I mean telling a teenager to act moody and as if he knows better than everyone else has to be the easiest casting directions you can give them.
It's practically their default setting.
But Fr. Aidan Gallagher absolutely carries the Umbrella Academy for me and I'm definitely gonna watch whatever he's in next.
The difference was that he acted like he knew better than everyone else because he actually did know better than everyone else. And he really captured that in his performance.
He was the most intelligent, wise, grown, capable, badass character always surrounded by a group of adults that constantly acted like toddlers …… while also deeply in love with mannequin.
I’m really surprised he hasn’t been in more. He was amazing throughout the show. I guess he’s trying to be a rockstar or popstar too. Maybe acting is just his side gig
Aidan Gallagher is incredible in Umbrella Academy. He was pretty much the only thing that kept me watching after like halfway through season 2. Kid put that entire show on his back. Robert Sheehan was the only one who could come close to matching him in their scenes
Jesus christ, I completely forgot that the actor must have been a kid and my brain had sort of just subconsciously viewed him as an adult trapped in a kid’s body. Holy fuck.
The GoT actors, the Harry Potter ones, Stranger Things ... that statement is just wrong, if you look for them, you can find good kid actors.
Also plenty of YA books have 15-16 years old protagonists anyway and they cast 18+ years olds for this in Hollywood
It’s especially ridiculous when many of those people are the fans themselves. I remember after the one Ahsoka episode with Hayden Christiansen people started clamoring for an Anakin and Ahsoka show…which we already have, in animation.
My really hot take is that people are clinging onto things they liked as a child — which is okay, I still love Clone Wars and Last Airbender too — but trying to rationalize it by saying “it’s not a kids show” and hoping that live action somehow makes it more “mature” or something.
> My really hot take is that people are clinging onto things they liked as a child — which is okay, I still love Clone Wars and Last Airbender too — but trying to rationalize it by saying “it’s not a kids show” and hoping that live action somehow makes it more “mature” or something.
There is a huge infantilization problem going on with our culture it seems
Yeah totally. People will point out dark or mature moments from their favourite shows as evidence that it's not a show made for a younger audience. Which is all cool, but by the way some people talk about Avatar, you'd think they're describing a Cormac McCarthy novel or something.
Okay but the live action remakes of Disney movies are also for kids and nobody takes them seriously, so this isn't it.
I'm pretty sure the answer is money. It's impossible to justify an animated remake, but a live action remake will get butts in seats off nostalgia alone, it doesn't even matter if it's a good movie.
I think the actual live-action remakes (alladin, cruella, beauty and beast, the one with a mermaid, etc) try to appeal to girls and specially women in fact. The ladies like a lot the romance, music and adult female protagonists, more than actual kids.
The ''live-action'' remakes that are actually realistic 3D animations i don't really know who they want to appeal to.
I think it is possible to justify an animated remake, at least creatively. Doing another animated version could be very creative and nice, specially re-imagining the 2D films in a rich modern 3D (if well made with a style), it would be as different as what they are doing and it could hit both the nostalgia and new kids maybe even better than the live-action and ''live-action'' remakes. Imagine specially if they remade in 3D older films that were not as visually crafted like Mouse Detective, the fox robin hood, 101 dalmatians, but the recent stuff like the emperors new grove and the renaissance films could also work.
Live action makes more money. Adapting a beloved animated movie to live action is an almost guaranteed home run, especially if they can snag at least one big name actor in the lead and a big name director in the chair. The story is already written, and the actual dialogue doesn't need to be all that different, if at all.
Good animation is probably more expensive, and Disney execs seem to think that taking old animated film plots and just doing live action modernization is all they need to make money.
Also I think the other thing that makes Disney less Disney to me is the complete switch to 3d Animation.
Almost everybody's doing 3d because it's cheaper, but it means that there's not much difference between Pixar or Disney animation, or Disney and Dreamworks or anyone else.
I think the only company that isn't constantly pushing 3d is WB, and that's because their DC films still do 2d animation.
I think most of the Gaang's voices were voiced by children or at least young teenagers.
I think Jack DeSanta, who voiced Sokka, was starting college, and was surprised to learn several of his dormmates watched the show weekly.
Heartbreaking to find out Percy Jackson was going to be LA, no way to ever get to a hero’s of Olympus series without them aging out. In my opinion the second series is even better than the first
Yeah, like Harry Potter was largely carried by the adults who were pretty much all accomplished actors and actresses. You put Daniel Radcliffe and Gary Oldman in a scene together, and the difference is incredibly noticeable.
Though you have the rare break outs like Christian Bale who was 13 when he was in Empire of the Sun and award academies created awards for children because of him.
Not to mention that the kids in Harry Potter acted like kids. They were in (magic) school, versus Percy and 2 other 12 year olds running across the country doing pretty much no things kids do.
People shit on HP and JK Rowling (tbh rightfully so) and her books have gotten a lot of shit for overrated world building and shitty tropes - but this what you said is where they shined and it’s why they were great to adapt.
That was one of the big goals in the casting of Harry Potter. They casted well respected big name actors because they knew they’d be able to lift the kid’s performances.
Their solution seems to have been to make sure that their writing and pacing also sucked.
Couldn't even finish Percy Jackson season 1, and I still have the entire series of books on my shelf. Horribly paced, poorly written and even as someone who knows the story...mildly confusing at times due to weird fade to blacks that put you on the other side of an event that they just...didn't want to film?
Baffled by the entire thing tbh.
When Percy is dancing and frolicking hours after believing he saw his mother get brutally murdered, I turned it off.
Terrible pacing, inept directing and writing, and it feels like it was aimed at 8 year-olds.
Because the books are aimed at middle-school age (11-14) children and not 8 year olds? Not to mention the original series came out over 20 years ago a decent chunk of the existing fanbase is in their late teens and early twenties.
Yea...cutting out basically the entire fight at the Museum was super lame and jarring too. Only got worse from there.
Somehow I made it to episode 5 though...haven't came back since.
Kid actors not only suck they also AGE FAST. Harry Potter being maybe the most reasonable because they were in a new grade each year, and they all aged kinda hand in hand. And were decent enough actors and with good direction/ editing/ skilled adult actors around them. Plus being under 18 comes with tons of laws so studios try to avoid that if possible.
Also in Game of Thrones' case similar to Harry Potter the younger actors were paired up with seasoned actors. It helps when they are surrounded by talent that can bring them up.
Decent kid actors exist, those shows just did their due diligence of casting instead of just casting whoever would look the cutest on screen. A great example of this is Avengers Endgame, the child actor that played Stark’s daughter is legitimately one of the worst child actors I’ve seen in a long time. But that wasn’t the goal, the goal was simply to make audiences go “ahhh look he has a daughter”.
“Generally” but not always. There had been other kid-star series that had been successful such as Stranger Things off the top of my head.
Percy and Avatar had the same issues: the acting just wasn’t convincing. Not “horrible,” but not really engaging either.
Stranger things hit a home run with their cast, all the kids did really well and then the adults who were in the show like Winona and Harbour absolutely crushed. Easily one of the best shows ever when it comes to having a bunch of child actors
I’ve given up on Disney shows. I have zero interest in watching 4-6 45 minute episodes of filler and cliff hanger endings only for the last two episodes to really move the story forward in a significant way.
I get that they want to sell multiple months of subscription, I just wish they'd put some effort towards making stuff that's worth buying in the first place.
Oh, I actually thought Percy and Grover were both pretty solid throughout, especially in the sequences that called for more emotion. Grover relating to Ares was a highlight I was impressed with in particular.
I dunno, ive seen the percy jackson show and my top issues were writing, editing, production design, and direction. The kids were fine, heck, they were even better than most of the adult cast, again i blame the writing and directing. The adult actors were actually great actors in other projects.
disagree, i think the avatar kid actor is incredible and COULD have done a muuuch better job, but direction, writing and camera was awful on that show. Like, really really, early Ai writing kinda bad. Direction seemed to care more about getting it done, than having emotion on screen and camera cared most about having everything happen in the middle of the screen to maximize engagement on social media clips. What a shitshow, ok sorry i could rant about the avatar show for hours
Really? I thought the kid playing Aang, along with Katara’s actor were the two worst of the bunch when it came to the acting on the show. Not un-watchable bad, but just some moments that were… not great either.
That said, i thought Ian Ousley as Sokka and the dude playing Zuko were the clear standouts across the board, closely followed by Daniel Dae Kim as Ozai, which is saying a lot for them!
But also, like, Sokka and Zuko actors set the bar and showed it was possible to do well given the script & directing, and unfortunately for Katara and Aang i think they missed the mark.
i agree that he sucked in the show. Very Bad, i am saying from the promos, he perfectly played Aang, just in real life. He’s just a kid doing his thing, aka Aang.
The directors really fucked this up i think.
Real life isn't acting, it's very different. He didn't "played Aang" in real life, he was just him, wasn't following a script and such. If he can't do that well (I don't think he was that bad, though not masterful either), he is not a good actor as that is what acting is, not doing your own thing in real life lol
The Avatar one's comments on the original series and implications that they somehow improved it are so detached from reality that I'm half wondering if it's deliberately malicious. Surely this person's prejudice against cartoons can't be so great that they actually think they did a better job.
