added ads to their streaming. It was pretty decent. Not decent enough to watch ads or pay more.
More than decent enough to watch it for free, though.
It’s not like Amazon and Bethesda / Microsoft are going to miss the money… 🤷♂️
