When an organism adapts to a new environment, it’s about making changes that better allow it to survive and thrive. With media, that’s probably the goal (even if unstated), but it doesn’t always work out very well.
(Case in point, this previous post.)
The most visible adaptations (though this may be the availability heuristic talking) are making movies, or tv-shows, out of books, comics, or video games. I’m sure we can all think of examples of this being a hit-or-miss affair.
It’s been said that there are two reasons adaptations fail: Not enough respect for the source material (i.e. too many changes, so existing fans don’t recognise it, so losing any value from having a known property); and Too much respect for the source material (e.g. including every little detail from the book, making the movie long, slow, and boring). While there’s some truth to this, I think this is more indicative of the two main approaches to adaptation, either of which can go wrong for a more fundamental reason; I’ll go over an example of each later to show what I mean.
My thesis is this: adaptation is essentially translation, and requires the same combination of skills. Besides having a good understanding of story-telling in general, the adaptor must be fluent in both the source language (e.g. novels), and the destination language (e.g. cinema). They have to be able to recognise the function of the different components of the story, and be able to replicate that function using (potentially very different) components.
For example, a scene in a novel of two people talking over dinner can be put in a film fairly directly, using the same pieces of dialogue. But how will the shots be framed? How will colour, lighting, set dressing, music, etc. create the desired atmosphere? What is the desired atmosphere, and why is it that way? What are the characters thinking/feeling, and how are the actors going to convey that?
What got me onto this train of thought was a video about Netflix’s “The Witcher“ (adapted from the short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski), that explained why the series was a bad adaptation. I was slightly surprised, as I’d thought the series was fairly well received (though it turns out to be an instance of “loved-by-general-audiences1, meh’ed-by-critics”).
“The Witcher” is an example of the “faithful” approach to adaptation, while also showing an awareness of the need to structure a story differently in a different medium. Each episode is based on a short story from the books, but as explained in the video, had to be ruthlessly trimmed to fit into the runtime. A short story generally seems to translate well to feature-length (i.e. 90–120 min), and here (given the series was following the storylines of three characters at once) it was often being crammed into 20–30 min. But that’s a fairly common problem: there are likely going to be cuts, the issue is what gets cut.
Again as per the video, some of the episodes fall short at story-telling. I didn’t really notice this while watching the series – I had an overall feeling that there was more to them, and I was motivated to read the books2, but this feeling was not just from them leaving out nuances and details of the world, but also omitting important connecting plot details.
Spoilers for Episode 1: “The End’s Beginning”/short story “The Lesser Evil”.
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In the first episode, Geralt (the eponymous Witcher) gets caught up in a vendetta between a bandit princess and a wizard. The theme of the story is the fallacy of choosing a lesser evil – both sides try to persuade Geralt to help them kill the other, and ultimately he fights and kills the bandit princess and her gang, but is labelled a butcher and run out of town for his trouble.
A lot of the detail of the conflict between the bandits and the wizard is left out. Mostly this isn’t an issue, but it means viewers don’t understand why Geralt suddenly rushes off to fight them then and there: the bandits had planned to attack on market day, and to use the townsfolk as hostages, killing them until the wizard came out of his tower. After the fight, it is revealed the wizard didn’t care what happened to the town (he was quite happy in his unassailable tower thank-you-very-much), so the bandits were going to give up and leave. Hence, Geralt chose a “lesser evil” (killing the bandits), when it would have been better had he done nothing.
Ironically, Geralt espouses this viewpoint (if both choices are evil, it’s better to do neither) earlier in the story/episode, and the way it’s shot makes it out as a Significant Moment™. But I remember it feeling … off … while watching. The problem is, it’s only significant in hindsight. It’s the lesson that Geralt starts out knowing conceptually, but by the end knows through bitter experience.
End spoilers
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Taking the other approach to adaptation is BBC America’s “The Watch” (from the books by Terry Pratchett); originally – when first greenlit by the author – intended to be a police procedural set on the Discworld. It seems since then to have gone through several years of development purgatory, being tweaked by each successive team that it got handed to, before finally emerging as a pale imitation of what might have been.
This form of adaptation aims to capture not the detail of the original story, but instead its mood and themes. Similar to, for example, making a Batman movie not based on any particular comic storyline, but still true to the character(s) and the world.
Depending on the source material, this approach can be easier or harder, depending on whether the original is known for its plot or its characters. Previous Discworld adaptations (e.g. “Hogfather”, “Going Postal”) were based on specific stories, whereas this would be taking a group of characters (Sam Vimes and the rest of the Night Watch) that appeared in multiple books, and showing some of their day-to-day adventures in between the existing stories. This meant that, in order to not alienate fans of the original3, it had to be true to the characters and the “feel” of the source.
Terry Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna says it better than I could:
Look, I think it's fairly obvious that @TheWatch shares no DNA with my father's Watch. This is neither criticism nor support. It is what it is.
@TheWatch will succeed or fail on its own merits. But watching the recent talk around the show, I feel I should point out that there are many fine actors & crew involved who’ve worked hard on this. If you don’t like what you’ve seen, then please don’t take it out on them.
That is not to say don’t be critical or don’t talk about what you do or don’t like in what you’ve seen. But targeting the accounts of individual actors is neither appropriate nor fair.
— Rhianna Pratchett 💙 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@rhipratchett) October, 2020
From my perspective (as a longtime Discworld fan), the similar names are somewhat distracting, but I can accept the series under the perspective of this being an Alternate Universe (the concept of alternate timelines/dimensions/etc. even comes up in the show, so it’s not that hard a stretch). However, it still feels like a tragic case of what might have been. Characters are given different races/genders (diversity and representation is great), but for the most part, not much is done with those characters. For example, C.M.O.T. Dibbler becomes a woman in a wheelchair, but the character otherwise comes across as just a generic wannabee crime-boss, rather than an ethically-flexible entrepreneur whose main skill is spotting a gap in the market. Again, it feels like a failing of story-telling missing the part that made the original work: it would be interesting and funny to see Throat become the head of the Thieves’ Guild, because he’s a known character. We’ve already seen examples of his (usually disasterous) schemes from previous books, and half the fun is the anticipation of “what’s going to go wrong this time?”
All that being said, I still feel both series are worth checking out if the premises appeal to you. “The Witcher” is apparently aiming to continue the storyline of the books (now that the first season has set-up a lot of things), and hopefully will be able to translate better. And “The Watch” (though unlikely to be more than one season) has some great moments, and has been lauded for its portrayal of a non-binary character, but I would stress that you need to be either unfamiliar with the Discworld, or are able to accept it as an alternate take on the characters/world.
1 I wonder how much of the favourable reaction is due to Henry Cavill in the bath?
2 It seems like wanting to experience the original source material should always be considered a positive outcome of an adaptation, though probably more as a bonus than the primary goal. The adaptation still needs to succeed on it’s own.
3 By this, I don’t mean to indicate that one should focus on keeping fans of the source material “happy” (an often impossibly contradictory requirement), just that if people familiar with the original look at your adaptation and react with “this isn’t X”, then you’ve gone wrong somewhere.
Thought Attempts 