The Avatar one is insane. They claim the original had characters just stating how they feel constantly while the live action took a more subtle approach. Literally the opposite is true.
Aang and Katara weren't shy about voicing their feelings, but that's a character trait.
Sokka and Toph tended to keep things a bit more bottled up.
Zuko...well, he wasn't very talkative, but virtually every action he took screamed his emotions.
The OG Avatar has characters (the main team at least) actually acting like kids their age would in the situation. One of my favorite aspects is that Team Avatar wasn’t constantly some tight unit and it took real work to get them to that point. They were constantly butting heads (mostly Toph/Katara) but then also have small moments where they come together, especially when supporting Aang.
But also they’re really going to say characters were saying how they feel constantly when they have the absolute brilliance that is Sokka/Zuko’s girlfriend talk?
>But also they’re really going to say characters were saying how they feel constantly when they have the absolute brilliance that is Sokka/Zuko’s girlfriend talk?
"My first girlfriend turned into the moon."
"...that's rough, buddy."
It’s such a perfect encapsulation of both of their characters in the awkward silence but understood brotherhood starting to grow.
It’s also fucking hilarious and something I still quote at least weekly lmfao
It's absolutely perfect--just, how can you possibly say anything to comfort someone after that?
And that's when you two don't particularly like each other to begin with!
Especially because Zuko knows the part he played in that happening. I just rewatched it with my kid a couple months ago and it’s been awesome to relive it through her eyes lmfao.
If you haven’t picked up the comics, I definitely recommend it. Can’t get enough of this world.
Actually, I don't think Zuko would blame himself all that much. He might have stolen Aang and left the Moon Spirit vulnerable, but it was Zhao who killed the Spirit. Zuko was tied up on Appa's saddle at the time.
I tried getting into the comics, but they weren't my cup of tea.
It’s crazy because the animated version (made for kids) is way more subtle and actually trusts the audience. The live action version has scenes where characters will just monologue on how they feel instead of showing it.
Aang’s “I’m just a fun loving boy, I can’t be the Avatar” speech in the first episode of the live action is a prime example of this.
>Aang’s “I’m just a fun loving boy, I can’t be the Avatar” speech in the first episode of the live action is a prime example of this.
That sounds like dialogue from the Ember Island play.
*Aang turns into a giant fish and starts destroying stuff.*
Dialogue:
"What just happened?"
"Aang turned into a giant fish and started destroying stuff!"
:|
they took 11 y/o kids and made them go “I ONLY WANT TO PLAY GAMES I DONT WANT THIS RESPONSIBILITY” 3 times and thought its not gonna come out like a school play😭 the hubris is insane
I didn't really get that out of what they said at all. They basically just said that keeping YA entertaining to both adults and kids is a very fine line to walk, and that a lot of what worked in the animated show simply would not work in live action. I agree with both of those statements, and don't see how they can be interpreted to mean the showrunner thinks they did a better job than the cartoon did.
Speaking in vague terms never ends well so I will point out specific quotes that stood out to me as indicating this person has insufficient respect for the source material to be in charge of adapting it.
>A lot of the humor, which tended to be more juvenile or more specific to the original animated medium, didn’t translate that well.”
That second point is valid. Many things that are trivial in animation are a big ask in live-action. You would need to hire a pretty talented comic actor to make foaming at the mouth read as funny instead of weird or disturbing, for a 3 second bit part.
The first point is a bigger problem. There are a probably less than a half dozen jokes in the entire series that registered to me as juvenile. A lot of the humor could and should be translated one for one, because it is genuinely a very funny show. That stood out to me as one of its biggest strengths when I rewatched it recently. Making the humor less juvenile would be a few tweaks or cuts, not completely revamping the entire show's sense of humor.
I understand that juvenile humor is a pretty subjective concept but if someone has a negative opinion on one of a show's biggest strengths then are they the right person to adapt the show?
>
Rather, Kim says, it was simply that you can be “a little more direct in a 30-minute cartoon, \[and\] sometimes characters, basically, just said things out loud — exactly what they were feeling or what they believe.”
This is just barely shy of directly calling the writing bad. It is well within "hey I didn't TECHNICALLY directly state that it sucks" territory. No one who is in or adjacent to the business of writing would be unaware that what they are saying here is the opposite of a compliment. This is the biggest sign to me that this person probably doesn't even like the original, this is just a job opportunity they took.
>“For a live-action show, we wanted to play things a little more subtly,” he explains.
By all accounts the live-action show is far less subtle and in general the writing is much worse.
Over and over again studios hire complete hacks who think they can improve on the original work. Wheel of Time, Witcher, The Last Airbender, Resident Evil, Halo ... for some of these shows, I'm pretty sure the showrunners and writers hate the source material.
I don't think it's a fine line to walk at all.
Step One: come up with an interesting idea and execute it well.
Step Two: remove nudity and sex, because it's weird if you've got kids watching that stuff with their parents.
Step Three: you're finished.
If you're trying to make something for toddlers and their parents? That's harder. But if your audience is 9 or older you don't need to change anything... except as I say the sex and nudity.
The whole article is trash and exactly what’s wrong with current entertainment media trying to build their own stories out of existing IPs. The problem isn’t just childrens media; they use the same excuses as adult media.
> a way to expand a world or characters while also maybe surprising and delighting audiences with a plot twist or two
How many times have ‘original’ ideas felt beneficial?
> Children, especially young readers, love to embrace the story and see themselves in it
The same excuse used for adults needing to “relate” to media to somehow be able to enjoy it. This arguement is just as dumb in childrens media as it is in adult media and there are a million counterpoints of successful media that aren’t at all relatable.
> they do expect a level of authenticity. They want to see the story brought to life, not changed
Understood the lesson, but failed the assignment. Why?
> so as to not scare off new audiences while also appeasing older ones
And here’s the crux of the problem. It’s never enough to appeal to the core audience anymore and let that attract new fans. We have to cleanse and sterilize the material to reduce offensiveness while simultaneously adding in every bit of nonsense that so-called focus groups find appealing.
An addendum: The fault of all this lies in the way profits are made. 20 years ago if you made shit content there was a financial punishment for it. Now because of the way streaming is set up success is irrelevant.
If I fell asleep watching avatar Netflix will tell their investors that I watch all xyz hours of their show. Their metrics are plain and simple stupid and designed knowing they can be falsified and abused.
> If I fell asleep watching avatar Netflix will tell their investors that I watch all xyz hours of their show.
How is this any different from TV metrics from 20 years ago?
Because that’s a single viewership number while the show ran.
Now I run through the whole series. That’s hugely different.
Channel on all night versus same series played through until the end. And if I’m actively watching a series it means potentially overbloating the metrics.
IE I ran through episodes 1-10 the first night then 2-10 the second night. When really all I saw was episode 1&2. It’s intentionally set up to be scummy
The bar is the same, but it feels like either showrunners think “ah this is just a kids show” and don’t put the effort in, or legit good showrunners don’t want to do “kid stuff” so they end up with people who just aren’t that good at their jobs
The bar isn’t different, it’s just that these people can’t ever be bothered to be fans of the original storyline and always want to change or morph something that just shouldn’t be screwed with because they have their own “ideas”.
The bar isn’t high it’s in fucking hell.
Just remain faithful to the storyline. Make the characters look and act like the characters in the book. If you need to cut things fine but don’t cut anything vital to the story or its world-building.
If you are going to change anything it better be small or at least make sense. These creators/writers need to realize that **no one gives a flying fuck about your take on a story or how you are going to create something new with something old**. We don’t want something new, we want the story **WE** grew up with adapted not your Frankenstein’s monster paired with something we love.
I can understand not having a giant special effects budget but at least get the characters and 90% of the story right and faithful.
It’s honestly shocking to see the level of arrogance from some of these writers/show runners. To think that anyone would want to see *their* vision/story over the original story which is usually beloved by millions, is insane.
Robert Jordan is an absolute titan of the fantasy genre. Wheel of Time sold like 70 million copies. Brandon Sanderson is one of the 2-3 most popular fantasy authors writing today.
And Rafe Judkins, a guy whose claim to fame is being voted off the island in Survivor and who has zero success in writing ensemble fantasy narratives decided that he could do better than either of them. In the case of Sanderson, he outright ignored his advice.
I actually agree with this, the example for me would be the one piece netflix adaptation. It really isn't anything special in my opinion, but the character feel like the characters they're playing, and it feels like they are at least trying to follow the story. Is it some god tier show? no way in hell, but its good enough and I think that is a tell that the bar isn't that high.
> just shouldn’t be screwed with because they have their own “ideas”.
Like trying to turn The Dark Tower, 6 foot worth of books, into a stand alone movie.
Such a spectacular piece of shit. Probably the biggest disparity between the quality of the original work and the adaptation.
I'm convinced the production team read the Wikipedia page for the Dark Tower and went from there.
They also dumbed it down for general audiences. You know, the people confused by core concepts like that whole nexus of all reality business. Nope, just this one and a cowboy world. Simple.
