What makes a good adaptation?

[MetalSkulkBane]

Some of you know of Avatar: the Last Airbender (amazing cartoon) and it's recent Live-Action Netflix adaption (which is... average at best). Many people talk how ALTLA doesn't need adaptation like that. Same discussion we had with Disney Remakes. Or Cowboy Bebop and other anime adaptions. Remakes, reboots, re-imaginings.

This lead me to ponder obvious question: what is EVER the point of adaptations? (other than death of creativity and attraction of well known IPs)

I can think of 2 types of scenario when adaptation can work:

1) Major Change of Medium
Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are beloved by readers and non-readers of original books. And appeal is simple: books have their unique strengths, but it's nice to actually see the characters, let alone with giant budget spent to bring something to reality. Similarly adapting to Video Game or even Musical. It might not be superior to original work, but it will have unique strengths.
Other site of this coin are Animation to Live Action adaption, something Hollywood keeps telling us is will be a massive upgrade, but ends up being novelty at best, failure at works. Because both media are similar, so it's not that easy to to "upgrade" the story. Only example of positive reception I can think of is Netflix One Piece, but I haven't seen either version yet.

2) Adapting setting not story
TMNT franchise has dozens of iterations, all with basic setting being the same (turtles mutate, befriend April, fight ninjas). But unlike A:TLA they don't copy plots or scenes, except some broad stokes (City At War, Escape to Northampton).  Because every versions of TMNT is flexible enough to justify it's existence, whenever it's edgy Mirage Comics.or craziness of Rise of TMNT.
Of course this works type of adaptation works for long running media (Superhero Comics, 80s cartoons) and is much harder if you have focused narrative with set story beats (Movies).

(Side note, it's crazy how anime industry works: Aiming for 1:1 adaptions, redrawing every panel, copying every line and just adding sounds and motion. Average Joe see it as original but better, while hardcores will explain how anime has special lighting, manga unique paneling, etc. No other genre can do that. Perfect comic books adaptations would often be a waste of time, while comics that just use screenshoots are considered lame).

[FlameStream]

Simply put, a good adaptation is something that makes use of the target medium's strength, all while knowing that there are constraints due to different resources available, and working around it to their best effort.

The anime industry may be generally seen as one that somehow abides by the source material 1:1, but I'm on the camp where if they can do it better, taking advantage of cinematography for an audience who cares about that like me, then my experience will be enhanced as a result regardless of the derivation.

Edited March 6 by FlameStream

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Respect of the source is what makes a good adaptation.

I don't mean in the purist sense of making a 1:1 adaptation or keeping everything the same as the source, but in using the source and following it's rules, settings, characters and their dimensions, and events in making the adaptation.

The point behind an adaptation is to expose a work to a new audience via a new medium: adapting a novel into a movie or a tv series, or a graphic novel/comic into an animated format. It does not have to follow the source rigidly to the point you can't make any alterations or additions, but ideally should at least follow the spirit of the source. Basically, don't pull the type of underwhelming shit M. Night Shyamalan did with The Last Airbender with his half-assed attempt with bending.

I'm actually not interested in the live action Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I did see a scene where 

Spoiler

Avatar Kiyoshi appears (in place of Roku? idk I didn't watch the episode itself) and trounces Zuko and his minions cornering Katara.

We all know that never happened in the original, but apparently they wanted to have a moment to bring this character out for audiences. It's a big change in itself, and I wouldn't call that a bad thing.

Some adaptations want to take advantage of any missed opportunities that the original work never did, either because they didn't have time or didn't think about it at the time--the Shattered World Crisis of Archie Sonic comes to mind for me over involving most of the present Sonic cast in it as opposed to excluding them entirely.

And sure, other adaptations may want to try something new, like the Sonic movie or Detective Pikachu (I never played Detective Pikachu, so I don't know how much that rings true).

What counts as disrespecting the source? Removing things and all around whitewashing elements because you personally find them problematic and distasteful and don't want to work with it, such as the news of the live action Avatar: TLA removing Sokka's sexism towards women despite that being essential to his growth in overcoming that as a character. I would've been able to eat that news much better if they said they didn't have time for it instead (if they could even say that to begin with), even if I wasn't personally interested in the live action version. That's like removing Batman's distaste for guns or no kill code because you find it stupid he won't put a bullet in his enemies--it's one thing to explore that as a "what if" story with an alternate setting or even to explore it in the main setting by (somehow) having Batman going through some development where he decides to use a gun (I don't exactly know how you'd actually pull that off and make it long term however), but to make a Batman adaptation where he goes in gun's blazing at his enemies and expect people to accept this as the same Batman they've always known? I don't need to explain how that's a complete betrayal of the character you're supposed to be adapting.

My thing with adaptations has less to do with them being adaptations and more to do with why you would want certain animated works to be given a live-action adaptation to begin with. This more or less has to do with my personal preference for animated works as opposed to live action, because if you were to make an animated adaptation of a live action work...I'm not gonna lie, I'd probably be more invested in it by comparison.

My only answer to the point behind live action adaptations is that they want to push the realism as far as they can go with adapting it--"what if it were real" seems to be a major premise to the idea of live action adaptations, and while I'm personally not a fan, I can't really deny that there is a selling point in there. Sure A:TLA the animation is a masterpiece, but we saw with the live-action trailer being a hit on YouTube at the time that there is something interesting to making an animated work look real with live actors and visual effects.

Edited March 6 by CrownSlayer’s Shadow