Batman Animation: Adaptation vs Original

[Arnoldoaad]

Here is something that has been on my mind for a long time

Im a big fan of anime and manga and I have always wondered how is with comics there is almost never a faithful adaptation of the source material like it is presented with anime.
I obvioulsly know that they are pretty different mediums mainly because on the side of manga there is lmost always only one writer and then when that is adapted it is still the same story told by the vision of the director and such, but the story is almost always the same beat by beat.

That never happens with comics.
Im mainly thinking about this right now because of the new Hush animated movie
I have not watch it yet and I actually wasnt even planning on picking it up, however thanks to CBR I got spoiled on the new twist.
Which I absolutely hate.
Even without really watching it I feel that this direction is complete non-sense
I dont even like Hush(the storyline or the character) that much, I think the story is extremely overated and both Heart of Hush and House of Hush are way better stories about that.

another good example of this is movie: Batman Vs. Robin
which despite of its title is actually an adaptation of Scott Snyder's Court of Owls storyline, which is one of my all time favorites and yet this is also not that either, it is instead a weird amalgamation of Snyder's Court of Owls with Peter Tomasi's Born to Kill storyline, which is also a very good arc too, yet the movie doesnt serve as a good replacement for either, I did enjoy this movie but not as much as I would expect something like a direct adaptation from beginning to end from those stories.

Would it be bad if for example DC made a new animated tv series and they just adapted Snyder's arc or Morrison's or King's from begining to end, scene by scene, panel by panel, bubble by bubble?
Im I wrong thinking something like that wouldnt be bad or difficult or even non-profitable or should DC Animated wing be independant on just adapting the stuff that they have with what they have?
or maybe should they start making completely new original stories again?
remembering that BTAS gave us Harley Quinn, the new origin for Mr Freeze, the Phantasm, etc.

[Jackalope89]

Under the Red Hood. The film cuts out the stuff unnecessary to the plot line (like Onyx and Bludhaven going boom), but otherwise remains true to the comic it was based on.

Granted, its a standalone film, but a very good one.

[bat1987]

The new twist in Hush, makes way more sense than the one in comics Imo.
I hated Batman vs Robin, was such a weird fusion of mutiple stories.
Under the hood was a great adaptation, so was dkr.
Panel for panel adaptations dont work IMO, I love Year one, but the animated version of it felt meh, it was just there.

[Restingvoice]

Hush and Batman vs Robin we kinda sorta can guess

The Batman vs Robin story was a Dick and Damian story while The Court of Owls is more Dick and Bruce story, but with Damian recently introduced and it took too long to adapt Morrison's whole story, they combine the title and make it about Bruce and Damian.

Eventually, they made Batman Bad Blood which is based on Morrison's story but it also cut and combine a lot of stuff.

I guess the thinking behind it was they don't know how many of these adaptations are going to be successful so they combine and cut stuff in order to include as many story elements as possible just in case it failed and they have to cancel the whole thing.

Even Justice League War, the first one in the series, already changed a thing by including Shazam! because by that point in the comic Shazam! was already a member. On the other hand, they switch Aquaman's debut to Throne of Atlantis, because that's his story, so might as well.

Then in Hush, because it's still set in the same universe as previous movies, they just follow what they already made by cutting characters they haven't introduced and the twist I think was done because in the comic Hush identity was too obvious.

[CPSparkles]

I actually really enjoyed Batman v Robin. I don't mind when they make changes. I even expect it now.

It's an adaptation not a faithful retelling that's why the words are different.

I don't think a faithful beat by beat retelling of these stories will be as profitable as Manga adapted into Anime because it's not the same. There doesn't seem to be that big a demand for these movies and what demand there is seems to be from the general viewing audience making it difficult to just adapt the one run.

I don't think it's a bad idea. I'd love to see a beat by beat of Tomasi's B&R but the general audience won't be able to get into it because unlike Manga which adapts the whole property you are adapting just one fraction of a property smack bang in the middle.