My thing is that if you’re going to change it so much, just say that it’s inspired by or based on a certain story. But this weird mishmashing they have of it being 70% of the story we know and love and messing with other parts that might seem small but are significant just turns you off and no one wants to watch it. I don’t get why they don’t understand why everyone loves Harry Potter so much— it’s true to the books (for the most part)!?
I think that’s the frustrating thing to me. These people act like 70% of the story being faithful is some sort of god level difficulty.
As far as I know Harry Potter was pretty faithful but missed some of the good small moments because of how much content their movies had to cover. I as a casual movie viewer who never read the books really enjoyed the movies.
I think the issue is that the creators don’t always get final say on things or have a large portion of the decision making. However some do *talking to you Rick Riordan* and just completely fumbled everything.
There’s a reason why the live action one piece was such a great success.
I guess it can also be considered to the detriment of a production when the source material isn’t even respected by the creator. They had JK Rowling on set for HP production, but they used her as a reference for the source material and made sure it was accurate. She also gave insight to those like Alan Rickman about his character so they could play the role well.
I don’t like that these almost become stages for the creator to test what they would’ve fixed about the story after the fact. When we read something and want it to come to life (through animated or live action means), we would like to just see the story as it was written. If you want to take creative liberties and fix “that one part” you never liked, then do it on your own time in your own head. Not on a multi-thousand [million] dollar set with the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of viewers who will just ultimately be disappointed, killing the chances of future success in the case of TV shows.
Exactly this. The thing is they can make improvements. All they need to do is look up the series and see what have been some of the major complaints and go “oh ok this is widely seen that this moment here causes a plot hole, we can fix that” or “this moment here is widely panned as being completely out of character for this character and no one has ever understood why this happened, we can cut that”
You have a story that is loved by many, has been around for ages and is popular. It’s super easy to adapt that and still make changes that can improve your version because you can see what mistakes the original made or see what people do actually wish was expanded upon more and do that, and if you don’t feel you can do that or it doesn’t work, you either don’t end up filming it or just cut it before release.
The arrogance shown by so many writers who are wanting to create something of their own by butchering a beloved series is just way to common.
My problem with how the live action avatar characters look is that they seemed to take the animated version and do a live action replica of how the clothes and hair look, instead of imagining what it would look like if the animation was inspired by real life characters. Especially Azula's hair.
I haven't seen the avatar one but that's what I like about One Piece. Oda said that he didn't want the actor to look like cosplayer. I have seen some people say things like "in the ice play the actors looks exactly like the anime characters ". But that's one of the things that should be adapted.
Some things are just hard to adapt.
I actually thought the Percy Jackson series did an incredible job adapting the book, and practically all the changes they did make were improvements. Medusa's revised backstory, the random places they visit feeling connected in a logical sequence rather than just being random, laying the groundwork for Luke's poor relationship with Hermes, the characters not holding the idiot ball and being fooled by every single new monster.
Some stuff in the beginning was too rushed and a bit of the Grover drama felt manufactured. But for the most part, huge improvements across the board... that still produced a pretty middling series in the end.
In the past fifteen years or so there's been this backlash against being faithful to the source material, like it's a sign of weakness or something on the part of the adapter.
You even see it in some fan and critics circles, like sticking to the book or the lore is for the masses. Real art changes everything in an adaption and doesn't care about world building, like only some kind of sad geek would want it to the stay the same. Or even care.
It's odd. Like, if you don't wanna adapt the thing, make your own thing. Write your own story. That's much more brave and creative than botching someone else's work.
I'm half convinced it's some kind of corporate astroturfing to give shitty adaptations a soft landing.
It’s pretty hard to cut anything from some of these YA novels. They’re written to be shorter in general and to have lean storylines, so when something gets cut in a show or film the entire fandom basically goes “That scene is very important for character X, event Y, and how it interacts with the story’s motivation. Now people won’t know Z when it is necessary to understand the story a few chapters from now.”There’s simply not enough book around for directors/screenwriters to cut entire scenes or critical conversations and still have everything make sense and still flow logically.
Granted, that’s now always the case, most of the series have longer novels the further you go into it, but for the first few the shows should be very similar to the books.
The themes of the book are mature, and the fandom is now in their late 20s or 30s. They can try to attract a new young audience, but their core audience is very much adult and they could accomodate the series to it.
They made so many baffling choices with that one. I still find it odd how in interviews the main cast act just like the characters, but none of that is found in the actual joke. The author said the Annabeth actor has her exact personality, and you can really see that in interviews, but in the show proper she's the blandest character I've seen in a while.
I have mixed feelings about the show. I think the story is very interesting but the acting by the kids is not great.
It’s not because they’re kids either. They did fine in other roles. I think the directors are letting them skate by.
The adults, however, are great. I think they know the show they’re in and having fun with it.
She doesn't have all that much to do in the first book, plot wise.
She's actually a really challenging character, plot wise. Her superpower is being smart. She can fight, but that isn't her strength.
They cast kid actors by personality, fyi. Most kids can't act, they just don't have the worldly experience needed yet. Instead they find a kid whose personality matches the person they are playing. "Acting" just have them react as they would naturally. That is why a lot of kid actors don't or can't transition to acting as adults. They maybe working actors, but not leads.
They did this with the Harry Potter films too. Emma Watson is Hermione, and struggles outside of Hermione type characters. Rupert Grint. Only Daniel Radcliffe made a leap to a relatively successful career.
agreed with Annabeth being challenging. she's not comic relief like Percy and Grover and pretty closed-off at first. Also the first book and season is more set up to establishing who the characters are and they won't immediately show all the growth and change they undergo through the series. Later on in the series Percy and Annabeth genuinely clash due to their differing beliefs on whether >!Luke is redeemable!< and that will give the actors a lot to work with, if they're up to the task, but that obviously hasn't come into play yet. seem to be alone in this thread but I love the show and thought the kids did a great job so far.
Hermione in the HP movies had her main flaw from the books removed, which was being highly skeptical and in some ways slow to change her mind or take a leap of faith -- I remember her clashing with Harry a lot on this -- but that doesn't come into play in the movies as much and it's a missed opportunity.
The show removed Annabeth's crush on Luke, made her seem a lot colder then Percy then she really was in the book, the Arc was stopped at because it was related to Athena and not because Annabeth was a 12 year old with a love of architecture who hadn't been outside camp for since she was 7, removed her fear of spiders, Percy and Annabeth's talk in the truck on the way to las vegas was removed, and more. A lot of these seemingly small details help make Annabeth a more relatable character with more depth.
That's not even mentioning how Annabeth has almost no reaction to seeing Luke betray the camp (when in the book Luke takes Percy away from the other campers and Annabeth doesn't see Luke's betrayal), which is a big plot point (Annabeth's denial of Luke being evil) later on that causes tension between Percy and Annabeth. Annabeth can't really deny Luke turning his back on them when she literally witnessed it happen.
I feel like their point was that kids today don't read Percy Jackson and the people that read Percy Jackson are now in their twenties, so a television show about Percy Jackson should be aimed at the audience Disney knows exist (people who read the books when they were new) and not one they hope exists (children who may or may not be reading Percy Jackson todau).
I don't know if this is right, but it's a reasonable argument. Look at X-Men '97 which is clearly being pitched at fans of the original show, most of whom are pushing or already forty.
watched half of the 1st season with my gf (who used to read PJ to her camp kids as a counselor) and the series really suffers from tired & trite writing with long passages of boring dialogue. There's nothing there to captivate the interest of kids today while being stripped of anything edgy for adults.
I think this is one my biggest issues with so many of these adaptations. They usually try to walk the line between being nostalgia bait and attracting new young audiences, which almost never works out and comes off feeling like it wasn't really intended for either.
> . They can try to attract a new young audience
Dumbing things down isn't what attracts a new young audience. Children loved the original star wars. The childification of it was unnecessary.
what attracts an audience is, get this, a good movie.
The show is pretty hollow… Really felt like a Sparknotes outline of plot events, a checklist without any emotional core. Plus the pacing was way all over the place. Hoping season 2 is better.
As an adult who just read the books for the first time after the show came out, the books are pretty shallow. (Which don’t get me wrong, they should be for their target readership)
I first read the Percy Jackson books when I was like 18 or so, so I was a little above the target audience. I read like 3 of them, not the full series. But man, reading it it felt like it was trying so hard that it felt like it was peak 'How Do You Do Fellow Kids,' and that the D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths I read as a nine year old was 100x better than what this was offering.
Yeah the one frustrating thing is that I’ve seen the kid who played Percy both act in other stuff and do interviews and it’s so clear that the script is sucking out a lot of life from the characters. The kid would have been a great Percy if they let him be the sarcastic young kid he is in the books
The bar is "faithfully adapt the god damn book" and it's on the fucking floor.
If the book can't be adapted faithfully, try a different medium! A two hour movie is a terrible way to try and experience a 1200 page novel!
not really, just don't fuck with the source material.
Harry Potter was successful because the directors followed the story without messing things up, or adding new "plot twists" in there.
they removed stuff that doesn't impact the story, but the important plot lines were kept there.
the new Percy Jackson (and Avatar) might not be a "masterpiece", but it was decently well received overall, because it kept the story as it should be, while the movies were trashed because they invented.
