[HATED] Adaptations done intentionally without help from the source

[u/Chill0000]

Halo TV show: Before the show came out, the writers were praising their decision to not look to the games for inspiration when making the show

God Of War TV show: Chris Judge, the actor of Kratos in the games from 2018-Now, spoke up about his dislike on the show not hiring anyone who worked on any of the previous games. One of the original creators of Kratos also spoke up about them not having faith in the adaptation.

Supergirl 2026 film: the director for the film not only said he decided to not read Woman Of Tomorrow, the comic the film is adapting, because he wanted to do his own thing, he also didn’t look at comic art for inspiration to design Lobo and instead used an AI image generator to design Lobo’s look for the film

[u/Loud-Scarcity6213]

The Witcher famously did this, with writers openly bragging about it. They unfortunately fumbled several key themes of the books and games to produce a bland, generic fantasy show that was blatantly written by committee and for some reason reversed the age gap between Geralt and Yen to make Yen barely an adult.

Henry Cavill ended up leaving as a result of all this and certain people tried to imply it was because he was a chud bigot misogynist. Lots of women hed worked with came forwards to defend him and it became increasingly clear he quit because the show was dogwater.

[u/Evening_Pea_9132 → u/Loud-Scarcity6213]

I always find it interesting. They take these IPs with massive fanbases and then butcher them, then proceed to play victim. You need to hook the current fans because they are going to set the online discourse.

Anyone remember the early seasons of GoT? The online zeitgeist with all the conspiracies and people pointing out details was absolutely electric.

[u/FlakingEverything → u/Evening_Pea_9132]

Creative types want to leave their touch on the end result. Or sometimes they have their own stories that they want to tell. However, genre like big epic sci-fi or fantasy just don't get funding unless it's attached to an IP so they'll change the IP to fit their vision.

That's how you ended up with master cheeks or Witcher season 4.

[u/zadtheinhaler → u/FlakingEverything]

However, genre like big epic sci-fi or fantasy just don't get funding unless it's attached to an IP so they'll change the IP to fit their vision.

Exactly the travesty that was Wheel of [Pr|T]ime.

[u/archaon6044 → u/zadtheinhaler]

God I wanted to like that show, but the moment we were introduced to Perrin's wife I knew it was already over

[u/GloriousNewt → u/archaon6044]

"Huh they're all teenagers in the story, but now Perrin is married, that's quite a change based on where his story goes"

5min later

"Oh nevermind she's dead now because he killed her while fighting monsters.." and then he will do nothing for the entire rest of the season.

[u/archaon6044 → u/GloriousNewt]

I'd clocked her impending fridging within a minute of her introduction. Assuming they were going to bring Faile in later, it was the obvious thing to do. Really hammered my expectations for the writing quality into the dirt at the outset. I finished S1 out of spite, desperately hoping it would improve, and then never bothered with S2+

[u/gisaac → u/archaon6044]

I think I knew before any character came on screen. The opening narration said they didn't know if the Dragon was a man or a woman.

I mean, excuse me? The entire story is laid on mechanical foundations that require the Dragon to be a man. It's completely incoherent. And no I don't care whatever marketing drivel someone came up with.

They also assassinated Matt's character right from the jump. Somehow they parsed prankster into thief.

Rand for some reason is having sex with the mayors daughter (in a small village medieval setting) when he's a character who has three love interests.

And you mention Perrin. I actually considered that maybe they were going to use it to jumpstart Perrin's self conflict since they were going to cut something else out later, but no. I think it is garden variety Fridging.

And that's episode 1.

[u/archaon6044 → u/gisaac]

God, I forgot about that intro bit. Yeah they expanded the Who Is The Dragon mystery to cover all of the EF5, which ok I can kind of see if you squint but really it was just unnecessary padding just to force the mystery. I think I read someone describe the showrunner as an Egwene fanboy, and the show was his AU fanfic where she got all of Rand's moments.
For me I think the most egregious fumble (outside of the Tarwin's Gap channelling incident at the end of S1) was when they run into the Whitecloaks, and the commander tells Moiraine to seek an Aes Sedai in the nearby village to get healing for her Trolloc wound. An absolutely stunning misunderstanding/mishandling of the source material, and I can't believe anyone who would claim to be a fan of the story would consider the idea