Yesterday I caught a few glimpses of The Killing Joke’s animated film adaptation, and while I won’t give you a review until I’ve seen it, the clip I saw got me thinking on the subject of adaptations and the ways people go about them.
TV Tropes has a vast list of different adaptation tropes, from Compressed Adaptation, where in the process of adapting the story to a new medium they cut out entire chunks of the story or universe hoping the overall experience remains the same, no matter how many holes there are. There’s Distillation, which is about simplifying complex elements of the source material to make the transitions easier. Pragmatic Adaptation is the most reasonable of all, where you cut out or remix the elements that just won’t work in the new medium. Continue reading Adaptations – Altering the Source