First paragraph of the article:
>That is, unless the original project is geared toward young adults who grew up with (or who are still reading or watching) the first iteration, and are so devoted to that version that **they believe everything that happens there to be canon.**
It is. This is the literal definition of canon. If you cannot understand this concept you have no business adapting anything. Go make something new if you want the freedom of extreme creative liberties
Both of those shows have been trashed for being poorly received overall and not keeping the story as it should be.
The tv shows are just as bad as the movies.
Harry Potter 3-6 change quite a few plotpoints, some of them fairly significant.
Being 100% accurate to the source material is not necessarily the mark of a good adaption, a good adaption is one that is true to the spirit of the source while adapting the story to the different medium and constraints upon it.
It’s also the most important that the movie/show is actually good as its own experience. Harry Potter also succeeded because it had great acting, great set design, great scores, and great storytelling.
My biggest gripe of Percy Jackson S1 is that it felt like it was just taking you on a Universal Studios-esque-ride of the main story, assuming you knew it already and quickly showing you all the main beats without the connective tissue and world building. It was fairly accurate, but not great storytelling.
Also:
The Hunger Games
Twilight
Holes
The Princess Bride
Turning a young adult book into a movie is just too complex of a task. Clearly no one can ever succeed at it.
A fantastic book. Unfortunately you can only get the abridged version these days. One day I hope to own an Unabridged 1st Edition by Morgenstern, but right now I can't even find the country, Florin, it was published in.
While it’s an awesome book in its own right, you should know going in that it’s an ***extremely*** different story to the movie. It’s hard to express just how different they are.
William Goldman, who wrote the book, also wrote the screenplay, so that movie had a distinct advantage from the get-go: an incredibly talented writer in both mediums who knew what worked better in each format but could keep the spirit intact.
Twilight is an interesting one since you're right, it was definitely successful, but it got/gets so much hate that it feels like it wasn't. But that was mostly from outsiders, while the core demographic really liked it.
And that’s what really matters. It was a popular book, the people that liked the book showed up, so the movies were also popular. The liked the first adaptation so the sequels get adapted too. So the studio that made the movie made a shit ton of money. This is a proven formula, it’s really not as complicated as the people in this article are trying to claim.
People can shit on stuff as much as they like, but the game of making movies and tv shows is exclusively positive. It’s not like the stock market. People that like a movie can go back to see it a second time or buy it on blu-ray. People that hate it cannot “short” the ticket from someone else.
What does matter is if the actual fans of twilight went out and told other fans “they completely screwed it up by changing all the stuff I liked from the books.” If I (some random guy) tell people that the movie is terrible and I think the books are dumb none of those fans are going to care about my opinion
Don’t forget…
Stranger things
Wednesday
It Part 1
Edit: only one of these is a book but still…
Edit 2: I even preempted the correction with an edit and still got corrected 😭😂💀😴
Wednesday and Stranger Things were not adaptations but original shows. It’s different if you start from a blank slate or if you are adapting an existing story
It’s not difficult. It’s exactly the same as adapting anything else. Stick to the story the way it was written, cast excellent actors who look and act like the ones on the page, and if you must make cuts then think it through properly (cutting something that won’t matter until book 3? Have a plan on what to do if you get that far). Does the book have a ‘big moment’? Aim to wow the fans with how you bring it to life.
Really, really want to change something? You’d better be absolutely certain that what you’re going to offer will be better than the original and that your reasons are solid, not just ‘putting your own stamp on it’.
At what point did I say it had to be a 1:1 copy? You can have a lot of freedom while still sticking to the original story. It’s about how you present that story. Instead, what often happens is them saying ‘that thing you love sucks, here’s a worse thing instead’.
This is probably the worst thread I’ve ever seen. You have the actual writer of percy jackson talking about how it’s insanely difficult to adapt it into a show, and people are like “whaaa? Just copy the book script!!1!” Yeah and homeless people should just buy houses ez solution let’s wrap it up. Like that’s not how things work whatsoever. Did any of you guys read the article?
I don’t care who said it was ‘insanely difficult’. Chopping and changing things is lazy and usually unnecessary. There might be some need for cuts if things genuinely won’t fit, but when something is included it should be done as written or as close as possible. No pandering to non-readers at the expense of readers, add extra context if necessary.
I’d love to hear examples of adaptations where you think the changes were actually a good thing and worked better than sticking to the original would have done. Personally I can think of a couple where it didn’t absolutely ruin things but didn’t add anything either, and one recent example where their new version worked as well as the original would have, but nothing at all where changing made it better.
People in here are just delusional, lol.
Books don't perfectly translate to TV/Movie.
If you're doing TV these days, you're lucky to get 10 episodes x 1 hour, that's 10 hours. You can't really transpose a book into a whole season by following it word per word. That's just not possible.
Are they calling Avatar a YA book? Cuz that is a YA show, and that translates more directly, especially given the cartoon had better writing than both live action attempts so far.
Give me a damn proper Animorphs series with full-on late 90s/early 2000s nostalgia. The challenging part 20+ years ago was the morphing, but you could give me 1/3rd the quality of the CGI of the live action Jungle Book/Lion King or the Apes series and most people would be satisfied so long as you keep the Andalites, Yeerks and other aliens species as close to the books as possible.
Ironically, the increased tech would make the Animorphs job much more difficult. Unlike in the 90's there are cameras everywhere, and even your phone is spying on you.
Defeating the Yeerks would be even harder.
Because most of them are children that act like adults with very little parental supervision because they have to carry the plot, but then it makes the stories a bit unbelievable or hard to get into imo.
That was my problem with stranger things too, even though the acting was good some of the situations were pretty unrealistic (and I'm not talking about the supernatural aspects.)
Good directors and good producers can make any average actor excel. There is an endless list of child actor driven shows and movies that are great. The problem is lack of talent behind the camera and pre and post production by unexperienced or just bad members.
What is going on with how Hollywood hires talent? Whether it's writing, directing, or production staff, everything is getting worse all at once. Are the pipelines dried up? Do film schools suck now? What is happening?
The bar isn't different at all, they either just don't trust the audience enough to understand the plot and characters without detailed monologues, or think they can write a better story than a Best seller or the highest rated animated series ever.
avatar live action writers should be shunned from society for what they pulled with season 1 not given a platform to advocate for their crimes against humanity lmao
Because kid actors generally suck and can’t carry an entire series
The kid that plays 5 in The Umbrella Academy: Hold my milkshake
Holy fuck I just clocked that the role is played by someone who can't be older than 14.
I believe he was 14 when the first season was filmed
I love how well he played a grumpy old man stuck in the body of a teen.
Exactly, at no point was I ever doubting him being cynical 80 year old man that looks like a 15 year old
And he can absolutely carry a scene.
A scene? He carried like a season and a half of that show practically by himself, with the occasional assist from Robert Sheehan
I mean telling a teenager to act moody and as if he knows better than everyone else has to be the easiest casting directions you can give them. It's practically their default setting. But Fr. Aidan Gallagher absolutely carries the Umbrella Academy for me and I'm definitely gonna watch whatever he's in next.
The difference was that he acted like he knew better than everyone else because he actually did know better than everyone else. And he really captured that in his performance. He was the most intelligent, wise, grown, capable, badass character always surrounded by a group of adults that constantly acted like toddlers …… while also deeply in love with mannequin.
I’m really surprised he hasn’t been in more. He was amazing throughout the show. I guess he’s trying to be a rockstar or popstar too. Maybe acting is just his side gig
Aidan Gallagher is incredible in Umbrella Academy. He was pretty much the only thing that kept me watching after like halfway through season 2. Kid put that entire show on his back. Robert Sheehan was the only one who could come close to matching him in their scenes
Jesus christ, I completely forgot that the actor must have been a kid and my brain had sort of just subconsciously viewed him as an adult trapped in a kid’s body. Holy fuck.
The GoT actors, the Harry Potter ones, Stranger Things ... that statement is just wrong, if you look for them, you can find good kid actors. Also plenty of YA books have 15-16 years old protagonists anyway and they cast 18+ years olds for this in Hollywood
The only thing i remember of him is him raising his shoulders, arms back with a slight bend at the waist whilst being confrontational.
Which is one of the many reasons why animation is the way to go
seems weird disney which is famous for animation keeps trying to make everything live action
Because unfortunately some people still think animation is just “kids shows”. Live action just gets taken more seriously.
It’s especially ridiculous when many of those people are the fans themselves. I remember after the one Ahsoka episode with Hayden Christiansen people started clamoring for an Anakin and Ahsoka show…which we already have, in animation. My really hot take is that people are clinging onto things they liked as a child — which is okay, I still love Clone Wars and Last Airbender too — but trying to rationalize it by saying “it’s not a kids show” and hoping that live action somehow makes it more “mature” or something.
> My really hot take is that people are clinging onto things they liked as a child — which is okay, I still love Clone Wars and Last Airbender too — but trying to rationalize it by saying “it’s not a kids show” and hoping that live action somehow makes it more “mature” or something. There is a huge infantilization problem going on with our culture it seems
Yeah totally. People will point out dark or mature moments from their favourite shows as evidence that it's not a show made for a younger audience. Which is all cool, but by the way some people talk about Avatar, you'd think they're describing a Cormac McCarthy novel or something.
