Adaptation Distillation: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Black Butler]]'': The anime diverges from the manga very early in the series, having little material to work with at the time. This ends up with the entire cast being tame & simple, lacking the mangas years of character development. Grell has the most notable personality difference between the two mediums.

* The 2122-page ''[[Akira]]'' manga was condensed into a 120-minute movie by ending it 3/5 of the way through (the manga itself was not completed at the time), eliminating subplots and fusing several scenes together.

** To be more specific, the first season followed the manga explicitly, minus a few characters and plots that had to relevance to the fair portion of the manga adapted to that point, and could have been easily used as a jumpoff point to switch to the manga save for the omitted details. The second season is [[Overtook the Manga]] incarnate, to the point it has no ties to actual canon save a few characters (and even they deviate from the manga by quite a bit) and essentially non-canon in all respects.

 

* ''[[The Punisher]] MAX'' is an example of distillation, although it's arguably just a set of "hardboiled" crime stories with only Frank Castle (and an Ennis take on Castle's backstory) to make it "Punisher," which works very well. (In "The Slavers" though it works ''too'' well, especially when you see the [[Downer Ending]].)

* The entire ''[[Ultimate Marvel]]'' line of comics.

* ''[[All-Star Superman]]'' is intended as Adaptation Distillation of the Golden and Silver Age Superman, and it's widely regarded as doing a great job at it. [[Alan Moore]]'s run on ''[[Supreme]]'' does the same thing (albeit with a Superman ''analogue'').

 

* The film versions of ''[[Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (novel)|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)|]]'' and ''[[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)|Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets]]'' retain the dialogue almost word for word and just about every important scene from the books is left in, with only a few merged with other scenes or removed from the story.

* All of the film and animated versions of the ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' comic book series have involved considerable amounts of Adaptation Distillation.

* ''[[A Letter to Three Wives]] was based on the novel Letter to Five Wives. Two wives were taken out, one at the start, the other after the first draft, in order to help tighten the film.

 

* William Goldman's ''[[The Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]'' claims to be "the good parts version" of an earlier novel by Simon Morgenstern, turning what was a digression-laden, politics-heavy slog into a fun action-adventure story. In fact, Morgenstern and his unabridged novel are entirely fictitious. This setup allows Goldman to lampoon such authors as Victor Hugo and his ilk. [[The Princess Bride (film)|The film]] distills the story even further, into its purest essence.

* Similarly to the ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' PC games, the ''[[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' series of novels by [[Dan Abnett]] do such a good job portraying the dog-soldiers of the Imperial Guard that the entire tabletop army was revamped to exhibit a competent, technologically-advanced army like that of the Ghosts. It would be so successful that this portrayal would go on to affect later novels by other authors, such as [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s ''[[Ciaphas Cain]]'' series.

* Subverted by ''[[The Sandman]]: The Dream Hunters'', a book by [[Neil Gaiman]]. In the introduction, the author claims it's an attempt to take various elements of various retellings of a certain preexisting Japanese myth, and bring them together in a logical, complete way. It apparently works as the thing turns out great, and the illustrations by [[Yoshitaka Amano]] are beautiful to boot... of course, as it turns out, the preexisting myth didn't so much exist at all, which is pretty much standard for Neil Gaiman.

 

* The eponymous hero of the 1990 series ''[[The Flash (TV 1990)|The Flash]]'' was an amalgamation of the [[Silver Age]] and [[Post-Crisis]] [[Flash]]es in the comics. While his secret identity was that of Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, some aspects of the character (like his relationship with scientist Dr. Tina McGee and his need to eat insane amounts of food to maintain his powers) were incorporated from the character of the later Flash, Wally West.

** One specific example: They based the Patrician on his later appearances (including Wuffles), instead of his eventually rather contradictory appearance in the actual early books. The "Machiavellian Vampire Flamingo" Vetinari was introduced approximately at the same time as the name "Vetinari". In fact, if it wasn't for [[Word of God]] saying that it was just badly written, people would still be arguing whether it was supposed to be ''the same Patrician or not.''

* The J-Drama form of ''[[Hana Yori Dango]]'' managed to compress thirty-six volumes of manga written over a period of eleven years into a much smoother story, combining characters and editing plot arcs as necessary.

