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Hard-to-Adapt Work

377 statements
70 feature instances
7 referencing feature instances

Hard-to-Adapt Work	type	FeatureClass
Hard-to-Adapt Work	label	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work	page	HardToAdaptWork
Hard-to-Adapt Work	comment	Some popular works never get adaptations, or if they do they have long and difficult production processes. It's not for lack of trying, however. Some works are just hard to adapt into certain mediums. One common reason for this is an Audience-Alienating Premise. What might be popular for one medium is not for another. For example, xenofictional literature works are rarely ever adapted. Most are too dark for kids' shows or films, but most older audiences aren't interested in serious works about talking animals or non-humanoid anthropomorphic aliens. This often coincides with differing writing and content standards between mediums and even if attempted will often rely on Human-Focused Adaptation. Story Branching is another common headache, particularly the form found in Visual Novels (which can already have vast amounts of text to work with). A single VN can feature not only multiple long, mutually exclusive storylines, but also cross-continuity Chekhovs Guns (i.e. a detail is explained but not relevant in the first route, then relevant but not explained in the second). Most adaptations either pick one route and stick with it, or invent a composite storyline with elements of all of them. The ability for novels to expand on environments, explain motivations and personality traits within the text makes it near impossible to replicate in a film format without tripling down on the exposition and explaining their emotions in a hamfisted manner. A reader can also experience a book at their own pace both in segments they read at a time and being able to easily double back on passages they might have overlooked, while a three-hour movie can continue on even if you leave the room. Films are rooted in visuals, dialogue and music to different degrees, all edited together in a cohesive whole. Kinetic action sequences timed to the soundtrack creates a fundamentally different appeal, as well as enormous spectacle filled with naturalistic details. See also Starring Special Effects. This can lead to No Adaptations Allowed if a work is deemed too difficult to work with. This is also a major reason adaptations fall into Development Hell, and frequently undergo noticeable Adaptation Decay once they're Saved from Development Hell. Video Game Movies Suck is a subtrope, given the incompatibilities between video games and film: either the former a) doesn't have enough plot to fill in the run time of a feature-length film without significant expansion, b) has too much plot for one without significant compression or c) is too strongly tied with the interactive nature of the medium in order to translate well into a passive format.
Hard-to-Adapt Work	fetched	2024-03-12T01:02:07Z
Hard-to-Adapt Work	parsed	2024-03-12T01:02:07Z
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Hard-to-Adapt Work	isPartOf	DBTropes
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_100aff60	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_100aff60	comment	Police, Camera, Action!, due to being an Edutainment Show / Gearhead Show has proven to be harder to adapt to another medium (aside from an obscure 1996 book with photo-stills) due to being a Real Life documentary, although a video game based on it would be a difficult exercise, and costly. Outside of parodies, there's been no real adaptations since.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_100aff60	featureConfidence	1.0
Police, Camera, Action!	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_100aff60
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_1327d39c	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_1327d39c	comment	This trope is the reason why all attempts to make a Crazy Taxi movie never got off the ground. While there are characters, there's basically nothing in terms of plot besides "drive around like a maniac, gain as much cash as possible, and listen to punk music." This works for an arcade game, where the appeal comes from the thrilling gameplay and getting a high score. It's a textbook case of No Plot? No Problem! Trying to make a narrative out of a game like Crazy Taxi is the equivalent of drawing blood from a stone. Even one of the stated reasons why the project got canceled was an "absence of plot elements."
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_1327d39c	featureConfidence	1.0
Crazy Taxi (Video Game)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_1327d39c
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_1af3cde6	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_1af3cde6	comment	Cats is a play based on a book of poems. Virtually every song is a poem set to music. There's no dialogue in the play, with the story being told through song. The loose, vague story and characterization makes it hard to adapt into other mediums, and even then one of the many criticisms was that the play's structure and thin plot is something one can only accept on the stage. The very specific, campy costumes of the visuals are also difficult to translate to anything but theater, as the main characters are cats that frequently spring into complicated dance numbers but make a few cat-like mannerisms on the side. It ultimately drew on the energy of a live performance with enormous sets, fanciful costumes and boisterous music, which would require an adaptation to match that step for step (an animated film produced by Steven Spielberg was once in the planning stages). Despite its popularity it took until 2019 to get a film adaptation, which attempted to translate as this as actors rendered with CGI to look like cats and Green Screen Sets, and it did not go over well with audiences.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_2149bc5	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_2149bc5	comment	Apocalypse Now could be considered the cinematic equivalent of Ulysses, in terms of works that would be impossible to make a good adaptation of, primarily owing to its challenging plot and heavy use of surreal imagery. The movie was already hard enough to adapt beyond the screen; a Tie-In Novel would expand the story unnecessarily.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_261c8d3f	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_261c8d3f	comment	An episode of The Simpsons has an In-Universe case of this, in a flashback plot where Homer and Marge are crew members on a film Krusty the Clown is directing based on his favorite sci-fi novel The Sands of Spacenote (a thinly veiled reference to Dune, with a few aspects from Zardoz and Krull) which was stated to be impossible to adapt, with Krusty intent to make it as accurate to the book as possible.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_2a43dd91	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_2a43dd91	comment	It took the film adaptation of Uncharted a decade to get off the ground because the gamesâ€™ stories are already structured like films and use film-like cinematography, meaning adapting them would just be condensing the story to a movieâ€™s run time. At one point, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were approached for the screenplay, but they passed. According to Rogen, no matter what they attempted with the material, it just felt like they were continuously ripping off Indiana Jones due to the nature of the game. The series' creators at Naughty Dog believed this so much that they refused to help their parent company Sony on the project until they gave up on a making straight-up adaptation of the series. In 2018, Sony decided to not adapt one of the games and go the Prequel route, with Naughty Dog's blessing, resulting in Uncharted (2022). While that movie was a financial success, it received mixed reception with fans who criticized the film for radically changing the personalities of Nathan and Sully while critics dismissed it as an Indiana Jones knock-off.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_2f3aa7ef	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_2f3aa7ef	comment	While it is very possible to build video games around most of the cast from My Little Pony, the same cannot be said for Discord, whose incredibly godlike powers of Shapeshifting and reality warping that go far beyond the power of most of the other powerful magic users in the setting make him very difficult to feature in a video game. On the one hand, featuring him in a video game as a player character or antagonist would require somehow managing to make the game challenging, yet still winnable, despite his blatant Story-Breaker Power; yet lowering his power level or even taking his powers away (the latter of which has actually happened in the show more than once) to create a manageable challenge defeats the whole purpose of involving The Omnipotent on either side. Case in point: In Mega Pony, all he does as the Final Boss is pilot a Wily Machine and throw shot-deflecting fireballs.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_31508337	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_31508337	comment	A specific part that is hard to produce an anime for is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run. The story revolves around an American cross-country horse race, and horses are notoriously difficult to animate in 2D. Even David Productions admitted that they would rather wait for technology to advance to help with 2D horse animation, as they don't want to rely on CGI to animate the horses.