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Comment by copperx | Hacker News Reader

I understand your point, but you're overlooking who does the adapting. Oral stories were naturally updated with each generation, and I think that's wonderful. However, in this case, we're discussing literature being adapted by a global corporation with shareholders aiming to please a broad audience.

If Disney were to adapt The Lord of the Rings in 100 years to reflect new "lessons," I would be relieved to no longer be around to see it.

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The Amazon Prime adaptation Rings of Power was an interesting (see: bad) case-study on what happens when you try to write Tolkien without him. It's perpetually insipid, like watching a puppet show try to adapt Shakespeare. So much is stripped off the bone that no story exists anymore, and all the characters and their motives blend into one another or aren't shown at all.

> If Disney were to adapt The Lord of the Rings in 100 years to reflect new "lessons," I would be relieved to no longer be around to see it.

What's funny is, these adaptations don't even do that. Peter Jackson's films are fun because they're essentially a "Spielbergian" take on what these books should be. They're still pared-back, but they have enough of the throughlines with the original story that you still get the big takeaways at the end. They're reductive films, but powerful.

Rings of Power just, exists. It doesn't want to adapt Tolkien's original themes of death and transcendence, it doesn't want to embrace a new theme, so it's stories feel incidental and pointless. There are no conflicting plots or overarching adventures. You're just watching people in costume do pretend-errands so we can point at the TV like Leonardo Decaprio when we see our favorite character. It has no intention to conserve the original narrative or puppet it's corpse for something new. It's just a cruel mockery of an IP that can be bought out for the highest bid.

A completely faithful film adaptation of Tolkien's books would make for a terrible movie.

Which isn't to say that all the adaptations are good, of course. But the changes that were made in Peter Jackson's LOTR or the Rankin/Bass adaptation of The Hobbit were well-intentioned and generally made sense for their respective media.

Probably Tolkien wouldn't like either, but that doesn't automatically make them bad. A good example here would be Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, which was an excellent film regardless of what Stephen King thinks about it.

Which isn't to say that all adaptations are good, of course. But ragging on artistic license in general just because some works of art fail is a depressing, philistine conclusion to draw.

A terrible action movie, maybe. I think Studio Ghibli could pull it off (not that that's what they do).

Funny you should mention Studio Ghibli right after I cited the animated version of The Hobbit. ;)

I think (even though it isn't well reviewed) Tales of Earthsea shows that they do sometimes make adaptations.

Not faithful adaptations, to my knowledge. They tell their own stories, and they do a good job of it, but they don't tell other people's.

The Earthsea adaptation was more of an action film than the books were action books, which happens to Tolkien adaptations too.

Speaking of Stephen King, The Mist is another great example. The film adaptation completely changed the ending, and people almost unanimously agree for the better.

The ending of IT's adaptation is also almost universally agreed to be better (the original ending involves group sex).

> It's perpetually insipid, like watching a puppet show try to adapt Shakespeare.

I don’t know about you but I would absolutely watch a Muppets adaptation of a Shakespeare play.

When it comes to adapting classic literature they’ve given us the best adaptations of A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island.

The adaptation was by a group of screenwriters, story tellers, and artists.

Sure, it lived inside a soulless corporation that imposed limits & expectations. But please don’t do a disservice to the brilliant artists and creatives who make animation.

> Sure, it lived inside a soulless corporation that imposed limits & expectations. But please don’t do a disservice to the brilliant artists and creatives who make animation.

Just because people are hard working and skilled does not place them above criticism. In fact they should be criticized even more when the stuff they produce is substandard

We would never say something trite like "don't do a disservice to the brilliant programmers and techies who make software" when we're criticising bad tech industry security practices

But they were specifically responding to a point about the identity of the creators, not the quality. And if it were about the quality, well, Disney's Little Mermaid is a classic.

Directors and PMs in multiple FAANG companies that I worked in would commonly say that "a lot of people worked really hard on this" and therefore we couldn't internally criticize an awful implementation or a terrible business plan that caused massive brand / reputation damage that could have been avoided if people outside the org had been able to file complaints sooner in the process.

In this case it is who is being criticized, or even more to the point, outright ignored.

I stand by my comment. It is incredibly, incredibly hard to make a living as a creative and even more challenging to do something as memorable as the Little Mermaid in all the many challenges of the entertainment industry.

Guess I’m just stuck on the “man in the arena” moment. Criticism is not virtuous by default.

Are you referring to the brilliant artists and creatives who refer to their place of employment as "Mousechwitz", or a different group who likely have their own affectionate nicknames? Because I'm pretty sure artists themselves are some of the most aware of how commercial imperatives warp the creative process.

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