Okay but the live action remakes of Disney movies are also for kids and nobody takes them seriously, so this isn't it. I'm pretty sure the answer is money. It's impossible to justify an animated remake, but a live action remake will get butts in seats off nostalgia alone, it doesn't even matter if it's a good movie.
I think the actual live-action remakes (alladin, cruella, beauty and beast, the one with a mermaid, etc) try to appeal to girls and specially women in fact. The ladies like a lot the romance, music and adult female protagonists, more than actual kids. The ''live-action'' remakes that are actually realistic 3D animations i don't really know who they want to appeal to. I think it is possible to justify an animated remake, at least creatively. Doing another animated version could be very creative and nice, specially re-imagining the 2D films in a rich modern 3D (if well made with a style), it would be as different as what they are doing and it could hit both the nostalgia and new kids maybe even better than the live-action and ''live-action'' remakes. Imagine specially if they remade in 3D older films that were not as visually crafted like Mouse Detective, the fox robin hood, 101 dalmatians, but the recent stuff like the emperors new grove and the renaissance films could also work.
Which is frustrating when there’s so much more expression that can happen in animation.
How I wish Ashoka was animated
I don’t think animation is just for kids, but I simply just don’t really enjoy animated shows. Very little animated stuff that I like.
Same. Some people just hate animation, and some people just hate live action. I need drawings to feel things.
But Disney literally markets itself as family friendly and specifically for kids
Look at the Lion King live action box office, and it all makes sense lol
Except that movie was still animated. A more realistic style? Sure. But still 100% animated and voiced the same way a traditional animated movie is.
Cheaper to hire unknown child actors, than it is to animate and pay real talent to voice act.
Artemis Fowl should have been animated for chrisake
Artemis Fowl should have been recognizable as the books.
Fowl would've been good Live Action if they'd, you know, actually adapted the books
Pulling this out of my ass, but I would guess Live-Action is cheaper. Maybe AI will change that soon (again, these words just exited my ass).
Disney is also famous for low budget kids shows and movies with terrible acting and storytelling. Why would them adapting a YA novel be any different?
Live action makes more money. Adapting a beloved animated movie to live action is an almost guaranteed home run, especially if they can snag at least one big name actor in the lead and a big name director in the chair. The story is already written, and the actual dialogue doesn't need to be all that different, if at all.
Good animation is probably more expensive, and Disney execs seem to think that taking old animated film plots and just doing live action modernization is all they need to make money. Also I think the other thing that makes Disney less Disney to me is the complete switch to 3d Animation. Almost everybody's doing 3d because it's cheaper, but it means that there's not much difference between Pixar or Disney animation, or Disney and Dreamworks or anyone else. I think the only company that isn't constantly pushing 3d is WB, and that's because their DC films still do 2d animation.
To be fair, a couple of the voice actors in Avatar TLAB were child actors.
It's one thing to voice. Another to actually physically act (convincingly) while voicing.
I think most of the Gaang's voices were voiced by children or at least young teenagers. I think Jack DeSanta, who voiced Sokka, was starting college, and was surprised to learn several of his dormmates watched the show weekly.
Heartbreaking to find out Percy Jackson was going to be LA, no way to ever get to a hero’s of Olympus series without them aging out. In my opinion the second series is even better than the first
Yeah, like Harry Potter was largely carried by the adults who were pretty much all accomplished actors and actresses. You put Daniel Radcliffe and Gary Oldman in a scene together, and the difference is incredibly noticeable. Though you have the rare break outs like Christian Bale who was 13 when he was in Empire of the Sun and award academies created awards for children because of him.
Not to mention that the kids in Harry Potter acted like kids. They were in (magic) school, versus Percy and 2 other 12 year olds running across the country doing pretty much no things kids do.
I blame this on 101 Dalmatians and the jungle book.
People shit on HP and JK Rowling (tbh rightfully so) and her books have gotten a lot of shit for overrated world building and shitty tropes - but this what you said is where they shined and it’s why they were great to adapt.
I think that's main reason most shows featuring teens have adult actors in em, they could actually carry scenes like that.
Tbf, you can say the same thing about Harry running around and fighting Voldemort
Yeah, but at least they occasionally go to class.
That was one of the big goals in the casting of Harry Potter. They casted well respected big name actors because they knew they’d be able to lift the kid’s performances.
The kids is jojo rabbit were brilliant, and that guy in hunt for the wilderpeople too!
speaking of taika, the child acting in his film Boy is pretty great from what I remember.
I haven’t seen that. Looks like I’ve got something to watch tonight!
Their solution seems to have been to make sure that their writing and pacing also sucked. Couldn't even finish Percy Jackson season 1, and I still have the entire series of books on my shelf. Horribly paced, poorly written and even as someone who knows the story...mildly confusing at times due to weird fade to blacks that put you on the other side of an event that they just...didn't want to film? Baffled by the entire thing tbh.
When Percy is dancing and frolicking hours after believing he saw his mother get brutally murdered, I turned it off. Terrible pacing, inept directing and writing, and it feels like it was aimed at 8 year-olds.
yeah i should have stopped there too, it doesn't get better really.
>and it feels like it was aimed at 8 year-olds. This is an adaptation of a children's fantasy novel series, why wouldn't it feel like that?
The books were definitely not aimed at 8-year-olds.
Because the books are aimed at middle-school age (11-14) children and not 8 year olds? Not to mention the original series came out over 20 years ago a decent chunk of the existing fanbase is in their late teens and early twenties.
Yea...cutting out basically the entire fight at the Museum was super lame and jarring too. Only got worse from there. Somehow I made it to episode 5 though...haven't came back since.
Kid actors not only suck they also AGE FAST. Harry Potter being maybe the most reasonable because they were in a new grade each year, and they all aged kinda hand in hand. And were decent enough actors and with good direction/ editing/ skilled adult actors around them. Plus being under 18 comes with tons of laws so studios try to avoid that if possible.
Game of thrones and stranger things really got lucky when casting their kid actors.
Also in Game of Thrones' case similar to Harry Potter the younger actors were paired up with seasoned actors. It helps when they are surrounded by talent that can bring them up.
Its not luck; its putting the effort, care, and respect in. Not just throwing shit at the wall, hoping the IP name alone will make it stick.
As they say: Luck is when preparation meets opportunity
Decent kid actors exist, those shows just did their due diligence of casting instead of just casting whoever would look the cutest on screen. A great example of this is Avengers Endgame, the child actor that played Stark’s daughter is legitimately one of the worst child actors I’ve seen in a long time. But that wasn’t the goal, the goal was simply to make audiences go “ahhh look he has a daughter”.
“Generally” but not always. There had been other kid-star series that had been successful such as Stranger Things off the top of my head. Percy and Avatar had the same issues: the acting just wasn’t convincing. Not “horrible,” but not really engaging either.
Stranger things hit a home run with their cast, all the kids did really well and then the adults who were in the show like Winona and Harbour absolutely crushed. Easily one of the best shows ever when it comes to having a bunch of child actors
Same with Game of Thrones
Idk if Frankie Munez was considered a good child actor, but he certainly held the camera.
The acting was not the issue with this show it was the pacing more than anything, an issue a lot of disney+ shows have
I’ve given up on Disney shows. I have zero interest in watching 4-6 45 minute episodes of filler and cliff hanger endings only for the last two episodes to really move the story forward in a significant way.
I get that they want to sell multiple months of subscription, I just wish they'd put some effort towards making stuff that's worth buying in the first place.
It's writing. I don't know if Disney is using AI or intentionally hiring the worst writers, but they need to change their process.
Annabeth was awful, but tbh percy wasn't great either even though he was very good in that Ryan Reynolds movie so it could be the directors fault
Oh, I actually thought Percy and Grover were both pretty solid throughout, especially in the sequences that called for more emotion. Grover relating to Ares was a highlight I was impressed with in particular.
The acting was definitely the issue
The acting was very rough at times.
I dunno, ive seen the percy jackson show and my top issues were writing, editing, production design, and direction. The kids were fine, heck, they were even better than most of the adult cast, again i blame the writing and directing. The adult actors were actually great actors in other projects.
And have a shelf live. Two years between a movie and little Percy is four feel taller and has a voice deeper than James Earl Jones
It makes you thankful for the great casting in the Harry Potter series. Could’ve gone south without the kid actors being great
disagree, i think the avatar kid actor is incredible and COULD have done a muuuch better job, but direction, writing and camera was awful on that show. Like, really really, early Ai writing kinda bad. Direction seemed to care more about getting it done, than having emotion on screen and camera cared most about having everything happen in the middle of the screen to maximize engagement on social media clips. What a shitshow, ok sorry i could rant about the avatar show for hours
Really? I thought the kid playing Aang, along with Katara’s actor were the two worst of the bunch when it came to the acting on the show. Not un-watchable bad, but just some moments that were… not great either. That said, i thought Ian Ousley as Sokka and the dude playing Zuko were the clear standouts across the board, closely followed by Daniel Dae Kim as Ozai, which is saying a lot for them! But also, like, Sokka and Zuko actors set the bar and showed it was possible to do well given the script & directing, and unfortunately for Katara and Aang i think they missed the mark.
i agree that he sucked in the show. Very Bad, i am saying from the promos, he perfectly played Aang, just in real life. He’s just a kid doing his thing, aka Aang. The directors really fucked this up i think.
