We are about two weeks out from Destin Daniel Cretton’s latest MCU joint, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a movie that I am somehow excited about even though I rolled my eyes very heavily at the plot contrivances at the events of No Way Home. This is also means, we’re about two weeks from the announcement that Destin Daniel Cretton had started the search to cast Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura for a live-action Naruto adaptation. I suppose a lot of the excitement for the latter is going to be predicated on the former, but the thought certainly got something stirring.
When Chris, the fellow BNP writer who shared the news with me, posted he also jested “I would ‘simply say not adaptable’ but One Piece Live Action exists, so what do I know?”
The funny thing is that right now Netflix has two live action properties that adapt beloved fan material that finished their dropping their second seasons this summer, and have managed to both prove and disprove simultaneously that it is in fact possible to adapt an animated series. So, let us look at why we adapt things in the first place before we discuss the highs of One Piece and the lows of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
The Reasons We Revisit…
There is a cynical part of me that looks at the attempts of adaptations as an easy cash grab. The property has proven itself in some capacity, so why risk making something new, when you can remake something old. Disney is currently playing this song and dance double time to mixed (if not utterly bad) results, but it is the path of least resistance.
But on a slightly less cynical hand, adaptation offers two major things. The first is exposure. Adapting a work is an easy way to reintroduce a beloved property back into the zeitgeist. And the second is revision. Adapting the work typically comes after the completion of the original, which means the whole narrative arc is revealed and understood, which means that elements can be introduced early and be more in lined with the final authorial vision than the early parts of the serialized adventures. It also allows for additions and modifications. When Harley Quinn was an invention for Batman: The Animated Series and then became a mainstay of Gotham, so there is plenty of precedent of adaptations expanding on the materials.
It is harder to point out solid examples when going from animated to live action. Despite the medium being incredibly mature in more ways than one, animated stories are still seen as “childish” so the the live-action is an attempt to bring it to a wider audience, and it works. So it’s not that surprising that there are so many attempts to convert the experience in an attempt to get that exposure, provide that revision, and yes, get that bank (earned or unearned).
Let’s Look at One Piece
- Author involvement
- a showrunner who cares
- casting
Let’s Look at Avatar: The Last Airbender
My controversial take is that I don’t think Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is necessarily a bad adaptation. By no stretch of the imagination do I think it is a *good* adaptation, but the series did a few of things right.
- Visuals
- Additional plot points of Zuko’s crew and Toph’s parents
The series also took several missteps between the refusal to let Sokka have a character arc and Toph’s iconic metalbending scene reduced to the worst line of dialog I’ve been in a show.
Truly, the dissapointing thing is that the show had the bones to be good, but there are unforced error after unforced error when it comes to condensing the story.
Bonus Round: Castlevania and Devil May Cry
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