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Sliding Scale of Adaptation Modification - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Apr 23 2012

When creating an adaptation of a story already well-known in another medium, those making it are often faced with a crippling dilemma. How true can we stay to the source material without risking a financial or critical bomb? It can be a very hard call for a director. On the one hand, if the changes are done poorly or without rhyme or reason, fans will complain that They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, and he may find himself a victim of the fandom's ire from then on. On the other hand, not changing a thing can result in either a very poorly-made adaptation or one that relies so heavily on the source material that people unfamiliar with the work will be completely lost.

The scale runs something like this:

  • Identical Adaptation: An adaptation in which next to nothing is changed.
  • Near-Identical Adaptation: An adaptation that changes the material just enough to gain a specific rating or be of reasonable length. Sometimes re-released with a Director's Cut.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: Probably the ideal rating in most cases. An adaptation that manages to capture the spirit of the original work, while at the same time, embracing the new medium. These are often big hits.
  • Recognizable Adaptation: Contains many deviations, but still bears enough resemblance to its source material that it can be realized as an adaptation. May involve a Setting Update.
  • In Name Only: Shares only the name and possibly the main characters. It likely could have stood on its own as an original work otherwise.

The scale, however, is not set in stone, and often times there is overlap. Also, Tropes Are Tools as any adaptation in any of these categories can become a great success. However, the further an adaptation falls from the center, the less likely that is.

This trope is usually applied to movie adaptations — The Film of the Book especially — although it can be applied to adaptations from movies as well, since other formats (books, comics, television series, video games) have room for more material. See also The Problem with Licensed Games for the video game equivalent.

Examples:

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Level 5: Identical 

Level 4: Near-Identical 

  • 300, which like Sin City above tries even to look like the comics.
  • 1776: The film adaptation is nearly identical except for Richard Henry Lee mounting a horse during his song and the removal of "Cool, Considerate Men" due to literal Presidential levels of Executive Meddling. Rises to Identical on the DVD release, which restores the cut number.
  • Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017) is sometimes seen as a Tropes Are Not Good example, with some arguing that it's too similar to the original, except for some minor changes that don't affect anything even if they should.
  • The Blue Bird (1976 film)
  • Brokeback Mountain
  • The Butter Battle Book (the Ralph Bakshi animated adaptation): Almost Identical. It follows the art style, story and tone of the book to the letter, but also sandwiches in some new stuff.
  • The Cat in the Hat (1971)
  • The Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z anime series follow the manga pretty closely, but it's broken up with a lot of Filler that wasn't in the manga. Also gives Goku Adaptational Heroism compared to the manga.
  • Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas : Jim Henson stuck very closely to the original book, with the only real change being Adaptational Villainy to the River Bottom Band, making them a bunch of troublemaking delinquints and bullies.
  • Fences had a screenplay written by the original playwright, and all that really was changed was the location of a few scenes (the play took place entirely in a backyard).
  • Fiddler on the Roof cuts a few musical numbers, but is otherwise identical.
  • Fight Club most drastically changes the ending from the book, which the author actually preferred to his own. There are also some minor changes to dialogue and the order in which events are depicted. note 
  • The Fly (1958)'s main changes to the short story are giving it a Bittersweet Ending rather than the original short story's Downer Ending and fleshing out a few secondary characters.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which was explicitly made to be this in contrast to the 2003 anime adaptation, which deviated from the source material in the second half due to overtaking the manga. Brotherhood is even criticized by some fans for speeding through material that the first show had already depicted in order to get to the un-adapted content faster.
  • Season 1 of Game of Thrones tightly adapts nearly all of the major and minor events of the first novel with only mostly small changes to fit time, budget, and clarity constraints of the new medium, with some time left over for some Adaptation Expansion. The series strays lower down the scale as it progresses, the books get more convoluted, and eventually stop existing.
  • The Godfather
  • The first two Harry Potter films, Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, are the most faithful adaptations of the series, only trimming out some of the less important details and other relatively minor changes. In part it was because they were adapting from the two shortest novels and could comfortably fit most of it into a film.
  • Animal Farm: Both the 1954 and 1999 film adaptations stick fairly loyal to the original book besides some minor character changes or omissions. The Downer Ending of the original book however is expanded in both takes to have the pigs get their comeuppance, likely to mirror the gradual downfall of the Soviet Union they were based on after the book was written.
  • The Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit cuts out a handful of characters and scenes, though these cuts don't affect the plot too much, generally ups the pace of the adventure by slimming down scenes, and adds a couple new songs. Aside from that, it's startlingly close, especially when one considers its lean runtime.
  • Chuck Jones' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; there's some Adaptation Expansion like a longer sleigh ride sequence and several songs, but the plot is nigh-identical, as is most of the narration and (minimal) dialogue.
  • Chuck Jones' version of Horton Hears a Who!. The only real difference from the book is that the mayor is downgraded to a science professor named Dr. Hoovey and a subplot is added involving the townspeople ridiculing his claims about there being life beyond Whoville and being an outcast as a result.
  • Hogfather
  • Holes: Due to the book and film having the same writer, there's only a handful of differences between the two, a lot of which is just streamlining existing scenes or using new scenes to replace exposition. (It does help that the book isn't very long.)
  • The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and both The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and Part 2
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's anime adaptation is extremely faithful, to the point that stills from the series are often near-identical to the original manga panels, but it does cut some minor scenes while adding a few of its own. The fourth season also swaps around the order of certain chapters in order to improve the pacing, but this doesn't really change the overarching plot.
  • K-On! just made Adaptation Expansions to the Story Arc of protagonists' senior year, but otherwise the overall trajectory of the story remains untouched.
  • Kick-Ass
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • Kim's Convenience's first season is Near-Identical, with some scenes being Identical. It follows the plot of the play almost beat for beat while introducing all-new characters and showing several scenes outside the convenience store, allowing for the expanded running time from a one-act play into a 13-episode sitcom.
  • Life of Pi
  • The Little Prince (1974 film musical)
  • The Lord of the Rings (Ralph Bakshi's adaptation) is a very faithful adaptation of the source material, with nearly all the differences being the result of cutting things out of the existing story and most of the dialogue being completely unchanged. That said, the process of cutting things down to fit a two-hour runtime means that so much is missing (such as segments of conversation) that it's rather difficult to follow unless you know the books.
  • The Martian
  • The Maze Runner
  • My Hero Academia: The scenes in the anime are basically identical to the original manga except for some additional background details and character interaction differences, with the obvious difference being the amount of Filler episodes in the series. The most predominant difference is that Kyoka Jiro in particular is generally depicted in a worse light.
  • National Lampoon's Vacation changes some names and gives the story a mostly-happy ending.
  • Peter Pan (1953): Although very little of the original dialogue is the same, the storyline is quite faithful to Barrie's stageplay.
  • The Princess Bride
  • Sailor Moon Crystal
  • The Shawshank Redemption: As an adaptation of a shorter work, it had to add parts in, but otherwise adheres almost verbatim to what is in the book.
  • The Silence of the Lambs
  • Swan Lake (1981) is by far the most faithful movie adaptation of Swan Lake, with the only real changes being the removal of the swan maidens and the addition of two talking squirrel sidekicks. Siegfried's name remains Siegfried (the other movie adaptations respectively changed it to Derek and Daniel), Odette was cursed to be a swan by Rothbart prior to the story, and Rothbart turns into an owl instead of a bat-like creature or vulture.
  • Thunderball, as the original book was even an expansion of a proposed television movie\episode.
  • The 2020 animated Toldi mini series, which is basically the original poem's text being read verbatim and visualized. Some verses are only animated but not read out, a few non-narrated scenes are added for pacing and atmospheric reasons, and slight corrections are made for the benefit of the story and historical accuracy. Even all of the poem's metaphors are made literal, adding a thick surreal layer to the otherwise mostly grounded story.
  • Tower of God first season anime: Some details of scenes changed, some elements of the story expanded and others given less space, but otherwise amounts to pretty much the same thing with the same story.
  • Vampire Academy is mostly loyal to the first novel of the Vampire Academy series. The differences are generally minor. Three characters receive name changes, one character is younger and more attractive than her book counterpart, three characters are of different age than their book counterparts, two characters who survive the original novel are killed in the film, Natalie Dashkov kills a different person than the one she killed in the novel (Ray instead of Mr. Nagy), Lissa does not practice Self-Harm, and some minor book characters do not appear at all in the films. The most obvious change comes from the style of clothes the characters wear. In the books, the students of the Academy wear regular street clothes. It is a sore spot for Rose that she can't afford decent clothing, at one point wearing clothes she received from the Salvation Army. In the films, both Moroi and dhampir students wear school uniforms. Rose wears a relatively stylish uniform.
  • Variable Geo: The anime adaptation of Advanced V.G. is mostly faithful to the original source material, despite making several major changes, such as Miranda Jahana already being deadnote . Likewise, the OVA casts Satomi as its deuteragonistnote  by making her the target of the Jahana Group, instead of Yuka.
  • Watchmen. The most notable change is the squid being replaced by a city-disintegrating explosion.
  • When the Wind Blows: Aside from remaining true to the text, there are a few lines omitted from the comic. One, in particular, being Jim's passage about the British Empire rising from the aftermath of the war. He also never says "stupid bitch" in the comic, and instead uses the words "stupid fool" (though Hilda still berates him for it) just before they duck and cover. The intro, attack and ending sequences are also more drawn out, and there are a few imagine-spots added in. Without these changes, it goes up to Identical.
  • The Falcon's Malteser: the screenplay for the film adaptation, Just Ask for Diamond, was written by the book's author Anthony Horowitz, and simplified one action sequence (Nick's escape from a flat he's being held prisoner in) and dropped another (Nick goes back to the scene of the crime and is attacked by the Big Bad) altogether, both for logistical reasons. Apart from that, the two versions are near-identical, and there are long stretches of dialogue in the film that are word-for-word the same as the book.
  • The Last of Us (2023): The story beats are largely similar to the game, but the series provides more worldbuilding, such as on the Cordyceps outbreak. There's less action overall, with many episodes (especially Episode 3) having more emphasis on character interactions and while Joel and Ellie kill hundreds of enemies over the course of the game, their body count is a more reasonable level- no more than a few dozen- in the series.