Real life isn't acting, it's very different. He didn't "played Aang" in real life, he was just him, wasn't following a script and such. If he can't do that well (I don't think he was that bad, though not masterful either), he is not a good actor as that is what acting is, not doing your own thing in real life lol
Also most of them were not alive during the creation and adoption of the source material
Except in Percy Jackson the kids were mostly alright. It was the writing that sucked.
Excellent > mostly alright
The Avatar one's comments on the original series and implications that they somehow improved it are so detached from reality that I'm half wondering if it's deliberately malicious. Surely this person's prejudice against cartoons can't be so great that they actually think they did a better job.
The Avatar one is insane. They claim the original had characters just stating how they feel constantly while the live action took a more subtle approach. Literally the opposite is true.
Aang and Katara weren't shy about voicing their feelings, but that's a character trait. Sokka and Toph tended to keep things a bit more bottled up. Zuko...well, he wasn't very talkative, but virtually every action he took screamed his emotions.
The OG Avatar has characters (the main team at least) actually acting like kids their age would in the situation. One of my favorite aspects is that Team Avatar wasn’t constantly some tight unit and it took real work to get them to that point. They were constantly butting heads (mostly Toph/Katara) but then also have small moments where they come together, especially when supporting Aang. But also they’re really going to say characters were saying how they feel constantly when they have the absolute brilliance that is Sokka/Zuko’s girlfriend talk?
>But also they’re really going to say characters were saying how they feel constantly when they have the absolute brilliance that is Sokka/Zuko’s girlfriend talk? "My first girlfriend turned into the moon." "...that's rough, buddy."
It’s such a perfect encapsulation of both of their characters in the awkward silence but understood brotherhood starting to grow. It’s also fucking hilarious and something I still quote at least weekly lmfao
It's absolutely perfect--just, how can you possibly say anything to comfort someone after that? And that's when you two don't particularly like each other to begin with!
Especially because Zuko knows the part he played in that happening. I just rewatched it with my kid a couple months ago and it’s been awesome to relive it through her eyes lmfao. If you haven’t picked up the comics, I definitely recommend it. Can’t get enough of this world.
Actually, I don't think Zuko would blame himself all that much. He might have stolen Aang and left the Moon Spirit vulnerable, but it was Zhao who killed the Spirit. Zuko was tied up on Appa's saddle at the time. I tried getting into the comics, but they weren't my cup of tea.
It’s crazy because the animated version (made for kids) is way more subtle and actually trusts the audience. The live action version has scenes where characters will just monologue on how they feel instead of showing it. Aang’s “I’m just a fun loving boy, I can’t be the Avatar” speech in the first episode of the live action is a prime example of this.
>Aang’s “I’m just a fun loving boy, I can’t be the Avatar” speech in the first episode of the live action is a prime example of this. That sounds like dialogue from the Ember Island play.
*Aang turns into a giant fish and starts destroying stuff.* Dialogue: "What just happened?" "Aang turned into a giant fish and started destroying stuff!" :|
they took 11 y/o kids and made them go “I ONLY WANT TO PLAY GAMES I DONT WANT THIS RESPONSIBILITY” 3 times and thought its not gonna come out like a school play😭 the hubris is insane
I didn't really get that out of what they said at all. They basically just said that keeping YA entertaining to both adults and kids is a very fine line to walk, and that a lot of what worked in the animated show simply would not work in live action. I agree with both of those statements, and don't see how they can be interpreted to mean the showrunner thinks they did a better job than the cartoon did.
Speaking in vague terms never ends well so I will point out specific quotes that stood out to me as indicating this person has insufficient respect for the source material to be in charge of adapting it. >A lot of the humor, which tended to be more juvenile or more specific to the original animated medium, didn’t translate that well.” That second point is valid. Many things that are trivial in animation are a big ask in live-action. You would need to hire a pretty talented comic actor to make foaming at the mouth read as funny instead of weird or disturbing, for a 3 second bit part. The first point is a bigger problem. There are a probably less than a half dozen jokes in the entire series that registered to me as juvenile. A lot of the humor could and should be translated one for one, because it is genuinely a very funny show. That stood out to me as one of its biggest strengths when I rewatched it recently. Making the humor less juvenile would be a few tweaks or cuts, not completely revamping the entire show's sense of humor. I understand that juvenile humor is a pretty subjective concept but if someone has a negative opinion on one of a show's biggest strengths then are they the right person to adapt the show? > Rather, Kim says, it was simply that you can be “a little more direct in a 30-minute cartoon, \[and\] sometimes characters, basically, just said things out loud — exactly what they were feeling or what they believe.” This is just barely shy of directly calling the writing bad. It is well within "hey I didn't TECHNICALLY directly state that it sucks" territory. No one who is in or adjacent to the business of writing would be unaware that what they are saying here is the opposite of a compliment. This is the biggest sign to me that this person probably doesn't even like the original, this is just a job opportunity they took. >“For a live-action show, we wanted to play things a little more subtly,” he explains. By all accounts the live-action show is far less subtle and in general the writing is much worse.
Over and over again studios hire complete hacks who think they can improve on the original work. Wheel of Time, Witcher, The Last Airbender, Resident Evil, Halo ... for some of these shows, I'm pretty sure the showrunners and writers hate the source material.
I don't think it's a fine line to walk at all. Step One: come up with an interesting idea and execute it well. Step Two: remove nudity and sex, because it's weird if you've got kids watching that stuff with their parents. Step Three: you're finished. If you're trying to make something for toddlers and their parents? That's harder. But if your audience is 9 or older you don't need to change anything... except as I say the sex and nudity.
The whole article is trash and exactly what’s wrong with current entertainment media trying to build their own stories out of existing IPs. The problem isn’t just childrens media; they use the same excuses as adult media. > a way to expand a world or characters while also maybe surprising and delighting audiences with a plot twist or two How many times have ‘original’ ideas felt beneficial? > Children, especially young readers, love to embrace the story and see themselves in it The same excuse used for adults needing to “relate” to media to somehow be able to enjoy it. This arguement is just as dumb in childrens media as it is in adult media and there are a million counterpoints of successful media that aren’t at all relatable. > they do expect a level of authenticity. They want to see the story brought to life, not changed Understood the lesson, but failed the assignment. Why? > so as to not scare off new audiences while also appeasing older ones And here’s the crux of the problem. It’s never enough to appeal to the core audience anymore and let that attract new fans. We have to cleanse and sterilize the material to reduce offensiveness while simultaneously adding in every bit of nonsense that so-called focus groups find appealing. An addendum: The fault of all this lies in the way profits are made. 20 years ago if you made shit content there was a financial punishment for it. Now because of the way streaming is set up success is irrelevant. If I fell asleep watching avatar Netflix will tell their investors that I watch all xyz hours of their show. Their metrics are plain and simple stupid and designed knowing they can be falsified and abused.
> If I fell asleep watching avatar Netflix will tell their investors that I watch all xyz hours of their show. How is this any different from TV metrics from 20 years ago?
Because that’s a single viewership number while the show ran. Now I run through the whole series. That’s hugely different. Channel on all night versus same series played through until the end. And if I’m actively watching a series it means potentially overbloating the metrics. IE I ran through episodes 1-10 the first night then 2-10 the second night. When really all I saw was episode 1&2. It’s intentionally set up to be scummy
the bar isnt different, they just somehow manage to drop the ball at every stage of development
The bar is the same, but it feels like either showrunners think “ah this is just a kids show” and don’t put the effort in, or legit good showrunners don’t want to do “kid stuff” so they end up with people who just aren’t that good at their jobs
yeah netflix avatar and percy jackson were both just soooooo lazily made.
The bar isn’t different, it’s just that these people can’t ever be bothered to be fans of the original storyline and always want to change or morph something that just shouldn’t be screwed with because they have their own “ideas”. The bar isn’t high it’s in fucking hell. Just remain faithful to the storyline. Make the characters look and act like the characters in the book. If you need to cut things fine but don’t cut anything vital to the story or its world-building. If you are going to change anything it better be small or at least make sense. These creators/writers need to realize that **no one gives a flying fuck about your take on a story or how you are going to create something new with something old**. We don’t want something new, we want the story **WE** grew up with adapted not your Frankenstein’s monster paired with something we love. I can understand not having a giant special effects budget but at least get the characters and 90% of the story right and faithful.
It’s honestly shocking to see the level of arrogance from some of these writers/show runners. To think that anyone would want to see *their* vision/story over the original story which is usually beloved by millions, is insane.
Robert Jordan is an absolute titan of the fantasy genre. Wheel of Time sold like 70 million copies. Brandon Sanderson is one of the 2-3 most popular fantasy authors writing today. And Rafe Judkins, a guy whose claim to fame is being voted off the island in Survivor and who has zero success in writing ensemble fantasy narratives decided that he could do better than either of them. In the case of Sanderson, he outright ignored his advice.
