Adaptation Displacement: Difference between revisions

[[File:Jaws_first_edition_7083.jpg|link=Jaws|frame|It was a book?!]]

Wait -- there was a book!?

In ongoing media, surrender to [[Adaptation Displacement]] can result in [[Ret Canon]] and [[Lost in Imitation]].

** ''[[The Girl Who Runs Through Time]]'' -- directly adapted into a manga by the same name, and also featuring an anime "adaptation" which is [[Stealth Sequel|actually more of a loose sequel]], ''[[The Girl Who Leapt Through Time]]''.

* Same goes for ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'', whose manga wasn't even about card games at first. Once the anime got to the US, it took a few months for the card game to show up as well. It doesn't help that 4Kids deliberately picked up the franchise because of the card game plot after how much money they'd made on ''Pokémon'' and its various components. The makers of the second anime did this too, so it's also not a surprise they sold it overseas on this -- even elements of the storyline they adapted that had little card game elements in the manga had the Duel Monsters segments played up for the anime to sell the cards.

* Few fans outside of Japan knew that there are ''[[Vampire Hunter D]]'' [[Light Novel|Light Novels]] until recently. And that they came first.

* The Barry Allen [[The Flash|Flash]] and the Hal Jordan [[Green Lantern]] -- and their relative [[Legacy Character|legacies]] -- are far more familiar to Joe Average than the [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] Jay Garrick and Alan Scott due to the [[Animated Adaptation]] of each (they were sort of displaced by their [[Silver Age]] versions even before the cartoons, but ''[[Superfriends]]'' cemented the newer heroes in popular culture).

** There are those who think that Disney created [[Peter Pan]] from whole-cloth in 1953, with their still-classic animated motion picture. Never mind the fact that Disney actually made a live-action [[Peter Pan]] film a couple of decades earlier, they (usually children, it must be said), are surprised to hear it was a book back in 1904....based off the original stage play that debuted in 1902. There is a rather larger section of the populace who believe that [[Disney Owns This Trope|Disney currently own the copyright]] on [[Peter Pan]]. They don't, that belongs to Great Ormond Street Hospital in perpetuity;<ref> in the UK; it's in the public domain in the US</ref> they get royalties on all derivative works, but cannot stop anybody from making something they don't want made (hence Disney rolling out its new ''Tinker Bell'' movies).

* When most people think of ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'', they think of the classic 1968 film starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, and Maurice Evans, or perhaps the ultimately forgettable 2001 remake starring Mark Wahlberg -- not the novel by Pierre Boulle. This may largely be due to the fact that the original novel was written in French. Despite [[Mis Blamed|what you might think]], [[Tim Burton]] didn't make up the ending to the 2001 movie; it's actually closer to the original book than the 1968 movie. But in the book, it made a kind of sense and followed naturally from the events in the story, instead of being tacked-on [[Gainax Ending|surreal randomness]].

* Maybe one of the most magnificent examples of adaptation displacement is in the progression of [[Dashiell Hammett]]'s novel ''[[Red Harvest]]''--the story began as a [[Film Noir]] novel (''Red Harvest''), then became a [[Jidai Geki]] film (''[[Yojimbo]]''), and was '''then''' adapted once more as a [[Spaghetti Western]] (''[[A Fistful of Dollars]]'') before being again adapted as a Gangster Film (''[[Last Man Standing]]'').

* A lot of ''[[Die Hard]]'' fans don't know that the first movie of the series is based on a novel (''Nothing Lasts Forever'', 1979). But wait -- there's more!. The book that ''Die Hard'' was based on was itself a sequel to a 1966 novel, ''The Detective''. ''The Detective'' had a film adaptation in 1968 starring Frank Sinatra which is unrelated to the Die Hard series. Moreover, ''Die Hard 2'' was ''also'' based on a novel -- a novel ''entirely unrelated to the novel on which the first film was based'' (but all ''Die Hard'' sequels [[Dolled-Up Installment|started unrelated]]).