Level 3: Pragmatic Adaptation 

  • 101 Dalmatians
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey: Very unusually, both the book and its film version were written in tandem by their respective authors.
  • AKIRA; though the fact the author\director was still finishing the manga also contributed for the story changes.
  • Alita: Battle Angel
  • Annie (both the 1982 and 1999 versions)
  • Being There
  • Black Butler: Season 1 (closer to Recognizable for the anime-original ending, but it's still very close in tone and theme to the manga and the previous 3/4 of the anime are very faithful to the manga).
  • Bokurano: The anime adaptation hits most of the same story beats as the original manga, but while the ending is largely similar, the story diverges from the manga after Maki's battle. The show also has more of an ensemble cast, unlike the manga, which had a focus on the characters or each arc.
  • Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is in essentials an adaptation of the first four books, but thrown into a blender first, so the timeline of events is presented very differently, and a few characters/situations differ from the books.
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It would have scored a similar adaptation if their massively changed Willy Wonka didn't impact the story so greatly.
  • The Walden Media adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia are somewhere around here, with the level of accuracy varying from Near-Identical to Pragmatic
  • The Colour of Magic
  • Coraline, with Neil Gaiman's support.
  • Death Note: The main story beats are the same, but some material is cut out, especially the post Time Skip arc. The ending is mostly the same, save for a character who Dies Differently in Adaptation, and the epilogue is removed.
  • The first Divergent film is compressed from the book in some places and omits certain supporting characters, but it is otherwise a fairly faithful adaptation. The second film, Insurgent, is Recognizable, as it's even more compressed from its source novel and has some notable deviations in the storyline (such as the five-sided box with the simulation trials, which was not in the original novel). However, it otherwise follows some of the same general plot beats, and is still a more faithful adaptation than the third film, Allegiant.
  • Ender's Game
  • The Expanse
  • Fantastic Mr. Fox: Most of the incidents from the original novel remain (though not all in the same order), but the heavy amount of Adaptation Expansion alters the nature of the film to a fair degree.
  • Season 2-4 of Game of Thrones. While 10 episodes was ideal for closely adapting the first novel, the greater scope of later novels and an increase in Adaptation Expansion required more distillation to fit the same time constraints while still mostly keeping the spirit of the original.
  • Ghost in the Shell (2017)
  • The Giver
  • The Godfather Part II
  • Going Postal is somewhere between Pragmatic and Recognizable.
  • Goldfinger
  • Green Eggs and Ham (2019): Adds more/expands on existing characters and tells an original storyline, but remembers the book's spirit and moral.
  • Hangman's Curse: The story is the same but the background is dramatically different.
  • The Harry Potter films from the third installment, Prisoner of Azkaban, and onward. In part because the novels were getting much longer, leading to more details being removed, and sometimes entire characters and subplots. However, the films also began to make other changes of their own, while occasionally expanding on certain aspects from the books, although by and large they were still faithful to the overall storyline. Deathly Hallows is about a 3.5; being spread across two films, they cover the final novel more thoroughly and faithfully than the previous films, while still condensing certain details and taking creative liberties here and there.
  • The Hobbit (Peter Jackson's adaptations): Similar to the Fantastic Mr. Fox example in that the major events and characters of the original novel are kept intact, but the films also feature a lot of Adaptation Expansion, including adding characters not part of the novel's narrative. Some of it is taken from The Lord of the Rings' appendices, while some of it is original content.
  • House of the Dragon, based on Fire & Blood. While an identical adaptation would probably have been impossible due to the nature of the original work (an in-universe history text that summarizes the events rather than showing them through POV), it includes close adaptations of tons of the original material, while simultaneously including enough changes (such as the restructured timeline) to prevent it from being near-identical.
  • The first Jurassic Park movie
  • Koi Kaze: The anime is clearly recognizable as the same story and characters, but some events are cut out or happen in a different order to better fit the constraints of a 13-episode series. Notably, the controversial themes of the story are not softened in any way—if anything, it's more serious by taking out some of the more lighthearted moments.
  • The Last Unicorn, adapted by the original author.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992) is solidly Pragmatic. The story hews close to the plot of the video game, with a few surprises:
    • Agahnim and Ganon are explicitly shown to be different beings, communicating between worlds in one scene. (The Agahnim in Ganon's Castle, however, is just a glamour used by Ganon himself.)
    • Link cannot travel freely between worlds and is trapped in the Dark World once Agahnim transports him there. He maintains his form in the Dark World by controlling his emotions, whereas in the game the Moon Pearl is needed to keep human form.
    • The events of the Dark World are heavily abridged, and Link only saves two maidens before finding Zelda; though Link visits Misery Mire and the Ice Palace, no maidens are imprisoned there.
    • The Wizzrobe impersonating Zelda is an obvious riff on Blind the Thief. Rather than revert to his true form in sunlight, he waits for Link to sidle up before doing a creepy Face-Revealing Turn.
    • The collection of items vital to the game's completion are either changed (the "Bird") or excised entirely, with only the Book of Mudora appearing in the same capacity.
    • Interestingly, the Eastern Temple more resembles the game's Great Pyramid. In exchange, Ganon's lair has been modified into an alien-looking orb.
  • The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson's adaptations)
  • Macross: Do You Remember Love?, for the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
  • Misery: The excerpts from the new Misery novel Paul is writing are dropped and Annie's violence is toned down.
  • Mr. Mercedes: The first season of the show is a fairly faithful adaptation of the Stephen King novel (and more so than subsequent seasons adapted the rest of the trilogy). Differences include the setting of the climactic showdown, the introduction of a Canon Foreigner and the protagonist and antagonist talking via video conference (which works better on TV).
  • The first NeverEnding Story film
  • Orphan Black: 7 Genes is a somewhat Lighter and Softer Japanese remake of the Canadian series of the same name. But other than a few character traits and fates as well as plot points from the original being reworked, the overall trajectory of story remains the same.
  • Ouran High School Host Club
  • Requiem for a Dream
  • The Novelization of Revenge of the Sith
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) (Post-Super Genesis Wave)
  • Sonic Rebound (external link) starts out as Identical, really trying its hardest to very faithfully retell the Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) in animated format, up to replicating the same scenes exactly and emulating the original artist's art style. It then goes down to Pragmatic with the crossover with the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) universe, which was never anywhere in the original comic.
  • Sonic X (though the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2-based arcs can go up to Near-Identical)
  • Space Battleship Yamato, due to character changes
  • Star Trek (2009) brings back the tone of Star Trek: The Original Series at many points while the Actionization nearly makes it a close to the show. However, the Alternate Timeline setting allows it to establish its own canon and justifies the drastically updated effects for modern audiences.
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  • The Walking Dead has the same overall plot as it’s comic counterpart, however, some plot lines have been expanded on or outright added to the show while others may have been condensed or removed. As for the characters, some of them have lived in the show where they died in the comics and vise versa and others have been killed earlier or later in the show. Also, some of the characters in the show may take traits from those in the comics. In addition, there have been several Canon Foreigners in the show and a few that have been Adapted Out or at least debuted at a different time than they did in the comics.
  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
  • The World God Only Knows anime
  • The first two episodes of the live-action drama based on Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches. Also the anime which follows the overall plot of the first 90 chapters of the manga fairly closely, but is forced to have a ridiculously fast pacing due to compressing 90 chapters in only 12 episodes; as such, many scenes are skipped or rushed through.