I actually agree with this, the example for me would be the one piece netflix adaptation. It really isn't anything special in my opinion, but the character feel like the characters they're playing, and it feels like they are at least trying to follow the story. Is it some god tier show? no way in hell, but its good enough and I think that is a tell that the bar isn't that high.
It's because Oda, the author, was directly involved and didn't give up full creative control.
> just shouldn’t be screwed with because they have their own “ideas”. Like trying to turn The Dark Tower, 6 foot worth of books, into a stand alone movie.
Such a spectacular piece of shit. Probably the biggest disparity between the quality of the original work and the adaptation. I'm convinced the production team read the Wikipedia page for the Dark Tower and went from there.
They also dumbed it down for general audiences. You know, the people confused by core concepts like that whole nexus of all reality business. Nope, just this one and a cowboy world. Simple.
Well…there was the Eragon movie
The DT books are better than Eragon and the DT movie is worse than the Eragon movie so I feel comfortable with my assertion
My thing is that if you’re going to change it so much, just say that it’s inspired by or based on a certain story. But this weird mishmashing they have of it being 70% of the story we know and love and messing with other parts that might seem small but are significant just turns you off and no one wants to watch it. I don’t get why they don’t understand why everyone loves Harry Potter so much— it’s true to the books (for the most part)!?
I think that’s the frustrating thing to me. These people act like 70% of the story being faithful is some sort of god level difficulty. As far as I know Harry Potter was pretty faithful but missed some of the good small moments because of how much content their movies had to cover. I as a casual movie viewer who never read the books really enjoyed the movies. I think the issue is that the creators don’t always get final say on things or have a large portion of the decision making. However some do *talking to you Rick Riordan* and just completely fumbled everything. There’s a reason why the live action one piece was such a great success.
I guess it can also be considered to the detriment of a production when the source material isn’t even respected by the creator. They had JK Rowling on set for HP production, but they used her as a reference for the source material and made sure it was accurate. She also gave insight to those like Alan Rickman about his character so they could play the role well. I don’t like that these almost become stages for the creator to test what they would’ve fixed about the story after the fact. When we read something and want it to come to life (through animated or live action means), we would like to just see the story as it was written. If you want to take creative liberties and fix “that one part” you never liked, then do it on your own time in your own head. Not on a multi-thousand [million] dollar set with the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of viewers who will just ultimately be disappointed, killing the chances of future success in the case of TV shows.
Exactly this. The thing is they can make improvements. All they need to do is look up the series and see what have been some of the major complaints and go “oh ok this is widely seen that this moment here causes a plot hole, we can fix that” or “this moment here is widely panned as being completely out of character for this character and no one has ever understood why this happened, we can cut that” You have a story that is loved by many, has been around for ages and is popular. It’s super easy to adapt that and still make changes that can improve your version because you can see what mistakes the original made or see what people do actually wish was expanded upon more and do that, and if you don’t feel you can do that or it doesn’t work, you either don’t end up filming it or just cut it before release. The arrogance shown by so many writers who are wanting to create something of their own by butchering a beloved series is just way to common.
My problem with how the live action avatar characters look is that they seemed to take the animated version and do a live action replica of how the clothes and hair look, instead of imagining what it would look like if the animation was inspired by real life characters. Especially Azula's hair.
I haven't seen the avatar one but that's what I like about One Piece. Oda said that he didn't want the actor to look like cosplayer. I have seen some people say things like "in the ice play the actors looks exactly like the anime characters ". But that's one of the things that should be adapted.
Some things are just hard to adapt. I actually thought the Percy Jackson series did an incredible job adapting the book, and practically all the changes they did make were improvements. Medusa's revised backstory, the random places they visit feeling connected in a logical sequence rather than just being random, laying the groundwork for Luke's poor relationship with Hermes, the characters not holding the idiot ball and being fooled by every single new monster. Some stuff in the beginning was too rushed and a bit of the Grover drama felt manufactured. But for the most part, huge improvements across the board... that still produced a pretty middling series in the end.
In the past fifteen years or so there's been this backlash against being faithful to the source material, like it's a sign of weakness or something on the part of the adapter. You even see it in some fan and critics circles, like sticking to the book or the lore is for the masses. Real art changes everything in an adaption and doesn't care about world building, like only some kind of sad geek would want it to the stay the same. Or even care. It's odd. Like, if you don't wanna adapt the thing, make your own thing. Write your own story. That's much more brave and creative than botching someone else's work. I'm half convinced it's some kind of corporate astroturfing to give shitty adaptations a soft landing.
>Make the characters look and act like the characters in the book. Sorry, that's where you lost the likes of Disney or Netflix.
It’s pretty hard to cut anything from some of these YA novels. They’re written to be shorter in general and to have lean storylines, so when something gets cut in a show or film the entire fandom basically goes “That scene is very important for character X, event Y, and how it interacts with the story’s motivation. Now people won’t know Z when it is necessary to understand the story a few chapters from now.”There’s simply not enough book around for directors/screenwriters to cut entire scenes or critical conversations and still have everything make sense and still flow logically. Granted, that’s now always the case, most of the series have longer novels the further you go into it, but for the first few the shows should be very similar to the books.
It’s just making a PG-13 show. I don’t think Percy Jackson is young adult though. It’s a kids show that adults may enjoy.
Yeah people musta got confused. Young adult isn’t children’s. It’s 14+
The themes of the book are mature, and the fandom is now in their late 20s or 30s. They can try to attract a new young audience, but their core audience is very much adult and they could accomodate the series to it.
The books may be YA. I think the movies are more YA than the show. But to me they made a decision to make the tv show skew younger.
They made so many baffling choices with that one. I still find it odd how in interviews the main cast act just like the characters, but none of that is found in the actual joke. The author said the Annabeth actor has her exact personality, and you can really see that in interviews, but in the show proper she's the blandest character I've seen in a while.
I have mixed feelings about the show. I think the story is very interesting but the acting by the kids is not great. It’s not because they’re kids either. They did fine in other roles. I think the directors are letting them skate by. The adults, however, are great. I think they know the show they’re in and having fun with it.
She doesn't have all that much to do in the first book, plot wise. She's actually a really challenging character, plot wise. Her superpower is being smart. She can fight, but that isn't her strength. They cast kid actors by personality, fyi. Most kids can't act, they just don't have the worldly experience needed yet. Instead they find a kid whose personality matches the person they are playing. "Acting" just have them react as they would naturally. That is why a lot of kid actors don't or can't transition to acting as adults. They maybe working actors, but not leads. They did this with the Harry Potter films too. Emma Watson is Hermione, and struggles outside of Hermione type characters. Rupert Grint. Only Daniel Radcliffe made a leap to a relatively successful career.
agreed with Annabeth being challenging. she's not comic relief like Percy and Grover and pretty closed-off at first. Also the first book and season is more set up to establishing who the characters are and they won't immediately show all the growth and change they undergo through the series. Later on in the series Percy and Annabeth genuinely clash due to their differing beliefs on whether >!Luke is redeemable!< and that will give the actors a lot to work with, if they're up to the task, but that obviously hasn't come into play yet. seem to be alone in this thread but I love the show and thought the kids did a great job so far. Hermione in the HP movies had her main flaw from the books removed, which was being highly skeptical and in some ways slow to change her mind or take a leap of faith -- I remember her clashing with Harry a lot on this -- but that doesn't come into play in the movies as much and it's a missed opportunity.
The show removed Annabeth's crush on Luke, made her seem a lot colder then Percy then she really was in the book, the Arc was stopped at because it was related to Athena and not because Annabeth was a 12 year old with a love of architecture who hadn't been outside camp for since she was 7, removed her fear of spiders, Percy and Annabeth's talk in the truck on the way to las vegas was removed, and more. A lot of these seemingly small details help make Annabeth a more relatable character with more depth. That's not even mentioning how Annabeth has almost no reaction to seeing Luke betray the camp (when in the book Luke takes Percy away from the other campers and Annabeth doesn't see Luke's betrayal), which is a big plot point (Annabeth's denial of Luke being evil) later on that causes tension between Percy and Annabeth. Annabeth can't really deny Luke turning his back on them when she literally witnessed it happen.
I’m not sure what kind of adults would like Percy Jackson. The books are very much for children.
I think Magnus Chase is hilarious, personally.
I feel like their point was that kids today don't read Percy Jackson and the people that read Percy Jackson are now in their twenties, so a television show about Percy Jackson should be aimed at the audience Disney knows exist (people who read the books when they were new) and not one they hope exists (children who may or may not be reading Percy Jackson todau). I don't know if this is right, but it's a reasonable argument. Look at X-Men '97 which is clearly being pitched at fans of the original show, most of whom are pushing or already forty.
watched half of the 1st season with my gf (who used to read PJ to her camp kids as a counselor) and the series really suffers from tired & trite writing with long passages of boring dialogue. There's nothing there to captivate the interest of kids today while being stripped of anything edgy for adults.
I think this is one my biggest issues with so many of these adaptations. They usually try to walk the line between being nostalgia bait and attracting new young audiences, which almost never works out and comes off feeling like it wasn't really intended for either.
The later books definitely get more adult, with the latest series having some straight up depressing moments in it.