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_33534161	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_33534161	comment	When the Halo (2022) TV series got middling reviews, accusations of this were made. Much like Doom, Halo doesnâ€™t have an audience-friendly protagonist with Master Chief being The Faceless and having minimal characterisation. The official web series Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn got around this by framing Chief from other charactersâ€™ POV. In contrast, the Paramount series unpacked Chiefâ€™s character by giving him standard angst and drama, turning Chief into more of a Action Genre Hero Guy. While this personality change, plus multiple scenes showing him without his helmet, were intended to make Chief be more accessible, both of these elements were instead heavily criticized for undermining the mystique of the character that made him so appealing in the first place. Not helping matters were unfavorable comparisons to the acclaimed The Mandalorian, which proved you could effectively have a faceless armoured warrior hero in a serialized show. The Paramount series also makes many other crucial changes like focusing mostly on human politics instead of the Covenant to save on VFX budget, which only confused newcomers and alienated fans, the latter of whom were the biggest audience for the show.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_38974f2	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_38974f2	comment	Much like the aforementioned Street Fighter and Tekken, The King of Fighters also struggled with its own movie adaptation, for most of the same reasons: the large cast and team-based structure of the original games necessitating Cast Herds of at least three characters, most with iconic, yet also stylized designs and powersets that don't translate well to live-action means that attempting to shrink it down to a more manageable number and change the designs and powersets to be more realistic would irk long-time fans. Another problem is the fact that the backstory of the games focuses heavily on both supernatural and scientific elements that require multiple games just for one specific saga, and that the film's attempt to streamline the Rugal/Orochi Saga (which took four installments to complete, making it the longest Story Arc in the franchise's history) with its limited runtime and budget overall made it feel like yet another run-of-the-mill martial arts film. That, coupled with several other differences that alienated diehard fans and confused general audiences, led to the film sinking in obscurity.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_3aeb1c75	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_3aeb1c75	comment	Dragon Ball has long since proved that it can be adapted effectively into animation, both 2D and 3D, being one of the most universally popular animes of all time. When it comes to a Live-Action Adaptation, however, it's proved three times to be phenomenally difficult, if not nigh impossible to adapt into live-action without serious Special Effects Failure or, in the case of Dragon Ball Evolution, ending up as In Name Only to the source material. The main difficulties is that the world of Dragon Ball is a massive anachronism packed Fantasy Kitchen Sink with a futuristic setting, dinosaurs, talking animal characters, robots, aliens, and multiple superpowered-martial artist characters who can fly around destroying mountains and planets, shoot beams from their hands, and also travel to other worlds up to and including the afterlife. To remotely do the series justice in live action, the budget would have to be around the level of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Avatar with fight choreography on the level of Ip Man and most Wuxia films, but few film companies are willing to go that length. Whilst there's been no attempts to adapt the series of late, films like The Matrix Revolutions and Man of Steel do pay homage to Dragon Ball with their high-flying fight scenes and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings can be seen as a Spiritual Adaptation to the point of a direct Shout-Out. Another issue, which goes for most ShÅ�nen live action adaptations, is that Dragon Ball is known and loved for its Awesome Art especially when it comes to its characters and fight scenes. Translating it into a medium like live action is very difficult, even when it's as faithful as possible. For example JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable Chapter I, Fullmetal Alchemist (2017) and Bleach (2018) all got drummings for struggling to capture the look and feel of their source materials and ended up visually closer to just cosplay.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_43a9c333	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_43a9c333	comment	Cowboy Bebop is one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed animes of all time, but when it was adapted into a live-action TV series the critical response was far from ideal and resulted in the series being cancelled after just one season with accusations of this being understandably made. One of the primary reasons the anime is hard to adapt is because its fluid animation and stylistic character designs (especially Spike, Faye and Ed) are extremely hard to translate into live action without coming off as awkward or outright cringeworthy. Another problem is that the Cowboy Bebop anime itself homages films like Blade Runner and Pulp Fiction, making especially hard for the TV show to capture its style when it's already effectively borrowing from other The Future Is Noir works in its own unique way. Along with this, is that the 1998 anime often had a subdued and brooding tone and was deliberately vague and minimalistic about things such as Spike's past. The TV show however has hour long episodes and thus is obligated to have a lot Adaptational Expansion, leading to questionable changes to characters like Julia and Vicious and the tone being made to be more humorous than the original anime, which results in a messier experience overall. Fair to note, that the anime isn't just difficult to adapt into live action, there is also a lesser-known manga adaptation of the series that isn't highly regarded either, despite it being much more accurate than the Netflix show.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_44c759ee	comment	Battleship was based on a board game with no plot beyond just two players trying to locate and sink each other's ships, which sounded like an absurd idea to most people. Universal and Hasbro tried to spice it up by adding some sci-fi elements to the story, but that only made it look like every other blockbuster movie at the time. Ultimately, it ended up flopping (in the U.S., at least), and any plans for a sequel were sunk.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_44fe781e	comment	Neon Genesis Evangelion was once considered for a Live-Action Adaptation by ADV Films and WETA only to end up in Development Hell. While Evangelion is rather popular in its native Japan and has a cult following in the US, its unique identity wouldn't be a sell for the general masses. A visually faithful adaptation would be ludicrously expensive for capturing the action and spectacle of the series, yet the series's graphic violence, sexual imagery (most of which involves characters who are minors In-Universe), angsty human drama, and surreal plotline would alienate mainstream audiences that would be necessary for justifying the enormous budget. Despite multiple attempts, the project was abandoned.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_529c5a6f	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_529c5a6f	comment	Goodnight Punpun, despite it's great acclaim, is acknowledged by fans and critics alike to be a very difficult or impossible work to adapt for a number of reasons. The most immediately apparent is the title character and his family: they are all portrayed as child-like drawings of birds, even while the rest of the cast are drawn in a more standard seinen anime style. This directly contrasts with the tone and pacing of the story, which is a slow, depressing Coming of Age story that verges on Protagonist Journey to Villain.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_57ad0c07	comment	Resident Evil has gotten Adaptation Overdosed, but unfortunately only a handful of works (such as the comics, manga, CG films, books and a commercial) are actually accurate to the games, while everything else like the live action adaptations take a notoriously loose approach to the gamesâ€™ canon. The first hurdle producers reach is that REâ€™s story, much like Metal Gear, is quite impenetrable with a plot somewhere between The X-Files and G.I. Joe and thus creators find it much easier to just take elements from the games (like the zombies, monsters and the Umbrella corporation) and make a new story with a Canon Foreigner hero, as was the case with the Paul W.S. Anderson Resident Evil Film Series and Resident Evil (2022). If characters from the game do show up, theyâ€™re Demoted to Extra, unrecognisable, or killed off as characters in horror media generally arenâ€™t expected to live long. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City does at least attempt to adapt the games, but like the Silent Hill films make crucial changes to the characters and the story. In particular, it mashes the plots of the first and second games together, which are better suited as separate, since it cuts into the pacing and leaves multiple characters without room to grow. Tragically, the father of zombies George A. Romero pitched a movie script for RE1 that was fairly faithful (besides Chris not being a S.T.A.R.S member and Barry being black) but it got rejected by Capcom. One of the biggest issues with adapting the games is the scale of the Zombie Apocalypse. In the games thanks to the heroes and the government, outbreaks never actually escalate beyond a city or country and after a while zombies themselves get shifted out for other exotic bio-horrors. Resident Evil Film Series and Resident Evil (2022), however, simply can't resist using the popular and standard After the End zombie setting that most audiences are used to — which, while serving the threat well, ultimately makes the efforts of the protagonists for nought, the exact opposite of what occurs in the games. Zombies themselves are also so popular that the live action adaptations only make half-hearted attempts to include other monsters from games. Another big issue with adapting RE is getting the tone right, as most of the games go for a Camp B-Movie tone mixed with actual scary Survival Horror elements (like Evil Dead 2), and finding that balance is very difficult, with a lot of adaptations just back sliding into action. Also, the idea of actually following narrative themes and tone of the games when came to video game adaptations were often scoffed at, prior to works like Castlevania (2017) and The Last of Us (2023).