Level 2: Recognizable Adaptation 

(aka Adaptation Inspiration)

Level 1: In Name Only 

  • Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass
  • Altered States
  • Artemis Fowl
  • Barbie:
    • Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper has a similar title and the same premise as The Prince and the Pauper, being about a royal and a commoner who are Identical Strangers and live in each other's roles for a while. The similarities end there, with the story being an entirely original yarn where the titular pauper, Erika, has to do an Emergency Impersonation of the titular princess, Anneliese, after she's kidnapped on the orders of an Evil Chancellor.
    • Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses maintains the concept of twelve princesses sneaking out to dance at night in a magical land, but changes everything else. The protagonist is one of the princesses (here named Genevieve), rather than the soldier of the original tale, and the movie has a Canon Foreigner villain who seeks to take over the princesses' kingdom.
    • Barbie in A Christmas Carol features the same theme as the original story (a Scrooge-like character is visited by three ghosts around Christmas and must reform), which it uses as a jumping-off point for an original plot. Scrooge's counterpart is a famous Victorian opera singer named Eden Starling, whose motivations and backstory are completely different.
  • Black Butler II: The entire season is anime-original, having no basis in the manga.
  • Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040
  • A Bug's Life from The Ant and the Grasshopper
  • Carnosaur
  • Catwoman (2004), outside of sharing an origin that was invented for Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in Batman Returns which was already quite different the comics, this version of Catwoman doesn't even make the lead Selina Kyle.
  • Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)
  • Clueless from Emma
  • The third film in The Divergent Series, Allegiant, only retains the broad premise of the novel as well as most of the major characters. The rest of the story deviates quite heavily, with several elements added to the film that were not in the novel, including a completely changed climax and a cliffhanger ending.note 
  • Some of the more extreme departures from the source material in the Disney Animated Canon:
    • The Fox and the Hound: Names are changed, characters are changed, and the overall flow of the plot is very different. The big one is that in the book, the titular fox and hound have no friendly relationship and the resolution sees both of them die, while in the Disney version, the entire plot is dedicated to the fact that they're childhood friends driven apart in adulthood and the ending is more of a Bittersweet Ending where they stay apart but reach an understanding.
    • Frozen: It takes place somewhere in Scandinavia, there's a character in it who can be described as a "snow queen" where a goal of the story is to reach her castle, and they mention a "frozen heart" in a few scenes. That's about it. Earlier drafts were closer, such as making the snow queen character a proper villain, but over time they drifted in the direction of making her a non-malicious victim of her own Power Incontinence.
    • Hercules (1997) is either on the low end of Recognizable or the high end of In Name Only—it features enough references to Greek mythology and the original story as a whole that it's clear the creators did indeed do their homework, but it's equally clear that they threw most of it out afterward. It doesn't really adapt any Hercules myth (though the climax is vaguely reminiscent of the Gigantomachy), and ends up being more a blend of the plots of Superman: The Movie and Rocky, taking place in a Purely Aesthetic Era version of ancient Greece. Hercules is only similar to his mythical self in that he's Zeus's son and he's very strong and heroic, the Twelve Labors, the most famous myth, is largely glossed over in a single montage, and the Greek pantheon is Hijacked by Jesus, with Hades (a marginal and largely benevolent character in the original myth) being bumped up to main antagonist status, displacing Hera.
    • The Jungle Book: Walt Disney actually requested that the creative team not research the original story, as he felt it wasn't kid-friendly. The only things they have in common are the premise of a wild boy in India and a few character names.
    • The Princess and the Frog: The classic story has a lot of versions, but the film is an original plot that only takes that single concept of a prince turned into a frog who wants a girl to help turn him back. Even the most basic telling usually takes place in an ambiguous Fairy Tale setting rather than early-1900s New Orleans, and has a female lead who's an actual born-into-royalty princess as opposed to a commoner who's mistaken for one.
    • Tangled: It takes the basic concept of a girl named Rapunzel with long hair who lives in a tower owned by a sorceress and meets an outsider she romances. Everything else is original to the film, including the reason for her being in the tower, the character of the outsider (who goes from a classical prince to a wanted criminal), and the entire plot outside of the romance arc and setup.
  • Edge of Tomorrow, adapted from the light novel All You Need Is Kill
  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The film is this relative to the book that it's inspired by. While the book is reference material about the titular fantastic beasts, the movie is a narrative about that reference book's author and an adventure he had before completing his book.
  • The Fly (1986) compared to the short story and previous film adaptation thereof (which was Recognizable). The basic premise of a scientist's Teleporter Accident is there, but that's about all. The original Charles Edward Pogue draft of this screenplay was similar, but David Cronenberg's rewrite nigh-obliterated that. (Both scripts, plus the original short story, can be read on the Collector's Edition/Blu-Ray releases.)
  • Gulliver's Travels (the 1939 animated adaptation by Fleischer Studios)
  • Godzilla (1998); the director stated outright it was intended to be In Name Only.
  • While the film version of Hair keeps most of the songs and the character names from the stage version, the plot is completely rewritten.