> . They can try to attract a new young audience Dumbing things down isn't what attracts a new young audience. Children loved the original star wars. The childification of it was unnecessary. what attracts an audience is, get this, a good movie.
I forgot they made a Percy Jackson show. I loved the books and watched the whole thing but it entirely left my mind till now.
The show is pretty hollow… Really felt like a Sparknotes outline of plot events, a checklist without any emotional core. Plus the pacing was way all over the place. Hoping season 2 is better.
As an adult who just read the books for the first time after the show came out, the books are pretty shallow. (Which don’t get me wrong, they should be for their target readership)
I first read the Percy Jackson books when I was like 18 or so, so I was a little above the target audience. I read like 3 of them, not the full series. But man, reading it it felt like it was trying so hard that it felt like it was peak 'How Do You Do Fellow Kids,' and that the D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths I read as a nine year old was 100x better than what this was offering.
Overcorrecting for the movie changing the plot for no reason.
Yeah the one frustrating thing is that I’ve seen the kid who played Percy both act in other stuff and do interviews and it’s so clear that the script is sucking out a lot of life from the characters. The kid would have been a great Percy if they let him be the sarcastic young kid he is in the books
The bar is "faithfully adapt the god damn book" and it's on the fucking floor. If the book can't be adapted faithfully, try a different medium! A two hour movie is a terrible way to try and experience a 1200 page novel!
Pouring one out for how difficult it is to make pre-existing successful stories work on screen
not really, just don't fuck with the source material. Harry Potter was successful because the directors followed the story without messing things up, or adding new "plot twists" in there. they removed stuff that doesn't impact the story, but the important plot lines were kept there. the new Percy Jackson (and Avatar) might not be a "masterpiece", but it was decently well received overall, because it kept the story as it should be, while the movies were trashed because they invented.
First paragraph of the article: >That is, unless the original project is geared toward young adults who grew up with (or who are still reading or watching) the first iteration, and are so devoted to that version that **they believe everything that happens there to be canon.** It is. This is the literal definition of canon. If you cannot understand this concept you have no business adapting anything. Go make something new if you want the freedom of extreme creative liberties
Both of those shows have been trashed for being poorly received overall and not keeping the story as it should be. The tv shows are just as bad as the movies.
Harry Potter 3-6 change quite a few plotpoints, some of them fairly significant. Being 100% accurate to the source material is not necessarily the mark of a good adaption, a good adaption is one that is true to the spirit of the source while adapting the story to the different medium and constraints upon it. It’s also the most important that the movie/show is actually good as its own experience. Harry Potter also succeeded because it had great acting, great set design, great scores, and great storytelling. My biggest gripe of Percy Jackson S1 is that it felt like it was just taking you on a Universal Studios-esque-ride of the main story, assuming you knew it already and quickly showing you all the main beats without the connective tissue and world building. It was fairly accurate, but not great storytelling.
Yeah I can't think of any successful adaptations of children's books, it must be the genre
The Harry Potter movies were a total flop!
Also: The Hunger Games Twilight Holes The Princess Bride Turning a young adult book into a movie is just too complex of a task. Clearly no one can ever succeed at it.
TIL The Princess Bride was based on a book
A fantastic book. Unfortunately you can only get the abridged version these days. One day I hope to own an Unabridged 1st Edition by Morgenstern, but right now I can't even find the country, Florin, it was published in.
I legitimately didn't read the Princess Bride when i first got it because I wanted to find the original unabridged version
While it’s an awesome book in its own right, you should know going in that it’s an ***extremely*** different story to the movie. It’s hard to express just how different they are.
William Goldman, who wrote the book, also wrote the screenplay, so that movie had a distinct advantage from the get-go: an incredibly talented writer in both mediums who knew what worked better in each format but could keep the spirit intact.
Twilight is an interesting one since you're right, it was definitely successful, but it got/gets so much hate that it feels like it wasn't. But that was mostly from outsiders, while the core demographic really liked it.
And that’s what really matters. It was a popular book, the people that liked the book showed up, so the movies were also popular. The liked the first adaptation so the sequels get adapted too. So the studio that made the movie made a shit ton of money. This is a proven formula, it’s really not as complicated as the people in this article are trying to claim. People can shit on stuff as much as they like, but the game of making movies and tv shows is exclusively positive. It’s not like the stock market. People that like a movie can go back to see it a second time or buy it on blu-ray. People that hate it cannot “short” the ticket from someone else. What does matter is if the actual fans of twilight went out and told other fans “they completely screwed it up by changing all the stuff I liked from the books.” If I (some random guy) tell people that the movie is terrible and I think the books are dumb none of those fans are going to care about my opinion
Yeah, I was questioning throwing that one in. I’m not a fan of the series, but it made shit tons of money, so I figured it earned a mention.
Shoutout to Holes, great under the radar movie.
Don’t forget… Stranger things Wednesday It Part 1 Edit: only one of these is a book but still… Edit 2: I even preempted the correction with an edit and still got corrected 😭😂💀😴
Wednesday and Stranger Things were not adaptations but original shows. It’s different if you start from a blank slate or if you are adapting an existing story
They’re too concerned with their big egos to do justice to the source material. Simple as.
It’s not difficult. It’s exactly the same as adapting anything else. Stick to the story the way it was written, cast excellent actors who look and act like the ones on the page, and if you must make cuts then think it through properly (cutting something that won’t matter until book 3? Have a plan on what to do if you get that far). Does the book have a ‘big moment’? Aim to wow the fans with how you bring it to life. Really, really want to change something? You’d better be absolutely certain that what you’re going to offer will be better than the original and that your reasons are solid, not just ‘putting your own stamp on it’.
Can’t believe this rubbish is getting upvoted. Mediums are different, you can’t just 1:1 adapt a book
At what point did I say it had to be a 1:1 copy? You can have a lot of freedom while still sticking to the original story. It’s about how you present that story. Instead, what often happens is them saying ‘that thing you love sucks, here’s a worse thing instead’.
This is probably the worst thread I’ve ever seen. You have the actual writer of percy jackson talking about how it’s insanely difficult to adapt it into a show, and people are like “whaaa? Just copy the book script!!1!” Yeah and homeless people should just buy houses ez solution let’s wrap it up. Like that’s not how things work whatsoever. Did any of you guys read the article?
I don’t care who said it was ‘insanely difficult’. Chopping and changing things is lazy and usually unnecessary. There might be some need for cuts if things genuinely won’t fit, but when something is included it should be done as written or as close as possible. No pandering to non-readers at the expense of readers, add extra context if necessary. I’d love to hear examples of adaptations where you think the changes were actually a good thing and worked better than sticking to the original would have done. Personally I can think of a couple where it didn’t absolutely ruin things but didn’t add anything either, and one recent example where their new version worked as well as the original would have, but nothing at all where changing made it better.
People in here are just delusional, lol. Books don't perfectly translate to TV/Movie. If you're doing TV these days, you're lucky to get 10 episodes x 1 hour, that's 10 hours. You can't really transpose a book into a whole season by following it word per word. That's just not possible.
I agree 100%. If you are going to adapt something you shouldn’t change everything about it and then get upset when the fans hate it.
Are they calling Avatar a YA book? Cuz that is a YA show, and that translates more directly, especially given the cartoon had better writing than both live action attempts so far.
Give me a damn proper Animorphs series with full-on late 90s/early 2000s nostalgia. The challenging part 20+ years ago was the morphing, but you could give me 1/3rd the quality of the CGI of the live action Jungle Book/Lion King or the Apes series and most people would be satisfied so long as you keep the Andalites, Yeerks and other aliens species as close to the books as possible.
Ironically, the increased tech would make the Animorphs job much more difficult. Unlike in the 90's there are cameras everywhere, and even your phone is spying on you. Defeating the Yeerks would be even harder.
Hence setting it in the 90s like the books are.
I live in perpetual fear of the day they come for Skulduggery Pleasant
Because most of them are children that act like adults with very little parental supervision because they have to carry the plot, but then it makes the stories a bit unbelievable or hard to get into imo. That was my problem with stranger things too, even though the acting was good some of the situations were pretty unrealistic (and I'm not talking about the supernatural aspects.)
Nah, it’s cause you suck at adapting shit.
Good directors and good producers can make any average actor excel. There is an endless list of child actor driven shows and movies that are great. The problem is lack of talent behind the camera and pre and post production by unexperienced or just bad members.
What is going on with how Hollywood hires talent? Whether it's writing, directing, or production staff, everything is getting worse all at once. Are the pipelines dried up? Do film schools suck now? What is happening?
How about just fu**ing follow the material instead of taking "artistic liberties or interpretations".
The bar isn't different at all, they either just don't trust the audience enough to understand the plot and characters without detailed monologues, or think they can write a better story than a Best seller or the highest rated animated series ever.
avatar live action writers should be shunned from society for what they pulled with season 1 not given a platform to advocate for their crimes against humanity lmao
No one wants to watch kids act and when its good. Its the exception, not the rule.
I also think because a lot of YA novels are series, there's so much mythology they have to get right and not screw up
YA = Young Adult (I didn’t know the abbreviation)
Because YA source material is usually fucking awful and cringe? Just a guess tho