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_58808436	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_58808436	comment	While the anime adaptations of Higurashi: When They Cry were fairly successful and led to a full-blown Cash-Cow Franchise, the same can not be said for that of its successor, Umineko: When They Cry. The story is massive, features dozens of characters, and heavy post-modernism elements. The anime suffered from being a Compressed Adaptation, with key scenes either being heavily abridged or omitted entirely. This led to the mystery being unsolvable due to important clues not appearing. For comparison, the manga had over 40 volumes while the stage-play has stuck to adapting one episode per 3-hour show.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_5afbc0cb	comment	Despite a devoted fanbase, resonant themes, and the potential for gorgeous visuals, a faithful adaptation of Undertale to a non-interactive medium would be exceedingly difficult. The story is intimately tied to video game mechanics as Save Scumming is a recognized in-universe phenomenon. The Story Branching also poses a problem since an adaptation would necessarily excise important material included in the branches that aren't adapted. Most pointedly though, much of the emotional torque of the original game relies on the Player Punch to end all player punches, which would be difficult to pull off in a non-interactive medium where the audience is not responsible for the actions of the characters: the entire game is a Deconstruction of the Sociopathic Hero tendencies of many Role-Playing Games, a genre in which executing enemies in combat is expected and unremarkable, while in another medium it would be harder for the audience to sympathize with Frisk slaughtering Random Encounters, if the creators wanted to adapt the Genocide Route.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_5cbb9f06	comment	The live-action adaptation of Ã†on Flux is very unpopular with fans of the original cartoon, but the entire format of the show makes it hard to see what the filmmakers really could have done with it. The show has very little plot, not a lot of characterization, and lends itself rather poorly to a feature-length format. That's not to say there was nothing the filmmakers could have done better, but there was a good reason this time due to the continued low quality of live-action adaptations.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_6ac55ec7	comment	The reason so many of the earliest attempts at adapting Dungeons & Dragons to film proved failures in some way or other can be attributed to the difficulty of adapting the game into such a medium. This is because DND is a social game, meaning you have the meta aspect of playing the game, and the story aspect of what the dice are being rolled for. Although the meta aspect is generally more important due to being the reason events can happen, it also is just rolling dice and people playing a character, which isn't going to seem appealing to a casual movie goer. Due to that, films often focus on the fantasy side of DND as a name and at most just reference things from the game, but because DND is still a social game about dice and playing with people, the loss of the meta aspect makes it a generic fantasy movie, which tends to cause people to not want to see the films. As a result, almost every DND movie released exclusively focused on the fantasy side of DND, and ended up failing due to coming across as generic fantasy movies that seem to think just the name DND is enough to get people to watch. It would ultimately take until 2023 for one to come out that gained a very positive reception, and it only did so by incorporating gameplay mechanics into the setting and narrative, making it as close to adapting the meta aspect as possible while avoiding the whole game aspect.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_701f0ece	comment	Berserk falls victim to this thanks to two major factors: The manga is a very long series that gets much of its atmosphere from a combination of decompressed storytelling and highly-detailed art. It's hard to cut out content because it has a lot of sensitive topics and Broken Bird characters, which without the original context risk becoming pointlessly dark and nonsensical. Most adaptations tend to follow the Golden Age arc, since it's a Flash Back that's largely self-contained. The 90s anime and Golden Age film trilogy, despite being extremely violent (particularly the latter), still censor a lot of the more explicit violence, sex, and rape scenes, either toning them down or omitting them outright to make the series suitable for broadcast. A completely faithful adaptation of Berserk would likely demand an NC-17 rating (The third film in the Golden Age trilogy, where the Eclipse goes down and the ugliest stuff in the Golden Age Arc happens, even has an unrated version shown during midnight screenings). The manga itself ran on a seinen magazine, which gave it fewer restrictions for its content and subject matter. It's worth noting that the series has many scenes that, even by manga standards, are outright explicitly sexual, with incredibly detailed onscreen penetration and all sorts of sexual deviancy.
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Berserk (Manga)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_701f0ece
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_702a974	comment	Shadow of the Colossus has been in talks for a film adaptation from as early as 2009, but has been stranded in Development Hell with shifting writers and directors for over a decade. The most obvious appeal of Shadow of the Colossus for a movie adaptation is its highly cinematic battles against various colossal monsters amidst beautiful landscapes, but the obvious caveats are that the actual plot of the game is supremely minimal and deliberately vague on details, with a thematic emphasis on the nature of player-centric morality and the slow realization that you, the player, are creating a tragedy by slaying the Colossi, something that would be tricky to convert into a typical Hollywood film structure while remaining faithful to minimalist spirit of the game. A leaked draft of the screenplay (written by Justin Marks, whose sole prior film credit was Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li) attempted to rectify this by giving much vaster attention on the backgrounds and motivations of its characters and deemphasizing the Colossi battles (from sixteen to eight, and three of them are taken out in a single montage), but this was widely criticized as being an In Name Only butchering of the game, setting up a bad precedent for the direction the movie could very well end up taking.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_702a974	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_702a974	featureConfidence	1.0
Shadow of the Colossus (Video Game)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_702a974
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_74f7210c	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_74f7210c	comment	A The Legend of Zelda film has long been in Development Hell, with the most recent announcement from Shigeru Miyamoto stating that a live-action film is in the works by Sony. Prior to this, there were pitches for two animated films (one by Imagi Animation Studios who did TMNT and Astro Boy) as well as a live action Netflix series, all of which were rejected by Nintendo. In fairness to Nintendo, while a Zelda film with the scope and quality of something like The Lord of the Rings or a Studio Ghibli film would doubtless be great, the fact that Link is usually a voiceless avatar for the player in the games presents a serious problem with characterization as he isnâ€™t usually meant to a deep character with complex emotions, which results in the seeming necessity to give him a deeper personality in adaptations to make him easier to sell to the type of audiences who'd generally watch a cartoon or film. Unfortunately, much like with Samus, giving Link a personality that would be easily accepted by those familiar with the games has proven difficult. The 80s cartoon managed to give him a solid personality, and it usually wasnâ€™t a very nice personality; something fans either found irking or hilarious and was a big departure from the games regardless (though it should be noted that this came out before future games personified Link the way we know). That being said, the Zelda manga adaptations have given Link a compelling personality and character drama and managed to be fairly well received, and it's also worth noting that Legend (1985) is more or less a The Legend of Zelda movie (a forest boy saves a princess from evil incarnate with the help of a fairy) in spirit and actually helped influenced the Nintendo games themselves. And with these factors in mind, plus the aforementioned upcoming Live-Action Adaptation, hope could yet remain for a proper film or cartoon adaptation of Zelda at some point in the future.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_74f7210c	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_74f7210c	featureConfidence	1.0
The Legend of Zelda (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_74f7210c
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_755c9804	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_755c9804	comment	In the early 2000s, LEGO has turned down adaptation proposals of their popular BIONICLE line because every pitch tried to add humans, and the company was adamant that the series took place in an alien, human-free universe. Other factors hindering adaptations were LEGO's strict anti-violence policies and the franchise's reliance on lengthy story arcs and interconnected mysteries being built up and slowly unveiled across years. Miramax Films and Creative Capers and later Universal and Tinseltown Toons managed to secure Direct to Video film deals by allowing LEGO to keep some control over the stories. But even so, all of the films suffered heavily from constantly referencing things new viewers wouldn't know, neutering violent scenes, arbitrarily changing character personalities, compressing the plots to heck, and aping popular movies of the time — the third movie mirroring the plot of Revenge of the Sith reportedly made one of the LEGO writers mad. And to make up for the "no humans" rule, many characters were given odd redesigns to make them more expressive, which divided the fans greatly.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_755c9804	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_755c9804	featureConfidence	1.0
LEGO (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_755c9804
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_75e9b784	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_75e9b784	comment	On top of struggling with the usual hurdles of adapting the Visual Novel medium, Dies Irae has a few more factors further complicating things. In addition to the routes needing to be read in a specific order due to the Eternal Recurrence plot going on, it has the added hurdle of the novels sheer length which means it would require a lot of episodes to cover everything. Even Fate barely scraped by with its 24 episodes for just one of its routes which of course means that the Dies Irae anime's episode count of 17 was far from enough. But further making things more difficult is that, due to the power scale of the verse, it uses a lot of fairly flowery language to describe abstract concepts and ideas that would be extremely difficult to portray on screen in contrast to the written format. Add in all of the both internal monologues and philosophical musings by the characters that is essential to understanding them and their motivations on top of all this and it is no surprise that any attempt at an adaptation will be fighting an uphill battle.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_75e9b784	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_75e9b784	featureConfidence	1.0
Dies Irae (Visual Novel)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_75e9b784
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7785278d	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7785278d	comment	Part of the problem with adapting the BioShock games is that they very deliberately take great advantage of being Immersive Sims and tell large amounts of their greater story through audio logs, diary entries, and visual setpieces and interactable objects. As such, BioShock: Rapture attempts to tell a linear narrative chronicling Rapture's fall which at times feels more like worldbuilding and Flavor Text than a story on its own, and since it obviously can't have Jack as the POV character the "protagonist" of the book is Bill McDonagh, whose entire story is told through three audio logs and some environmental storytelling in-game, leading to quite a bit of Adaptation Expansion.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7785278d	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7785278d	featureConfidence	1.0
BioShock (Video Game)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7785278d