  • The Gene Dietch adaptation of The Hobbit. The broadest strokes of the plot are the same, as well as a handful of character names, and everything else is changed or cut. Much of it comes down to it being a severely Compressed Adaptation (it's about twelve minutes long), but even then, there are enough deviations that can't be credited to the runtime for it to end up here.
  • Jem and the Holograms (2015)
  • Jumper
  • The Lawnmower Man, so much that Stephen King took legal action to remove his association with the film
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
  • The Lizzie Bennet Diaries from Pride and Prejudice
  • Logan, as an adaptation of Old Man Logan. The only similarity it has with its source material is that it's story following an older Logan traveling through America, in a future where the other X-Men are dead. The plot beats, set pieces, supporting characters, villains, and reason for the journey are all completely different. Even the setting itself is so different (20 Minutes into the Future vs an apocalyptic wasteland ruled by supervillains) that one of the main similarities arguably doesn't count.
  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park
  • Meg 2: The Trench in contrast to the first movie in the series which was at least recognizable as an adaptation of the first book, this movie has virtually nothing to do with the book it's supposedly adapting. None of the major plotlines from the book are retained, and only the existence of a research station in the trench ties into the book. Even then then it's only a minor set piece that gets destroyed fairly early on in the film rather than the setting of one of the two main plotlines of the book.
  • The Mighty Thor: To Norse Mythology; the plot doesn't really utilize any myths and the canon foreigners outnumber the characters from the myths. Makes liberal use of Related in the Adaptation, Promoted to Love Interest, Unrelated in the Adaptation, Adaptational Backstory Change, and Adaptation Personality Change, among others. Depending on the Writer, Continuity Snarl, and crossovers have not helped.
  • Moonraker
  • The Neverending Story III Escape From Fantasia
  • The Nutcracker in 3D, to both the book and ballet
  • Prom Night (2008)
  • Most of the Resident Evil Film Series, though the rejected George A. Romero script treatment would have been a Pragmatic Adaptation
  • Rosario + Vampire: The second season is this, completely ignoring the manga to create anime-original content focused solely on fanservice. Many fans weren't pleased.
  • The Running Man
  • Scrabble (Scrabble Showdown edges closer to Recognizable)
  • The Shaggy Dog remake
  • Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
  • Sonic Underground: For starters, Sonic from the games (or any other adaptation) is not blood-related to royalty, doesn't have siblings, and doesn't fight against evil with The Power of Rock.
  • Enforced with The Spy Who Loved Me. Ian Fleming hated his original novel so much that he only sold the rights to the title, ensuring that the film that took the name would not be an adaptation of the book.
  • Starship Troopers
  • Stuart Little
  • The Super Mario Bros. (1993) movie and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
  • Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea
  • The Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films
  • The Universal and Hammer Horror takes on Dracula and Frankenstein (shading a bit into Recognizable for the Universal version of Dracula).
  • Teen Titans Go!: The original cartoon was already a pretty loose adaptation, and Go is a massively Denser and Wackier version. There's no Teen Titans run that bears even a passing resemblance to it.
  • Wanted
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Though it overlaps with Pragmatic Adaptation in some aspects.
  • Wicked
  • Wonder Woman is to Classical Mythology what The Mighty Thor is to the Norse myths. For one thing, the Amazons were descendants of Ares, not his enemies, and Diana is a Latin name, so finding it on a Greek character makes it Sadly Mythtaken.
  • World War Z: Max Brooks himself stated that the film adaptation had so little in common with his novel that he ironically was able to enjoy it since it didn't ruin any of his characters or stories, due to them never appearing.
  • Arrowverse: Most of the shows and their versions of many characters tend to bare little in common with the comics, and grow even further as time goes on. The shows mostly started off as an early-days/semi-prequel story, taking liberties to fit a 'CW formula', but as they go on the changes they made are focused on while the comic roots are pushed aside.
    • Arrow to Green Arrow: Is about a rich white guy named Oliver Queen who survived being shipwrecked on an island in the Chinese sea before returning home and using the survival skills he learnt to fight crime. That's about it. The show at least starts as almost Recognizable note , but decays into In Name Only as Oliver's Adaptation Personality Change settles and the few characters from the comics are pushed out in favour of Canon Foreigner types.
    • The Flash (2014) to The Flash: It's about a man named Barry Allen who gains Super-Speed after being hit by lightning in his lab and fights crime in a red suit. At first the show is a Recognizable, almost Pragmatic, adaptation of the The Flash (2011) era of the character (itself a Recognizable adaptation of the comics proceeding it), but it delves further down as it introduces characters from the The Flash (1987) era of comics, but each one is increasingly In Name Only. Each season is almost recognizably lifting from a Wally West storyline, but makes such heavy changes to the story and characters (such as Zoom, Jesse Quick, Savitar, and others), not to mention the fact they're re-written to work around Barry Allen instead of Wally West, while Wally himself is pushed out of the show without ever graduating out of the Kid Flash mantle, never mind the fact he was heavily retooled in the first place. The show similarly adds a 'team' around Barry, using Vibe and Killer Frost (and later, Elongated Man), but who (with the exception of Elongated Man) have no prior history working with the Flash and in the show have their personalities, backstories, and even their powers changed and altered. They also make Barry the foster brother of his love interest Iris West and created a completely different character as her father to act as a Parental Substitute to Barry.

