(Hated)changing somenthing to be more "progressive" ends up being a bad thing

[u/Morr4Seiya]

Now to be clear,i am not one of these "anti-woke" losers that complain some people exist,and i am also not the type to complain about changing somenthing in a new version or adaptation,however there are cases where it did ended up being a bad idea.

-In the anime of Cowboy Bebop there is the character Gren,despite being short lived the character is very memorable specially thanks to his tragic story.Basically his story was that he was a soldier from the titan war who was a great friend with Vicious(the main bad guy)after the war he was emprisioned thanks to Vicious who testified against him and he was forced to take a experimental drug that caused him hormonal problems,giving him a feminine appearence and even breasts.

In the Netflix live action,for some reasons they decided Gren was going to be non-binary,which wouldn't be a problem(some people believe he was gay in the anime)if it wasn't for the fact that they also removed all the nuances and complexities that made the character memorable and interesting,instead of a tragic war veteran that was betrayed and had his body changed against his will,Gren is just kinda there.

-The original Rugrats cartoon had the couple Betty and Howard,Betty was a big and masculine woman while Howard was a smaller and nervous man,it was a genuine interesting relationship that stood out from the other couples who were the standard straight couple.

In the new series however they replaced Howard with a woman named Trish,two things,first off why?What was the problem with having a woman being the stronger in a straight relationship?Second why does Hollywood seem to think that every tomboy or masculine woman is a lesbian?

Overall not the worst thing but it is jarring that they had a gender reverse roled that was progressive and decided that wasn't enough.

-Oh man,this one pisses me off the most so i am gonna have to break it down

So back in the late 80s and 90s there was this anime called Saint Seiya also knows as Knights of the zodiac,it tells the story of knights who fight for the Goddess Athena to protect earth,being divided in the golden,silver and bronze knights,the anime was a huge hit in latin america and Europe and while it floped in the US it still has a loyal fanbase.

Being a fan myself i can't recommend it enough,now granted the story does have a fair share of flaws,and that's because the author was honestly just making stuff up as he went along(also a lot of side characters are poorly used or even forgotten about)still it is a great story you should check out

But then a couple of years back Netflix got the rights and decided to a 3D reboot,in this reboot they decided to make the story more "american" to try to bring more american viewers,now i could go on and on a big rant about how that was a bad idea and the execution was so terrible that it made me want to strangle someone but this post is about one specific change.

So Saint Seiya has five main characters,those are Pegasus Seiya,Dragon Shiryu,Cygnus Hyoga,Phoenix Ikki and finally Andromeda Shun.

While the other four characters were the standard masculine and brute male characters who were always ready to throw punches,Shun was smaller,more sensitive and even feminine looking,a pacifist who didn't liked fighting,but don't mistake that for weakness because Shun was loyal to his friends and was extremely powerful.

Then Netflix decided to change Shun into a girl named Shaun.

So wait,you have a male character who goes against every male stereotype and you turn him into just another generic female character?

When asked about it,the showrunner Eugene Son said he made that change because there was no girl in the group and having a all boys group wouldn't be acceptable nowadays

First off that's not true because Athena was also part of the main cast,yeah she wasn't the fighting type but she still helped quite a lot in the story even saving the knights on several occasions,second if you wanted to add a girl to the main group why not use Marin or Shaina?Hell,if you were going to change the story anyway why not turn Seiya sister into a knight?

Thankfully this monstrosity was cancelled(so much for trying to bring more fans)

[u/audiodudedmc]

I blame superiority complex, I think hollywood script writers think they are better than people who write video game scripts, even when said video game stories are more beloved and successful than anything that they have done in their entire careers.

[u/MiseryGyro → u/audiodudedmc]

Nah I will defend writers. When you do an adaptation you do have to make it your own thing. You cannot just recreate what happened before. It would bore people already familiar with the material.

Adi Shankar just sucks and his shows suck

[u/amaROenuZ → u/MiseryGyro]

Nah I will defend writers. When you do an adaptation you do have to make it your own thing. You cannot just recreate what happened before. It would bore people already familiar with the material.

I disagree strenuously. Some of the best films ever made are faithful, by the numbers adaptations of the source material. Lord of the Rings, the Godfather, the Wizard of Oz, the Princess Bride, No Country for Old Men, the Shining, Silence of the Lambs, they're all good precisely because they refrained from trying to "make it your own thing", and instead preserved the plots, themes, and settings that people came to the theatre to see. Your job when adapting a book, a game, a play, a comic book, is to make the adjustments needed to translate mediums, not to use the original work as a costume for the story you pitched and got shot down on.

[u/MiseryGyro → u/amaROenuZ]

I'm assuming you mean Jackson's Lord of the Rings films? Because those famously cut a lot from the books and changed the character arc of Aragorn.

Book Frodo is 50 when he leaves the Shire.

You are dead wrong about your very first example. And a number of your examples. They all famously divert from the books in some way. Except for No Country for Old Men. Edit: McCarthy wrote the script for No Country first then wrote it as a book so it would get made I believe

Stephen King famously hates the Shining film because Jack Torrance is his negative self insert. And in the novel Jack is given a small redemption at the end.

[u/HarrisonTheBarbarian → u/MiseryGyro]

I'm assuming you mean Jackson's Lord of the Rings films? Because those famously cut a lot from the books. Book Frodo is 50 when he leaves the Shire.

Hence the "adjust for the medium". Why waste time in an already massive movie trilogy when you can cut to the chase. Quite frankly, it's a small change and certainly doesn't "do it's own thing".

And the movie Trilogy famously has a lot of content CUT from the final cuts played in theater. Everytime there's a new one we learn that there's apparently even more cut scenes.

[u/MiseryGyro → u/HarrisonTheBarbarian]

Jackson's films fundamentally change Aragorn as a character. They needed to give the trilogy a character in the B plot that goes through a hero's journey.

Elrond is changed to be antagonistic to Aragorn in that story. In the books he loves him.

If I was to explain all the work Peter Jackson did to "adjust to the medium" I would be here all day.

And that work is my point. It was a substantial task to translate these books to film and it required creative decisions from Jackson. And writing from him and Fran Walsh when they veered from Tolkien.