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7849f0c1	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7849f0c1	comment	Though Getter Robo saw many a successful adaptation to TV, film, and OVA, it stands out in the realm of toys for being almost impossible to work with—ironically for the series that essentially created the Combining Mecha concept, which went on to be defined by Merchandise-Driven works using it to make toys. This is because the mech's core concept requires three components that can take on four modes each (jet, upper third of a robot, middle third, and lower third), and just about every iteration of the Getter Robo design cheats the transformation heavily, fluidly morphing into a design that simply doesn't fit in the small jets that usually make up its components. The vast majority of toys from the series abandon transformation completely, and the ones that don't and manage to be even remotely accurate tend to cost hundreds of dollars.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7849f0c1	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7849f0c1	featureConfidence	1.0
Getter Robo (Manga)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7849f0c1
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7a12fa31	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7a12fa31	comment	One of the staff writers on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! explained that the show's production team found it hard to derive material from the shallow plots and thin characters of the games (which was especially the case in 1989, when the series' presence in the United States amounted to just the first two home console games and the freshly-released Super Mario Land, which wasn't even out yet during the cartoon's production; Super Mario Bros. 3 wouldn't be out in the States for another year), which is why most of the episodes are structured around stock movie and historical parodies. Indeed, Nintendo of America themselves had cold feet about the idea of adapting the games into an animated series. Mario in general has proven to be tricky to adapt as seen by the live action Super Mario Bros. (1993) film which understandably made Nintendo wary of letting Hollywood adapt their games for decades until PokÃ©mon Detective Pikachu. The Super Mario Bros. Movie by Illumination, however, was created with direct assistance from Nintendo themselves, and is firmly set in the visual style of the games while also at this point having considerably more lore and existing info on the characters and setting to work with, and obviously more faithful and successful for it.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7a12fa31	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7a12fa31	featureConfidence	1.0
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_7a12fa31
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8124a34e	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8124a34e	comment	The idea of a Barbie live-action film was touted around since The '80s, and went through a ton of writer, director, cast and studio changes, mainly due to the factors of Barbie being synonymous with the Girl-Show Ghetto, the overall idealistic and bright tone of the franchise risking Sweetness Aversion, the toyline generally not having much of a plot or lore behind it, and most prior storylines such as the Barbie animated movies and Barbie Vlog revolving around either straightforward Fairy Tale adaptations just with Barbie, simplistic original fantasy stories that just happened to star Barbie, or a Slice of Life with trivially low stakes. It was ultimately the association of Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Warner Bros. that cracked the code and produced a financial and critical success out of the toy line in 2023.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8124a34e	featureApplicability	-1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8124a34e	featureConfidence	1.0
Barbie (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8124a34e
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_86f6da00	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_86f6da00	comment	There's been two cinematic live-action attempts at Street Fighter and in contrast to Mortal Kombat: The Movie, neither were particularly accurate to/as liked as the games (though most people will agree RaÃºl JuliÃ¡'s Ham and Cheese as M. Bison alone makes the 1994 movie worth watching). The main trouble is that the story of the games doesn't usually lend itself to a traditional movie structure, being a global Tournament Arc with a metric butt ton of characters, and narrowing that down to just beating Bison and Shadaloo as the films do leaves a good many fan favourite fighters by the way-side. Also the cast of the games are iconic and beloved for their anime-inspired designs and flashy fighting moves, which if not given proper justice or commitment to on screen can be disastrous, as The Legend of Chun-Li shows extensively. Another issue is that Ryu, the actual protagonist of the games, doesn't tend to have much in-story stakes besides being a wandering fighter whose sole motivation is fighting stronger opponents and improving his own martial arts talents, as opposed to beating the Big Bad Bison to avenge a loved one or an ally. Which may be why the films swap him out as The Hero for Guile and Chun-Li respectively (though it might just be a case of Mighty Whitey in the former). Not to say it's been impossible to have a more accurate live-action adaptation, Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist is very faithful to the games and well-reviewed despite its lower budget struggling with the ki effects and Akuma's design. Cobra Kai is also considered a Spiritual Adaptation of Street Fighter by some fans.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_86f6da00	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_86f6da00	featureConfidence	1.0
Street Fighter	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_86f6da00
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ac4e993	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ac4e993	comment	Efforts to adapt Gundam into a Live-Action Adaptation have been met with Development Hell. Much like Dragon Ball or Evangelion, the series is extremely expansive and full of incredible spectacle regarding its beautiful mechs making it immensely hard to do justice in live action without a massive budget and creative scope. However, after the success of Pacific Rim "this can't be adapted" attitude towards the Gundam series has soften among fans and relatively more optimism towards announcements that Legendary Pictures and Netflix would take a stab at adapting the series.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ac4e993	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ac4e993	featureConfidence	1.0
Gundam (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ac4e993
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ee238c9	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ee238c9	comment	The Persona series generally consists of RPGs that can easily take 100 hours to complete, so parts of the story will inevitably have to get cut for a 26 episode anime with an OVA or two (Persona 4: The Animation, Persona 5: The Animation) or a film tetralogy (Persona 3: The Movie). Unfortunately, this can be a risky proposition considering that in the Persona series, small details and seemingly innocuous scenes can become very important to the plot. The Persona 5 anime adaptation stands out; not only is the game the longest of the three, but the dungeons are more elaborate and have more story scenes, and the non-party Confidants are more relevant to the plot, meaning that more is lost as a result of cutting down in those areas.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ee238c9	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ee238c9	featureConfidence	1.0
Persona (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_8ee238c9
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_916ad40d	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_916ad40d	comment	Adaptation., as mentioned in the Literature subpage, is ostensibly based on a non-fiction book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Charlie Kaufman looked to turn the book into a movie screenplay, but it is a book about flowers where nothing really happens. So he turned his own struggles to adapt the book INTO the movie, focusing more on the existential crisis he now faces as he desperately wants to avoid throwing in needless drugs, sex, and violence to spice it up into a generic Hollywood movie. The movie still ends up going down that path, but far from any traditional story structure. The amusing part is by having Charlie obsess over all the details of The Orchid Thief the audience will still leave knowing the broad story and thematic points from the book, making it an oddly successful adaptation in the process.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_916ad40d	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_916ad40d	featureConfidence	1.0
Adaptation.	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_916ad40d
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_965783f1	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_965783f1	comment	A major criticism people had with the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen was that, similar to Cats, the original stage show was too inherently theatrical to transition to a cinematic setting. On Broadway, the show is executed with a Minimalist Cast and little in the way of an actual set, instead utilizing dynamic lighting that dominates the stage, matches the music, and showcases Evan's inner feelings and increasing instability. This was completely lost in the transition to film, making the finished movie look a lot less lively and more mundane. Several of the musical's more dreamlike elements were also dropped in this transfer, including the majority of Connor's role, which significantly damaged the audience's understanding of and sympathy for Evan. Multiple plot-relevant songs were also cut, likely to prevent the movie's runtime from being too lengthy; however, the absence of "Good for You" made it feel like Evan never really got any kind of comeuppance in the end, to say nothing of how the other cut songs severely limited the side characters' development. And, finally, the main plot of the musical is something of an Audience-Alienating Premise when taken at face value, and removing it from the spectacle and theatricality of Broadway forced the viewers to confront it more directly, which made Evan very unlikable for some.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_965783f1	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_965783f1	featureConfidence	1.0
Dear Evan Hansen	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_965783f1
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_96f4de62	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_96f4de62	comment	Attack on Titan has seen great success in anime and video game adaptations. However, bringing the Titans to live action has proven to be difficult. The story is long and takes its time building the world and lore of that ultimately drive the Ontological Mystery of the series. Almost every character has lengthy backstories that often tie into other characters which helps explain their motivations and goals. Finally, the titular Titans are massive humanoid abominations that leave lots of destruction in their wake. Fights against them involve lots of swinging with the omni-directional mobility gear like Spider-Man or Titan vs. Titan battles akin to Kaiju works. To bring the Titans convincingly to live action would need an equally titanic budget. All of these issues have led to the series having a hard time coming to a live action medium: The two live action films from 2015 suffered from a case of Compressed Adaptation. They tried to fit the first 25 episodes of the anime into two movies, leading to many important characters and plot points being Adapted Out. The characters that did appear were radically different from their anime versions to the point where they might as well have been new characters. The movies also did NOT have the budget to make the Titans look imposing, leading to lots of Special Effects Failure and Narm. The only other crack at a live action version of Attack on Titans has been from Warner Bros, whose adaptation has been stuck in Development Hell. The stage musical went through a Troubled Production in an attempt to bring the swinging action to the stage. The death defying acrobatics used by the omni-directional movement gear is easy enough to convey in print or animation; doing it in a theatre setting is much easier said than done. It would require lots of safety harnesses and wires (and all the financial and logistical issues that come with it) to do safely, as well as athletic actors to perform the stunts. During testing for the original musical, acrobat Kazutaka Yoshino suffered an injury during rehearsals and ultimately died from his injuries, putting production on the musical on hold. That said, a musical for Attack on Titan did get off the ground in 2023, to favorable results.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_96f4de62	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_96f4de62	featureConfidence	1.0