Special Cases:

  • The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad: The Wind in the Willows segment is Recognizable, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment is Pragmatic.
  • The first Shrek film is somewhere between In Name Only and Pragmatic. The film borrows very few elements from the William Steig book save for Shrek himself and Donkey (who only appeared on one page), but a picture book does require some major Adaptation Expansion to make it viable for a feature length film.
  • Film adaptations of Les Misérables run the gamut from Near-Identical (1934, 1958, 1978) to Pragmatic (1982) to Recognizable (1998, 2012) to borderline In Name Only (1935, 1948, 1952).
  • Matilda is a Pragmatic Adaptation. Changing the setting from Britain to America leaves an impact on the film, and some scenes are added or shuffled around, but overall it's one of the most faithful adaptations of Dahl's works.
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe. While most people would agree it's usually a Pragmatic Adaptation, there are some movies that are Near-Identical (using a lot of elements from the comics as they were, e.g. the Super Soldier serum), with others being Recognizable (removing or heavily altering comic book elements, e.g. how Pym Particles work).
    • On the higher end of the scale, Thor: Ragnarok is a Near-Identical adaptation that maybe slips into a Pragmatic adaptation; it adapts several storyarcs from The Mighty Thor canon that delve into Ragnarok and takes ideas from each one while condensed into a single story, while also throwing in Planet Hulk and a reworked backstory to Hela. Tone-wise, however, it's the closest to a genuine 80's comic and lifts entire scenes and sequences verbatim from Walt Simonson's run, arguably the most iconic Thor run published. Several ideas it uses also have roots and basis in Norse mythology and/or the history behind themnote 
    • On the low-end of the scale, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a Recognizable adaptation that almost borders on In Name Only; it has Peter still as a young teen after Civil War (he was married and in his 20s when this happened in the comics), and he attends a charter school designed explicitly to nurture scientific minds when typically Peter attended a public school. He was bullied for his intelligence and had no friends in school originally, whereas here he's got several and is instead admired for his intelligence as he's a valued member of the school's academic team, while Flash Thompson, typically a popular jock archtype from an abusive household, is a spoiled rich kid academic, whose obnoxious behavior makes him the unpopular outcast. In the post-MCU Civil War world, Peter is a loyal sidekick to Iron Man and longs to join him in the Avengers, whereas in the comics Peter had cut ties with Tony out of disgust over what he did during the war as well as failure to protect his family. Vulture's backstory is similar to his comic counterpart (being a businessman screwed over by richer businessmen, in this case Tony Stark), but here he's upper-working class/lower-middle class who's more a leader than an inventor, whereas typically he was a well-off inventor and scientific genius but was too sociopathic to lead others.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World arcs downward as the film goes on, due to both runtime and the nature of its creation: it was greenlit somewhat early in the run of the graphic novels, and it was finished at a point before the release of the final installment. Volumes 1 and 2 get a Near-Identical bordering on Identical adaptation, with just about every major scene being kept and a lot of the dialogue being the same, Volumes 3-5 get what's more or less a Pragmatic adaptation, with characters and scenes getting squished down, removed or altered, and Volume 6 ends up as approximately a Recognizable adaptation, with the extreme broad strokes of the ending being the same (i.e. Scott fights Gideon in a nightclub, briefly dies, and ultimately wins and gets together with Ramona), but almost all the details differing significantly.
  • Adaptations of the Pokémon games fall all over the scale, though so far none have quite reached the extremes of In Name Only or Identical. Of the more widely-known adaptations:
    • The original anime is a Pragmatic Adaptation with heavy Recognizable leanings, with exactly how heavy depending on the circumstances; most of the basics of the world of the games are there and the show adapts parts of the plots of the games to at least some extent suiting its format (collecting badges to face the League, fighting the evil teams of each generation), but there's a lot of Adaptation Expansion and the fine details of it all can get a fair bit different from the games.
    • Pokémon Adventures is very much a Pragmatic Adaptation, but has shades of Near-Identical and Recognizable in its interpretation of certain aspects of the 'verse, certain characters, and certain plotlines (Recognizable for the latter two being more common early on.
    • Pokémon Origins is a blatantly Near-Identical adaptation (and deliberately designed as one) of the original pair of games. There are still several things preventing it from being an Identical adaptation, however, the most notable being the franchise debut of Mega Charizard X.
    • Zigzagged by Pokémon Detective Pikachu. Compared to the original Detective Pikachu game, it's at least Pragmatic with the same cast of characters and basic premise. However, the game is a rather obscure spin-off. When placed side-by-side with media like the main game series and the anime which the general audience would be far more familiar with, it's In Name Only, with the only point of commonality being that it has Pokémon in it and passing mention of places from the games and anime.