* The same thing applies to the ''[[Rambo]]'' series (''First Blood'', 1972), which is also victim of the [[Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo]] -- most people forget that the first Rambo movie was itself called ''First Blood'', not ''Rambo''. The sequel was ''Rambo: First Blood Part 2'', which was followed by ''Rambo 3'' (there is no ''Rambo 2''), which is then followed by the confusingly titled ''Rambo'' from 2008. Also ''First Blood'' was actually based on a book wherein {{spoiler|John Rambo dies at the end}}. Bet you never knew that. Also, there has been significant displacement of the first film within the Rambo film franchise itself. How many Rambo fans remember that First Blood was a depressing film about a [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]] fleeing the law?

* There was a small segment who had no idea there were ''books'' of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' when [[Peter Jackson]]'s films were released. This was parodied in at least one comic strip where kids muse how much of a pastiche of other, earlier films it was -- the hobbits were clearly stolen from ''[[Willow]]'', for example -- and that they were thinking of checking out "the [[Novelization]]". There are many more who only know the films because, well, the books are [[Doorstopper|not light reading]] -- enough that Fanfiction.net has a filter in its ''The Lord of the Rings'' section allowing choice of Book, Movie, or AU fics.

* Both the 1963 black-and-white psychological horror piece ''[[The Haunting]]'' with Claire Bloom and its 1999 remake are much more well-known than the book they were based on -- Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel ''The Haunting of Hill House''.

* [[Andrew Davies]] changed the ending of the novel ''[[House of Cards (British series)]]'' in his [[The BBC|BBC]] adaptation. The programme was so much more successful than the (still modestly successful) book that author Michael Dobbs wrote a sequel, ''To Play the King'', and [[Retcon|retconned]] it to fit with the ending of the programme. Then Davies adapted ''To Play the King'' and '''exactly the same thing happened again'''.

* Few people realise that "Hey Joe" by [[Jimi Hendrix]] was a cover of a [[Tim Hardin]] song -- which was ''itself'' a cover of a song by The Leaves.

* ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'' musical has displaced the original Gaston Leroux novel in the minds of many. And also -- though not quite to so grotesque an extent -- the old Lon Chaney movie, which was relatively faithful to the book.

* The famous ballet ''[[The Nutcracker (theatre)|The Nutcracker]]'' is actually based on [[The Nutcracker (novel)|a book]] with a slightly different plot and a different backstory for the Nutcracker himself. The ending is also different -- many productions of the ballet have Clara awaken at the end to learn it was [[All Just a Dream]], whereas the book ends with Marie discovering that it was all real and [[The Power of Love|her love for the Nutcracker breaking his curse]]. Some productions of the ballet actually include elements of the original ending anyway; Mark Morris' tongue-in-cheek [[Setting Update]] ''The Hard Nut'' spends much of the second act telling said backstory.

* The musical ''[[Little Me]]'' seems to be better known than the Patrick Dennis book it was based on -- which is somewhat odd considering that the show was neither a Broadway hit nor made into a movie.

** And many fans of ''[[WALL-E]]'' are unaware that the latter's title music is from ''Hello, Dolly!'' -- even though the relevant clip is included in the movie.

** This [[Adaptation Displacement]] was taken into account by the creators of the second film who originally intended to stick closer to the comics and have the mutagen be the creation of a brain-like alien race called the Utroms. Professor Perry, who still appears in the movie as the man who created the mutagen, was going to be revealed as the last Utrom still on Earth. However, the cartoon featured a villainous alien brain named Krang who bore a strong physical resemblance to the Utroms but little else. Since the movie was being marketed to fans of the cartoon, the Utrom subplot was ditched because of concern that viewers would assume the brain was Krang.

* Speaking of Christmas specials, while the animated version of ''[[How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (animation)|How the Grinch Stole Christmas]]'' hasn't exactly displaced the book -- partly because [[Dr. Seuss]] is one of the most famous authors of children's books in the world -- we challenge anyone to read the book to himself and ''not'' hear [[Boris Karloff]] narrating it.

* Almost no-one reads [[H.P. Lovecraft|HP Lovecraft]], but [[Eldritch Abomination|Cthulhu]] is [[media:cthulhu_doll.jpg|everywhere]]. Certainly you can find Cthulhu on Hulu.