Attack on Titan (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_96f4de62
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9bdb7d4	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9bdb7d4	comment	The 90s anime and Golden Age film trilogy, despite being extremely violent (particularly the latter), still censor a lot of the more explicit violence, sex, and rape scenes, either toning them down or omitting them outright to make the series suitable for broadcast. A completely faithful adaptation of Berserk would likely demand an NC-17 rating (The third film in the Golden Age trilogy, where the Eclipse goes down and the ugliest stuff in the Golden Age Arc happens, even has an unrated version shown during midnight screenings). The manga itself ran on a seinen magazine, which gave it fewer restrictions for its content and subject matter. It's worth noting that the series has many scenes that, even by manga standards, are outright explicitly sexual, with incredibly detailed onscreen penetration and all sorts of sexual deviancy.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9bdb7d4	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9bdb7d4	featureConfidence	1.0
Berserk (1997)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9bdb7d4
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9db1766a	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9db1766a	comment	Thereâ€™s been difficulty with adaptations of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. Both got adapted into animes but despite geuinely great animation, neither were as highly acclaimed as the games they were adapted from. The number one issue is that the protagonists Dante and Bayonetta are meant to be effortlessly cool with the difficult Hack and Slash gameplay actively making the player strive to be as awesome as the characters are in cutscenes and in-story. However, when the gameplay is taken out of the picture itâ€™s quite hard for Dante and Bayonetta to not come off as just boring Invincible Heroes a lot of the time. Devil May Cry: The Animated Series also took a more downbeat and Slice of Life tone, with the crazy all-out action that the games were known for being limited likely for budgetary reasons, something that disappointed a portion of fans. Since then, Castlevania (2017) producer Adi Shankar announced in 2022 that they will be making a Netflix animated adaptation of Devil May Cry and promised that it would be faithful as possible.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9db1766a	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9db1766a	featureConfidence	1.0
Devil May Cry (Video Game)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_9db1766a
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a0112f3d	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a0112f3d	comment	Tekken, for very similar reasons to Street Fighter, proved to be quite a mess when adapted into live-action, as it's mainly about a fighting tournament with numerous characters. In fact, one of the main reasons why the games are so liked in the first place is because there's many characters each with their own unique backstory, distinct personality and character arc. Not to mention that it's the kind of fighting game series where a bear and dinosaur with boxing gloves can be part of the roster. But trying to make such a story work in an hour and 27 minutes, unsurprisingly has been a fiasco. The 2010 live-action film similar to The Legend of Chun-Li tries to take a grounded Darker and Edgier tone, which jars greatly with the tone of the games and turns the story into more of a generic gritty martial arts film. The animated adaptations have been better received, especially the more recent Tekken: Bloodline series which got appreciation for giving genuine depth to characters such as Jin. Though like the previous anime adaptations, the de-emphasizing of particular fighters in favour of solely focusing on the Mishima plotline was bemoaned, given the serial-based narrative could allowed enough room for it.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a0112f3d	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a0112f3d	featureConfidence	1.0
Tekken (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a0112f3d
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a17bbe03	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a17bbe03	comment	Most complaints about the live-action film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender revolved around how the show's concept only really works in animation because it is so fantasy-based, forcing the film to largely resort to Coconut Superpowers, with the moments of power usage that involved CGI often being prone to Special Effect Failure.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a17bbe03	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a17bbe03	featureConfidence	1.0
The Last Airbender	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a17bbe03
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a796bde8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a796bde8	comment	Cracks at a movie adaptation of Metal Gear Solid have languished in Development Hell since the game's release in 1998. While the game and series have some hallmarks that could translate into a film — memorable characters, big set pieces, giant nuke-carrying mechs — they are also densely plotted and outright strange, especially in their rogues gallery, making it a tough climb for anyone who could condense a weird, complex twelve-hour trip into a coherent two hours.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a796bde8	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a796bde8	featureConfidence	1.0
Metal Gear Solid (Video Game)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a796bde8
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a81325d3	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a81325d3	comment	Final Fantasy is an RPG series that was popular enough for a film adaptation in 2001, but the problems are that each game is completely unconnected to the previous one; taking place in a different universe with different lore, only sharing some similarities that depend on the games. While some of the games could make for a miniseries, and the seventh and eighth might not be too effects heavy given their futuristic worlds and mostly human casts, the problem lies in which one to adapt first - since several of the initial games were released in the west under differently numbered titles (the fourth was released as Final Fantasy II for example). And since each game has a significant fan base, in choosing to adapt one, it would likely alienate a group of fans sad that their favourite wasn't adapted first. The actual film adaptation ended up as a standalone story that just alienated most of the franchise's fans, especially since it was set on Earth After the End rather than an original world like the games were. Even attempts at film sequels or spin-offs to existing games, such as Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, were poorly received for being unable to translate to a different medium. One of the reasons why itâ€™s so hard to translate into film also lie in the structure of how most Final Fantasy plots are told. While itâ€™s pretty easy to adapt a few memorable story moments from the games as seen by the Last Order: Final Fantasy VII OVA, itâ€™s a much taller order to try and weave the seriesâ€™ conventions into an hour and 40 minutes without disastrous pacing. The fact is most FF games are densely plotted, with the length and size of the games allowing for an equal amount of exciting action and compelling character drama, Advent Children and to a greater extent Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV however tried to cram as much character drama into the runtime and try and make up for it with massive action spectacle in their climaxes.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a81325d3	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a81325d3	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_a81325d3
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ab2a760	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ab2a760	comment	Despite talks of a Five Nights at Freddy's film adaptation having occurred for many years since the game was first released, it ultimately took until 2023 for such an adaptation to finally get out of stasis. Scott Cawthon posted on Reddit in the interim revealing that a key reason behind the long wait was because many scripts for the movie were scrapped and rewritten. Most of the scrapped scripts were scrapped either because they were FNAF In Name Only, had serious Continuity Lockout, or were not tonally appropriate for a FNAF adaptation. FNAF's story is a lore-dense Jigsaw Puzzle Plot in Anachronic Order, which also happens to be filled with Mind Screw, Surreal Horror, and Black Comedy, likely playing a part. As a result, Willy's Wonderland was the closest thing to an FNAF movie that people would ever get for a while. Ultimately, a direct film adaptation of the first game was finally released in 2023; and while fans largely liked the film for the faithfully recreated animatronics and the high degree of respect for the lore and fandom, critics largely were unimpressed due to the conspicuously low number of the iconic jump scares commonly associated with the games and the overly high focus on Mike Schmidtt and the other human characters instead of the iconic animatronics.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ab2a760	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ab2a760	featureConfidence	1.0
Five Nights at Freddy's (Video Game)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ab2a760
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ac03a2dd	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ac03a2dd	comment	While most of Little Shop of Horrors wasn't difficult to adapt for the 1986 film adaptation, the ending proved to be a case of this. Originally, the film was supposed to retain the stage musical's ending where Audrey and Seymour are killed and Audrey II begins its spectacular conquest of Earth to the tune of the song "Don't Feed the Plants". However, the Downer Ending proved to be a disaster with test audiences and the creators were forced to create a Focus Group Ending where Audrey and Seymour live and Audrey II is defeated. Director Frank Oz later realized that the differences between theatre and film were the reason why the original ending was received so poorly.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ac03a2dd	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ac03a2dd	featureConfidence	1.0
Little Shop of Horrors (Theatre)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ac03a2dd
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b0028436	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b0028436	comment	JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: It took the better part of 30 years for the manga to get a reasonably faithful anime adaptation for many reasons. Hirohiko Araki's character designs are incredibly busy and go through a lot of Art Evolution, the fights and powers are hard to work with if you don't have the aid of constant narration, and the most iconic part of the franchise that introduces the signature Stand system, Stardust Crusaders, is the third arc and serves mainly to tie up the plot of the first two (which deal with a completely different power system that becomes irrelevant from that point on). This even translates to trying to get it a Western release, as Araki's great love of Musical Theme Naming turns the series into a trademark minefield. The 90s OVA had to cut and change a lot of things to make it work, and the David Productions anime simply shrugged and embraced the operatic unreal stylism of the source material, going so far as to even create an animated equivalent to Araki's refusal to stick to a color scheme. A specific part that is hard to produce an anime for is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run. The story revolves around an American cross-country horse race, and horses are notoriously difficult to animate in 2D. Even David Productions admitted that they would rather wait for technology to advance to help with 2D horse animation, as they don't want to rely on CGI to animate the horses.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b0028436	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b0028436	featureConfidence	1.0
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Manga)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b0028436
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b1e6eef4	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b1e6eef4	comment	Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is the 35th Anniversary series in which the rangers transform into past rangers, which naturally makes it really hard to make a good Power Rangers adaptation out of it: the Stock Footage has 15 other Sentai shows which weren't adapted at all and it would be hard (and expensive) to change the footage into only the series which were adapted. Power Rangers Super Megaforce responded to this by... just using the unadapted Sentai teams, and lazily handwaving it as them being teams "never seen on Earth before."