  • Hunter × Hunter has three separate anime adaptations, each one falling on a different part of the scale. The Jump Festa short film, produced shortly after the manga began, ranks as a Recognizable adaptation by adapting the introductory chapters more or less faithfully, but adding in battles against sea monsters that weren't in the original and are a tonal mismatch for the rest of the series. The 1999 anime is a straightforward Near-Identical adaptation, largely faithful to the manga's story, but adding in multiple elements of Filler that either expand on existing elements of the manga or introduce new situations to lengthen the story, and giving some slight changes to Killua and Kurapika's personalities and demeanor. The 2011 anime is a borderline Identical adaptation (though a couple moments in the first few arcs suffer mild Bowdlerization due to the move to a daytime timeslot), with the only major story deviation being Gon's backstory with Kite being kept a secret until the beginning of the Chimera Ant arc.
  • Power Rangers has varied in faithfulness to Super Sentai from season to season. They range from being as similar as Near-Identical (Wild Force, Samurai) to as different as In Name Only (In Space, RPM).
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): The first three episodes (The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window) are all Near-Identical, while the fourth episode The Miserable Mill (which is the only episode not to be written by the original author, Daniel Handler) is somewhere around Pragmatic or Recognizable The rest of the series is a solid Pragmatic Adaptation, with the changes present for the series carrying over across all the other parts of the story.
  • Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining is interesting in that it starts out as Near-Identical, but it gradually deviates further and further from the book until it becomes a Recognizable adaptation. It stands out more as a special case in book adaptations in that while generally considered a must watch horror film for how it does its themes of madness and isolation, the original book's author Stephen King has made it well known he considers the film a betrayal of his work in how it handles themes and characters.
    • The Nutty Professor remake has a similar process. The first half ranges roughly between Pragmatic and Near-Identical, and the second half becomes In Name Only, but becomes Near-Identical again at the climax.
  • The Disney Silly Symphonies shorts adapted Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling twice—the 1931 short is an In Name Only adaptation of the original story, while the 1939 short is a Near-Identical adaptation that sticks much closer to the source material.
  • Simon Birch, the film adaptation of A Prayer for Owen Meany, steadily shifts from Identical to In Name Only as the story progresses.
  • The Betty Boop cartoon Snow White (1933) starts off as Near-Identical, but drifts into In Name Only around the middle.
  • Dragon Ball Super and its manga is an odd case - Neither the anime nor the manga are adaptations of each other, but rather based on a plot outline provided by franchise creator Akira Toriyama. Since the plot outline in question is evidentally rather loose, the anime and the manga vary wildly in different aspects - major plot points can be completely different and anime-exclusive transformations are commonplace, but random throwaway jokes appear in both formats. In practice, they're ultimately both a Recognizable Adaptation of each other.
  • The Abridged Series are all pragmatic and altered to at least some degree, but how much this is the case can vary. Some of the more faithful ones (Dragon Ball Z Abridged, most notably) border on Near-Identical, most (such as Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series and Sword Art Online Abridged) lean towards Recognizable, and a few (Alternate Reality DBZ being one particularly glaring example) are In Name Only. However, reliance on the original footage means they can never really reach full In Name Only territory.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The first three books, radio show, TV version, and movie are pretty consistent — Recognizable or even In Name Only; even the dialogue sometimes matches. But the episodic bits are often shown in different order. The movie added some new material.
  • Son of the White Horse shifts between Near-Identical and Recognizable, but mostly lands in Pragmatic. Being based on an ever-changing folk story, it slavishly lifts certain elements, lines and scenes full-cloth from different versions of said tale, but alters their meaning, combines their characters, expands them with material taken from unrelated myths, and mixes in plenty of original content. The visuals and added symbolism veer closer to Recognizable.
  • Thomas & Friends started off as Near-Identical for its first two seasons, adapting The Railway Series stories near word-for-word besides some mild streamlining and certain stories being Out of Order. Seasons three and four took more liberties with the books, and also made some original stories, but still adapted a lot of events faithfully, keeping it roughly Pragmatic. Afterwards the series stopped adapting anymore stories directly and took more liberties with the material, bringing it all the way down to In Name Only. A handful of stories were adapted in Season 20 as well as the first stories getting a retelling in The Adventure Begins, which are largely all a Pragmatic adaptation with occasional liberties and restructuring.
  • Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 plays it safe by adapting only Volume 2, Section 5 of War and Peace, but that section is an Identical adaptation.
  • Pinchcliffe Grand Prix: The original 1975 movie is a Recognizable adaptation due to changing the personalities of most of the characters. The late movies lean more toward Pragmatic adaptations, being feature-length films based on a series of comedic newspaper pages, although some Adaptational Villainy is still in effect.

