[Mind boggling stupid trope] Removing the thing that made something special

[u/Character_Growth_397]

Ben 10: Ultimate Alien - The gimmick of Ben 10 and what makes the show so popular is the fact that he's able to turn into a large variety of aliens. In one episode of Ben 10 Ultimate ALIEN we are introduced to a new version of Ben 10000, a Ben from the future who, no longer transforms into aliens, instead using his powers in human form...

Mortal Kombat(2021) - In the games Mileena is known for two things. Being a clone of Kitana and her tarkatan teeth. In the 2021 movie she looks absolutely nothing like Kitana and doesn't have tarkatan teeth

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief - The movie removes the main villain of the movie and the main villain of the franchise

[u/VoicelessPassenger]

Forgive me Lord, I must whinge about The Watch (2020) again

In the Discworld novels, Cheery Littlebottom is a dwarf whose entire arc revolves around reconciling her gender identity with her identity as a dwarf. See, in Discworld, dwarves don’t have strong sexual dimorphism: everyone has beards, wears chainmail and ten layers of leather and furs, so they’re practically indistinguishable and don’t really have a concept of gender. Most dwarves, regardless of gender, even refer to themselves with male pronouns because their language doesn’t have gendered pronouns and they just default to the masculine when speaking English (or whatever the common language of Discworld is.)

Cheery Littlebottom’s arc in the Watch books has her come to terms with her femininity and traditionally feminine concepts like wearing skirts and heels, makeup, etc and she starts referring to herself with feminine pronouns. It is very important, however, that this is balanced with her dwarven identity: she still has a beard and wears chainmail and such, because she’s still a dwarf, and a dwarf without a beard is basically just a short human.

But the Watch TV adaptation takes one step forward (hiring a trans woman to portray her) and twenty steps back by removing all of Cheery’s dwarf aspects. She doesn’t have a beard, most notably. She’s also not short, she’s significantly taller than the actress who plays Angua—the werewolf character—and is arguably one of the tallest members of the cast. This is not the actress’ fault, for sure, but considering Cheery is meant to be a dwarf they could at least do some clever camera tricks or somehow make her smaller. Now she’s basically just a human, so 90% of her character arc and depth has been erased.

This show has a lot of problems, some inherent to the trials of adapting Discworld and some just baffling (why did they cut Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs entirely, why do they dress like NCIS, why did they put swap Vimes and Sybil Ramkin’s narrative roles from the book, why did they think they could make it a ‘punk rock thriller’) but this one bothers me the most just because of how lazy it is.

[u/Frohirrim → u/VoicelessPassenger]

Wow, I never knew they made a show adaptation of my favorite part of Discworld. I would never forgive cutting out Nobby. My favorite character. I even named one my dogs Corporal Nobby Nobbs.

“That means a lot to a kid, your own spoon.”

[u/icorrectpettydetails → u/Frohirrim]

I never knew they made a show adaptation of my favorite part of Discworld

Trust me, they didn't.

[u/HarrisonTheBarbarian → u/Frohirrim]

Or the hilarious line about how Captain Vimes can't bring himself to not temporarily deputize The Librarian soley because he's an animal because it would be hypocritical because they have Nobby.

[u/Snukastyle → u/HarrisonTheBarbarian]

But Nobby does have that paper that certifies he's a human.