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b1e6eef4	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b1e6eef4	featureConfidence	1.0
Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b1e6eef4
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b369b223	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b369b223	comment	The commercial failure of both Doom and Doom: Annihilation show that the Doom franchise as whole is a case of this. In principle a brutal and stoic protagonist in armour tearing through hordes of enemies shouldnâ€™t be so hard to get right (especially given works like The Raid, The Mandalorian or John Wick) but neither adaptation has managed to recreate the tone or story of the games. The main appeal of Doom is the Rule of Cool Power Fantasy as the player is supposed to embody the Doom Marine, whoâ€™s only purpose or joy in life is decimating The Legions of Hell. Later games like Doom (2016) understand this with the characterisation of Doomslayer purposely being kept at a bare minimum to the extent of an In-Universe apathy for non-demon slaying matters. For the films however such a character is a very hard sell to audiences, leading to obligatory tortured angst as seen in the 2005 film with Doomguy-expy Reaper, which conflicts the point of the character from the games. Doom Annihilation can't resist giving its protagonist Joan some depth and drama either, which only furthers distances the film from the games beyond her wielding the BFG. Another difficulty is the filmmakers fully committing to the Hell setting and iconography of the Doom games, being not only costly to film but a sure-fire way to trigger Christian groups. The 2005 film does a lot of Doing In the Wizard and making all demons infected humans rather the denizens of the inferno, which renders the plot closer to Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil (2002) more than anything to do with Doom. Doom Annihilation, to its credit, does use Hell and demons, albeit in a more sanitised fashion compared to the games.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b369b223	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b369b223	featureConfidence	1.0
Doom	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b369b223
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b4967d43	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b4967d43	comment	Sonic the Hedgehog only had the first two games representing the brand in the States when the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) debuted, with Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Robotnik being the only recurring game characters. Also not helping is that the localization process excised what story info the Japanese manuals originally had. The 2020 movie showed very little of Sonic's homeworld and opted for a Human-Focused Adaptation starring Sonic escaping to Earth (which is where he lives in the games anyway), to favorable results.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b4967d43	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b4967d43	featureConfidence	1.0
Sonic the Hedgehog (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b4967d43
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b7df5916	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b7df5916	comment	Prior to the announcement of Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, producer Simon Bennett stated this was why the source series, Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger, would not be given an adaptation. The show features a full team of twelve Rangers, which is a logistical nightmare in terms of giving them all proper character development over a single season. Cosmic Fury took a third option with the show adapting the Kyuranger mecha footage and having the team from Power Rangers Dino Fury in new suits.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b7df5916	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b7df5916	featureConfidence	1.0
Power Rangers Cosmic Fury	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b7df5916
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8b584cf	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8b584cf	comment	In one of their Sketchbooks, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman mentioned that Zits is not meant to be animated due to much of the strips' humor relying on surreal paneling, oddly shaped speech bubbles, and other static visual gags that would be incredibly hard to translate in an animated medium.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8b584cf	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8b584cf	featureConfidence	1.0
Zits (Comic Strip)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8b584cf
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8e7bb8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8e7bb8	comment	Super Sentai: Samurai Sentai Shinkenger is considered one of the best seasons and a Gateway Series for new fans, but it is also one of the hardest to translate into other languages due to its heavy rooting in uniquely Japanese cultural themes (Pillars of Moral Character, familial honor over profession, etc.). Because it was the first Sentai series Toei worked on after its western adaptation, Power Rangers was seemingly canceled, it's believed that they made a series strictly for themselves as they no longer had to worry about an international audience and how they'd deal with the inevitable cultural clash, and it's why it didn't even receive a Korean dub. However, Power Rangers was Un-Cancelled and the series was adapted into Power Rangers Samurai, which was seen as rather lackluster, in large part due to mostly being an untouched retread that repeated several plot elements and character beats but lacking the cultural assumptions motivating them, confusing western audiences. Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is the 35th Anniversary series in which the rangers transform into past rangers, which naturally makes it really hard to make a good Power Rangers adaptation out of it: the Stock Footage has 15 other Sentai shows which weren't adapted at all and it would be hard (and expensive) to change the footage into only the series which were adapted. Power Rangers Super Megaforce responded to this by... just using the unadapted Sentai teams, and lazily handwaving it as them being teams "never seen on Earth before." Prior to the announcement of Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, producer Simon Bennett stated this was why the source series, Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger, would not be given an adaptation. The show features a full team of twelve Rangers, which is a logistical nightmare in terms of giving them all proper character development over a single season. Cosmic Fury took a third option with the show adapting the Kyuranger mecha footage and having the team from Power Rangers Dino Fury in new suits.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8e7bb8	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8e7bb8	featureConfidence	1.0
Super Sentai (Franchise)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b8e7bb8
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b9b796cf	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b9b796cf	comment	Fate/stay night, while one of the more successful VNs in terms of adaptations, has a number of elements that are very hard to preserve in other media. Most of these relate to it not only having multiple very long routes (each one is about â…” the length of The Lord of the Rings), but requiring them to be played through in a specific order. The first route, Fate, takes the time to put all its cards on the table for the player's sake, and demonstrates how the central conflict is intended to play out. This makes it pretty straightforward to adapt since all the exposition is already there— in fact the first anime adaption came just two years after release, with the only major deviation being the removal of the porn scenes. That said, it is also generally considered the blandest of the three routes, because it explores Shirou's character the least and more or less goes how you'd expect it to gonote While the story does have some dramatic twists, all the important ones are so thoroughly in It Was His Sled territory that even later entries in the same franchise poke fun at the idea that anyone would be shocked by them, which is likely why it tends to fare poorly in adaptations after that initial one. Even that first adaptation threw in scenes or references from the other two routes in order to better pace the run-time and give characters Out of Focus in Fate more character. The second route, Unlimited Blade Works, has a clear point of divergence that allows the story to focus on certain characters and events that were glossed over or even Killed Offscreen the first time around, but this point is before more of the exposition happens. Shirou actually complains several times that he has to play catch-up with all the magi-babble Tohsaka spits out, but the game knows the player's already familiar with these concepts. This all makes UBW very difficult to adapt to another medium without destroying the pacing with tons of additional exposition, and even the best-regarded attempts are admitted to have some Continuity Lockout. Furthermore, the UBW route is the most fight heavy, as it focuses on the Servants duking it out more than the others, so it relies on a lot of exposition and detailed breakdowns of the characters abilities, which doesn't flow well outside the confines of a visual novel. The third and final route, Heaven's Feel, was long considered completely un-adaptable. Put simply, the plot is driven by an In-Universe case of Off the Rails and without understanding how things are supposed to go (which is completely skipped, as the player's been shown twice by now), it's next to impossible to see where things go wrong, let alone understand the characters' reactions. Additionally, a third subset of characters are focused on, and take full advantage of two whole routes worth of Foreshadowing; without it, most of their development teeters back and forth between Diabolus ex Machina and Ass Pull. Finally, the route includes two alternate endings ("Mind of Steel" and "Sparks Liner High") which are among the most popular scenes in the VN, but impossible to work into the main story. In all routes, Shirou is a First-Person Smartass with severe psychological issues which leave him unable to laugh or smile, and compel him to help others even when he knows they're just using him; at the same time, he knows he's strange and tries hard to conceal it from others. Whenever the player is given a choice on how Shirou should act, usually picking the more reasonable options will result in him dying in bizarre and horrific ways, with the option that sounds crazy being the only way to progress. The story actually encourages you collect as many of these bad endings as possible before moving on to the correct answer, and they often provide Foreshadowing for later plot developments. None of this is easy to work into the adaptations (which are linear and usually don't include any of Shirou's snarky narration), resulting in Shirou coming across as far more of The Fool than his VN counterpart.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b9b796cf	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b9b796cf	featureConfidence	1.0