[Aahz]

A mage is usually apatep from the start of the series to the end. With comics that not really possible, since the series run so much longer, and you have different eras, continuities, writers and lots of inconsistencies and retcons.

I case of Batman you have usually even several Series going on at the same time, that are not really in sync with each other, which makes it even more complicated.

On top of this you have sometimes to shorten the stories (or to extend them in case of Killing Joke) to fit the 70 minutes Runtime of the Movies.

The thing Batman vs Robin and Hush is that they are both part of a shared continuity that is simplified in comparison to the comics, and each new movie they add has of course changed to fit in that continuity. (In the comics Hush takes for example place before Damian in introduced, and has characters like Tim Drake and Huntress that don't exist in the animated continuity).

But there are some pretty faithfull adapations. Year One and Dark Knight Returns a direkt adaptaions of the comics, Under the Red Hood has a few changes but is still quite close to the source material and apart form the Prologue with Batgirl, Killing Joke also follows the original story line. I think both of the Batman/Superman Movies also follow the original comics.

[Arnoldoaad]

A mage is usually apatep from the start of the series to the end. With comics that not really possible, since the series run so much longer, and you have different eras, continuities, writers and lots of inconsistencies and retcons.

I do understand the difference between the mediums but I was thinking it like this: focus on only 1 writer and tell the story that wanted to be told and iron out any continuity problems that might be present

for example one of the first scenes of CoO is the panel with batman and all the robins in which it mentions Tim Drake as being a previous robin and then this scene got corrected in the trade
you can make minor adjustments like that and it really wouldnt change the story at all.

the fact that this series run for a lot longer is not that important and in fact it serves as an advantage
lets take for example Morrison's run, if that was adapted beat by beat now it would have to also have some adjustments for stuff tht happen on other runs, that on itself is not a bad thing

I case of Batman you have usually even several Series going on at the same time, that are not really in sync with each other, which makes it even more complicated.

I disagree
for self contained stories and arcs it is rare to have lastig effects from other stories intercet on that main story
so
just ignore those pieces or adapt small parts of them

like for example we dont need to see every single individual fight of the batman family vs the talons, we dont need the backstory of talon mary from batgirl or the redood one or the whatever

on the other hand if we were adapting lets say batgirl's story alone, just tell the story that it needs to tell, dont adapt the crossover with COO or other stories

this shouldnt be a problem

On top of this you have sometimes to shorten the stories (or to extend them in case of Killing Joke) to fit the 70 minutes Runtime of the Movies.

The thing Batman vs Robin and Hush is that they are both part of a shared continuity that is simplified in comparison to the comics, and each new movie they add has of course changed to fit in that continuity. (In the comics Hush takes for example place before Damian in introduced, and has characters like Tim Drake and Huntress that don't exist in the animated continuity).

Im sorry if I thought this was obvious enough to not mention it but on this hippotetical case I would propose to just abandon what it is already build in the current continuity of the movies right now and start fresh

I do understand that Damian is on the Hush movie because is suppouse to follow that same continuity
but a true adaptation would just ignore that

But there are some pretty faithfull adapations. Year One and Dark Knight Returns a direkt adaptaions of the comics, Under the Red Hood has a few changes but is still quite close to the source material and apart form the Prologue with Batgirl, Killing Joke also follows the original story line. I think both of the Batman/Superman Movies also follow the original comics.

I think Under the redhood is the perfect example of what I want to see on an adaptation

I actually really enjoyed Batman v Robin. I don't mind when they make changes. I even expect it now.

It's an adaptation not a faithful retelling that's why the words are different.

semantics!

I don't think a faithful beat by beat retelling of these stories will be as profitable as Manga adapted into Anime because it's not the same. There doesn't seem to be that big a demand for these movies and what demand there is seems to be from the general viewing audience making it difficult to just adapt the one run.