* [[The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries]] cuts most of [[The Hardy Boys]] book series' supporting cast. The Hardys' mother, Laura, is dead, and the boys live with their widowed father and Aunt Gertrude, and the only friends from the books that show up are Callie Shaw and Chet Morton — and Chet, only in two episodes. In second season, the series is distilled even more, with even Aunt Gertrude and Callie getting cut.

 

* Parodied with the ''[[That Guy With The Glasses|in 5 seconds]]'' YouTube videos, which cut down the targeted film to its most important points. The quality varies somewhat widely from video to video though. This may represent an inadvertent [[Deconstruction]], as some basic biology knowledge will tell you that it is unhealthy to remove ''all'' the fat from the body.

** A lot of [[Rule of Funny]] goes into those, so it's hard to really call it "distillation", in the traditional sense.

* Some of [[The Abridged Series]] out there can do this, not just successfully (or unsuccessfully) turning the story into a comedy but also greatly simplifying the story.

 

* Parodied in the ''[[GURPS]]: Goblins'' RPG sourcebook; a sample adventure includes "The Abridged ''[[Macbeth]]'', With Just The Witches and the Fighting". The entire script is one page long.

 

* When Edna Ferber's ''Show Boat'' was made into the famous Broadway musical in 1927, it wasn't common at all for such long and convoluted novels to be made into musicals. The result still ran very long for a Broadway show, and so has been subjected to various levels of Adaptation Distillation in all revivals (and in the 1936 movie, the only faithful film version).

* The play ''[[Auntie Mame]]'' is an Adaptation Distillation of Patrick Dennis's pseudo-autobiographical novel. To quote Patrick Dennis:

* A double example: British playwright Christopher Bond took the most exciting elements of the Sweeney Todd myth (the razors, the chair, the pies) and added plot elements from ''[[The Revenger's Tragedy]]'' and ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo (novel)|The Count of Monte Cristo]]'' (as well as excellent dialogue) to create a first-rate melodrama with real character motivation. Then, [[Stephen Sondheim]] took Bond's play, fixed the [[Plot Hole|weakest plot moments]] and set the whole thing to [[Crowning Music of Awesome|an amazing musical score]] to create ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'', a first-rate musical tragedy.

* Herman Wouk distilled his novel ''[[The Caine Mutiny]]'' into the play ''The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial''. A made-for-TV version of this play directed by [[Robert Altman]] appeared in 1988, but the more famous 1954 film version is a very different distillation of the novel.

 

== Theme Parks ==

** ''[[The Little Mermaid]]: Ariel's Undersea Adventure'' takes the approach of focusing entirely on the film's songs, though coming at the cost of Ursula gaining mostly [[Offscreen Villainy]].

 

* ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]'': The story mode is basically the plot of the first three games condensed into one, while cutting the fat away. While there are changes (some quite major) because of the Timey Wimey Ball, most of the stuff that happened in the old games still happens in this one.

* Arcade game manufacturer [http://www.globalvr.com Global VR] lived on this trope by making arcade games that are distillations of Electronic Arts games. Examples include [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5237 Madden NFL], [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5714 EA Sports PGA Tour Golf], [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5927 EA Sports NASCAR Racing], and three [[Need for Speed]] games: [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=4976 Hot Pursuit 2- which was rechristened "Need for Speed GT"-] plus [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5806 NFS Underground] and [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=6041 NFS Carbon] as well. They've also done distillations of UBI Soft games as well- witness [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5807 Paradise Lost, a rail shooter based on Far Cry] and [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5994 Blazing Angels.]

* The games in the ''[[Batman]]: [[Batman: Arkham Asylum|Arkham]]'' [[Batman: Arkham City|series]] have essentially taken the different forms of media that Batman and his world have appeared in, selected the best bits from each one, glued them together, filed the edges down and then cast the player as Batman. It's generally considered one of the key reasons the games have been so successful.

 

* The [[The DCAU|DC Animated Universe]], from ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'' to ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', was generally of this kind.

** A more specific example would be the [[Dark Knight Returns]] segment of the episode "Legends of the Dark Knight", which perfectly encapsulates Miller's style and the tone of the book in five minutes of animation. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoZLPwRCjcQ watch it here.]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Abridged Series Tropes]]

[[Category:Media Adaptation Tropes]]

[[Category:Derivative Works]]