Fate/stay night (Visual Novel)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_b9b796cf
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_bdbfba8e	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_bdbfba8e	comment	Many fans regard the show as next-to-impossible to adapt into a movie. Much of this stems from the 1963-1989 series' nature as a serialized show, already featuring drawn-out plots that match or even surpass the length of most feature films, making the idea of a movie redundant. Additionally, the series' dense lore and tangled continuity would make it difficult to make a movie that appeals to neophytes, as so much stuff would need to be introduced at once. Only three Doctor Who movies were ever made — the first two were adaptations of already-aired serials set in an independent continuity, while the third was poorly-received by fans thanks to being indecisive about whether it wanted to appeal to longtime fans or newcomers.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_bdbfba8e	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_bdbfba8e	featureConfidence	1.0
Dr. Who and the Daleks	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_bdbfba8e
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c43df4d8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c43df4d8	comment	Doctor Who: While the series has seen a number of mostly well-regarded adaptations in other mediums, two of them are considered far trickier: Many fans regard the show as next-to-impossible to adapt into a movie. Much of this stems from the 1963-1989 series' nature as a serialized show, already featuring drawn-out plots that match or even surpass the length of most feature films, making the idea of a movie redundant. Additionally, the series' dense lore and tangled continuity would make it difficult to make a movie that appeals to neophytes, as so much stuff would need to be introduced at once. Only three Doctor Who movies were ever made — the first two were adaptations of already-aired serials set in an independent continuity, while the third was poorly-received by fans thanks to being indecisive about whether it wanted to appeal to longtime fans or newcomers. The other medium Doctor Who has a strong amount of difficulty fitting into is video games. While the series' "fighting monsters through time and space" premise would theoretically make for a good game, it's set back by the fact that the Doctor is not a conventional action hero, preferring to confront enemies with guile more often than not, with the Doctor's companions typically acting as The Watson to them. It's also the result of bad timing, as the genre of video games that would suit the show, Adventure Games, were most popular in the 1990s when the television series was cancelled and by the time of the revival, Adventure Games were out of fashion. Consequently, while multiple attempts have been made to create viable Doctor Who video games, only a few of them were particularly well regarded.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c43df4d8	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c43df4d8	featureConfidence	1.0
Doctor Who	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c43df4d8
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c46417ba	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c46417ba	comment	One of the reasons why itâ€™s so hard to translate into film also lie in the structure of how most Final Fantasy plots are told. While itâ€™s pretty easy to adapt a few memorable story moments from the games as seen by the Last Order: Final Fantasy VII OVA, itâ€™s a much taller order to try and weave the seriesâ€™ conventions into an hour and 40 minutes without disastrous pacing. The fact is most FF games are densely plotted, with the length and size of the games allowing for an equal amount of exciting action and compelling character drama, Advent Children and to a greater extent Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV however tried to cram as much character drama into the runtime and try and make up for it with massive action spectacle in their climaxes.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c46417ba	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c46417ba	featureConfidence	1.0
Last Order: Final Fantasy VII	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_c46417ba
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ceae00ca	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ceae00ca	comment	1. Outside from 1995 never received the film adaptation that was suggested for it at one point, being perhaps more directly comparable to Ulysses in that it features a heavily non-linear plot and frequent use of internal monologues (most of which are the songs on the album itself).
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ceae00ca	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ceae00ca	featureConfidence	1.0
Outside (Music)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_ceae00ca
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d794a2a2	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d794a2a2	comment	AKIRA may be a successful manga adapted into an even more successful anime film, but efforts to create a live-action film have frequently stalled out, despite efforts from directors such as Jordan Peele and Taika Waititi. Most have pointed out that intricately detailed set pieces such as the destruction of Tokyo and Tetsuo's mutation are much easier to accomplish via animation (and even then the anime film cost so much to make that it risked tanking Japan's entire animation industry), and that its dark plot involving drug abuse, gang violence, and tyranny via superpowers does not have broad audience appeal. Not helping matters is the predominantly Japanese cast, raising concerns about the Minority Show Ghetto. Despite these factors, other Capepunk films inspired by AKIRA have seen success, and Chronicle can be argued to be a Spiritual Successor.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d794a2a2	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d794a2a2	featureConfidence	1.0
AKIRA (Manga)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d794a2a2
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d7b49ed0	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d7b49ed0	comment	Diamond Dogs from 1974 was never the easiest to translate to another medium thanks to its lack of an actual plot— it was written as a Captain Ersatz version of Nineteen Eighty-Four after Bowie failed to secure the rights to make a musical adaptation of the book, but the album foregoes any semblance of a story in favor of simply exploring a general set of themes; it has less of a plot than Ziggy Stardust! The one time Bowie did try to bring Diamond Dogs to another medium was on the stage during the album's associated tour; like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, it was marred by constant technical issues, and Bowie eventually dropped the whole shtick altogether during the second leg of the tour in favor of a far more minimalist, soul-inspired setup.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d7b49ed0	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d7b49ed0	featureConfidence	1.0
Diamond Dogs (Music)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d7b49ed0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d99024a2	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d99024a2	comment	Genesis' 1974 Rock Opera The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is generally considered to be the musical equivalent of Ulysses in terms of works that would be impossible to make a good adaptation of, primarily owing to its Mind Screw plot and heavy use of surreal imagery. The album was already hard enough to adapt on stage; the associated tour required a bevy of extraordinarily elaborate effects, and at no point was all of it ever able to work as intended. Since then, nobody has attempted to adapt The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway into any medium, to say nothing of the performance stage.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d99024a2	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d99024a2	featureConfidence	1.0
Genesis (Band) (Music)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_d99024a2
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_db55312d	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_db55312d	comment	The two live action films from 2015 suffered from a case of Compressed Adaptation. They tried to fit the first 25 episodes of the anime into two movies, leading to many important characters and plot points being Adapted Out. The characters that did appear were radically different from their anime versions to the point where they might as well have been new characters. The movies also did NOT have the budget to make the Titans look imposing, leading to lots of Special Effects Failure and Narm. The only other crack at a live action version of Attack on Titans has been from Warner Bros, whose adaptation has been stuck in Development Hell.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_db55312d	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_db55312d	featureConfidence	1.0
Attack on Titan (2015)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_db55312d
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_dd6c417	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_dd6c417	comment	Samurai Sentai Shinkenger is considered one of the best seasons and a Gateway Series for new fans, but it is also one of the hardest to translate into other languages due to its heavy rooting in uniquely Japanese cultural themes (Pillars of Moral Character, familial honor over profession, etc.). Because it was the first Sentai series Toei worked on after its western adaptation, Power Rangers was seemingly canceled, it's believed that they made a series strictly for themselves as they no longer had to worry about an international audience and how they'd deal with the inevitable cultural clash, and it's why it didn't even receive a Korean dub. However, Power Rangers was Un-Cancelled and the series was adapted into Power Rangers Samurai, which was seen as rather lackluster, in large part due to mostly being an untouched retread that repeated several plot elements and character beats but lacking the cultural assumptions motivating them, confusing western audiences.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_dd6c417	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_dd6c417	featureConfidence	1.0
Samurai Sentai Shinkenger	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_dd6c417