Patterns:

  • The older and more established the original work is, and the more existing film adaptations that have been done with it, the less "need" new adaptations will feel to stick closely to the original, and the more likely it is that they will take their own approaches. This is especially true if the work is in the Public Domain, and that's why works by people like William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens get so many Setting Updates and reinterpretations.
    • Conversely, if the vast majority of preexisting film adaptations fall low on the scale, some filmmakers will feel a greater need for a future adaptation to stick closely to the original; if the earlier loose adaptations causes Adaptation Displacement, this can both incentivize and deincentivize a more faithful later take, depending on how the filmmakers and studio executives respond to it. This can also occur if a work only had a single adaptation (or at least a single high-profile one), but it was relatively loose in approach and old enough to fall into legacy status (e.g. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory vs. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 34 years later).
  • Musicals and more recent plays that get film adaptations tend to be relatively faithfully adapted, other than for length. It helps that they're already adapted to a more similar medium (they have a script, they take into account the visual element in a way novels don't, etc.)
  • Anime fall into some predictable patterns:
    • Manga and novel adaptations that are of finished works tend to be between Pragmatic and Identical, unless they are very old and established works with previous adaptations, in which case they might fall lower on the scale.
    • Manga and novel adaptations of ongoing works vary based on what the original creator and the studio want them to do with it. If they just stop the story at a certain point (planning to animate more when there's more if the show does well enough), they're usually Identical or Near-Identical. If they stall for time using "filler arcs" (see: Naruto and One Piece), the presence of those fits them into Pragmatic Adaptation. Series that get anime-original endings vary based on how early the ending is established, varying from Pragmatic to Recognizable. depending on that.
    • Video game and Visual Novel adaptations necessarily have to make some changes to turn a branching story into a linear one, so they're usually Pragmatic or Recognizable. In the case of some mobile or card game adaptations, they might have to make up a story from scratch where the original didn't have one, falling into In Name Only.
  • Movie novelizations, due to their very nature, are typically Identical or Near-Identical, with the main differences being either extra information added or being based on an earlier draft of the movie.
  • Animated shows based on shared-universe superhero comics tend to be Pragmatic: telling stories inspired by those of the comics and constructing a world meant to resemble them, but going in their own direction in terms of how they interpret events and characters. (Some may dip into Recognizable if they're particularly fanciful in their interpretation, such as Teen Titans or My Adventures with Superman.) This is typically because they're based on universes so complex and long-running that doing a direct adaptation would be a difficult endeavor. If they're adapting a specific issue that isn't an origin, they'll usually try to stick as close as possible within the runtime: for instance, the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Laughing Fish" and the Justice League episode "For the Man Who Has Everything" are Near-Identical when compared to the stories that inspired them.

Alternative Title(s): The Sliding Scale Of Adaptation Decay, Sliding Scale Of Adaptation Faithfulness, Sliding Scale Of Adaptation Decay, Sliding Scale Of Adaptation Fidelity