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e26d37ec	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e26d37ec	comment	A Tetris movie has bounced in and out of Development Hell for years due to the fact that, well, it's a simple shape-stacking puzzle game with exactly zero narrative potential. Larry Kasenoff, the producer of Mortal Kombat: The Movie and the director/producer of the infamous Food Fight, had the rights for a while and expressed a plan for an "epic science fiction trilogy" based on the game... however the hell that would work. Eventually, the rights were picked up by Apple TV+, who decided that rather than directly adapting the game, their movie would instead be about the very odd and interesting real life story behind the development of the game.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e26d37ec	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e26d37ec	featureConfidence	1.0
Tetris / Videogame	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e26d37ec
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e2716b52	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e2716b52	comment	A Chorus Line is a musical about the lives of Broadway chorus dancers, combining elaborate choreography with musical soliloquys from each of the dancers. As the show is heavily based around Broadway culture and purposefully lacks a main character, the 1985 film adaptation did not do well with critics or audiences. The appeal of seeing all the dancers come together on stage is lost on film, and rather than focus on its Ensemble Cast, the film makes Cassie the main character, even recontextualizing "What I Did For Love" as her Break Up Song to Zach as opposed to the cast singing about their love for their craft. Note that a huge theme of the original story is that every character in the ensemble is important in their own way, but the choice to prioritize Cassie's story to give the film a more traditional narrative undermines this.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e2716b52	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e2716b52	featureConfidence	1.0
A Chorus Line (Theatre)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e2716b52
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e5da0fa0	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e5da0fa0	comment	Various attempts to adapt the Myst series to either film or TV have wound up in Development Hell, likely due to the games being told from a first-person perspective with a nameless, faceless protagonist and a focus on exploration and puzzles rather than action and violence.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e5da0fa0	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e5da0fa0	featureConfidence	1.0
Myst (Video Game)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e5da0fa0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e67a7d6c	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e67a7d6c	comment	Negima! Magister Negi Magi is a manga that ran for nine years and famously went through a slow Genre Shift over its life, transforming from a fanservice-filled slice of life comedy into a still admittedly fanservice-filled action fantasy tale. Thus, the vast majority of adaptations focus only on the earlier chapters, ignoring (or never reaching) the later parts of the story when it becomes more of a fantasy epic, though one OVA did simply start 100 chapters in and cover some of those later chapters. That the manga ended very abruptly due to rights disputes doesn't make it any easier, either.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e67a7d6c	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e67a7d6c	featureConfidence	1.0
Negima! Magister Negi Magi (Manga)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e67a7d6c
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e6ef8ea2	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e6ef8ea2	comment	The Nutcracker has proven to be a challenge to adapt beyond the ballet stage. Since the show has its conflict reserved for the first half and is mostly a showcase of music and dancing, nobody seems sure of how to add a plot to a story that is so...plotless. Though Hollywood has certainly tried, no major film adaptation seems to have captured the spirit of the ballet too well.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e6ef8ea2	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e6ef8ea2	featureConfidence	1.0
The Nutcracker (Theatre)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e6ef8ea2
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e7110fee	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e7110fee	comment	When BlazBlue: Alter Memory released to a middling reception, this was one of the complaints leveled at it. The BlazBlue series just has too much going on, being a massive Fantasy Kitchen Sink with a large cast of characters that have stories that tie in to each other and the lore of the series. The plot is also extremely dense, with elements of a "Groundhog Day" Loop, Timey-Wimey Ball, and Jigsaw Puzzle Plot. It's a lot to get through, but the games are able to take their time by giving each character their own story path to explain what's going on. Alter Memory tried to compress the first title and the second title into a 12 episode anime, and it far from enough to get the story across. It's telling that most other adaptions (such as the manga or drama CDs) of BlazBlue didn't bother for a straight retelling of the story from the games, instead focusing on other characters or parts of the story that the games didn't cover.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e7110fee	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e7110fee	featureConfidence	1.0
BlazBlue: Alter Memory	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_e7110fee
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_f4559fd1	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_f4559fd1	comment	The original Kinnikuman anime never saw the light of day in America because distributors would have the difficult, if not impossible, job of translating/censoring the show so that it's suitable for their audience given the sheer amount of violence (and to a lesser extent, its Toilet Humor), the main protagonist being a drunken pervert and there being a heroic Nazi character with a lot of screentime. While toys and a video game based on the series did make it over stateside, it was renamed M.U.S.C.L.E and the aforementioned Nazi character was removed. Also worth noting is how the original cartoon did air in France, where censorship laws are less rigid than in the US... and was quickly banned.
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_f4559fd1	featureApplicability	1.0
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_f4559fd1	featureConfidence	1.0
Kinnikuman (Manga)	hasFeature	Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_f4559fd1
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_f8ee3c81	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_f8ee3c81	comment	There's been a Metroid film in Development Hell since 2003, and even John Woo was set to direct at one point before it got canned. The problem, as explained by film producer Brad Foxhoven, is that Samus isn't particularly complex as heroines go and is largely a voiceless avatar for the player to boot, and so the discussion with Nintendo to expound upon her character led the company getting cold feet about the project. Even when Nintendo themselves decided to have Samus talk and give her a personality in Metroid: Other M, it got derided by fans for being too stereotypically girly and damsel-y, and contrasting badly with other versions of her character (which were closer to Master Chief or the Doom Slayer). Along with Samus's character, the games are generally meant to be isolationist, with Samus being alone without other humans to talk to, which is a tough sell to general audiences (despite films like Gravity doing well). Even when the producers are on board with going in that direction, such as Jordon Voght Roberts, who envisioned the film like Drive (2011), Nintendo is still hesitant about it. This was also seen when Adi Shankar, the Netflix Castlevania (2017) producer, pitched a Metroid series; it got turned down by the series' co-creator Yoshiro Sakamoto, who still feels the cutscenes of Metroid Other M are worthy of the movie label. Despite this, the Metroid manga adaptations are pretty well received by fans, and even one of the authors, Idzuki Kouji, encouraged a film to be made.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_fa738078	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_fa738078	comment	Sailor Moon rather unsurprisingly has proved to be a challenge to be adapted into live action, as seen by both Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon and Sera Myu. While both adaptations are quite enjoyable in their own ways with plenty of Narm Charm, the effort to try replicate the iconic transformation sequences and general beautiful art and animation of the manga and anime, particularly in Pretty Guardian's case is arduous. Thereâ€™s just no getting around the fact the Sailor Senshi and the rest of the characters were designed to be as stylised as possible in both appearance and actions and attempting to bring them to life with only a modest budget, even when written by the original mangaka Takeuchi, is a recipe for trouble. Even more minor things like the billowing of the Senshiâ€™s hair and skirts, which can be effortlessly done in animation is lost in live action thanks to wardrobe and effects constraints.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_fdd11c1b	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Hard-to-Adapt Work / int_fdd11c1b	comment	While Eternal Fighter Zero's other source visual novels, Air, Kanon, and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e all have anime adaptations, MOON never got one, and One only has a couple of OVAs with enough episodes to be counted on one hand. The anime of One doesn't bother explaining the story or characters to those who haven't played the visual novel, cuts out all iconic scenes of all character routes, and has even less action and tangible conflict than Air and Kanon. Meanwhile, MOON has a plot of a H-Game and is so dark, disgusting, and graphic that no studio will ever risk making an anime adaptation without cutting out much of the content and therefore making the story incomprehensible.
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Hard-to-Adapt Work	processingCategory2	Media Adaptation Tropes
Adaptation. / int_23011aa8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
The Shining / int_23011aa8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
The Word Is Murder / int_23011aa8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Made in Canada / int_23011aa8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Overly Sarcastic Productions (Web Animation) / int_23011aa8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work
Mother's Basement (Web Video) / int_23011aa8	type	Hard-to-Adapt Work

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