I don't think it's a bad idea. I'd love to see a beat by beat of Tomasi's B&R but the general audience won't be able to get into it because unlike Manga which adapts the whole property you are adapting just one fraction of a property smack bang in the middle.

I agree with this if this was a movie, but what if it was a tv series?
would it be more profitable? would it boost the sales of the trades

again: think it like this, DC anounces that it would have a new Batman series adapting Snyder's run from CoO to Superheavy on a netflix show
would that make them enough money to later adapt Kings run
would that increase the sales of comics and trades of exactly Snyder's runand maybe beyond

[Inversed]

The Dark Knight Returns may be the best adaptation wise of all the animated Batman stories. Pretty much everything from the book is there with relatively few changes, so if you want to see a good template go for that. There's a reason it needed two films to tell it.

It's also been a while since I've seen it, but I remember Year One being fairly accurate too. And I would cut something like Batman Vs. Robin some slack since it never really went out of its way to be a singular adaptation but rather taking influence from multiple sources. There's also something like The Killing Joke (the main segment not the Batgirl part), which is almost completely accurate to the original story, but its the filmmaking and execution make it feel a bit off.

[Aahz]

I disagree
for self contained stories and arcs it is rare to have lastig effects from other stories intercet on that main story
so
just ignore those pieces or adapt small parts of them

like for example we dont need to see every single individual fight of the batman family vs the talons, we dont need the backstory of talon mary from batgirl or the redood one or the whatever

on the other hand if we were adapting lets say batgirl's story alone, just tell the story that it needs to tell, dont adapt the crossover with COO or other stories

this shouldnt be a problem

Depends on what kind of adaptation we are talking about. For a stand alone movie you can ignore that other stuff, for a series or series of movies not so much.

And for example Damians story from his first introduction till he finally became Robin, went on over so many story arc, that it is basically impossible to do accurate Damian origin story as a movie.

And Bad Blood was imo also case where they adapted something that you couldn't really do as a movie in it's original form. R.I.P/Final Crisis is just to messy to take it as reason why Dick had to take up the cowl (and Battle for the Cowl is just terrible), and I can't really think of an arc from Morrisons Batman and Robin that would have really made for a good movie.

Im sorry if I thought this was obvious enough to not mention it but on this hippotetical case I would propose to just abandon what it is already build in the current continuity of the movies right now and start fresh

I do understand that Damian is on the Hush movie because is suppouse to follow that same continuity
but a true adaptation would just ignore that

Yeah but DC has for some reason decided to have all those movies placed in the same continuity, and that can necessitate a lot of changes.
I mean I haven't seen Hush, but for Judas Contract they had to do massive changes since the team is in their continuity made up of completely different characters then in the original story.

But I think some of the movies (for example the Justice League ones) are also pretty accurate.

One reason might of course be that DC wants to promote their new characters (Damian, Blue Beetle ...) and uses the popular stories to generate interest for the movies.



An interesting case is btw. Gotham by Gaslight, that was changed despite being a stand alone movie. But that was probaly for the better.
spoilers:

In the original it is so obvious who the bad guys is, that you now basically right from the start what the twist is end is ...

end of spoilers

[Arnoldoaad]

Depends on what kind of adaptation we are talking about. For a stand alone movie you can ignore that other stuff, for a series or series of movies not so much.

And for example Damians story from his first introduction till he finally became Robin, went on over so many story arc, that it is basically impossible to do accurate Damian origin story as a movie.

adapting anything that interwines with a crossover would be pretty hard to do
but on case like "storyline A told by X writer" then "storyline B told by Y writer" not only it is doable but it is perfectly common on TV series thee only thing needed is a roadmap

like with Damian's example, I dont think there are many stories told by other writers besides Morrison before he became robin, the only big exception that pops in my head is Tony Daniel's Battle for the Cowl and for the most part you could try to adapt everything from Batman & Son to RIP/Final Crisis and then do an adaptation of BftC and then go Batman & Robin(wouldnt that be supercool?)

now I guess then the next question would be "What other stories with Damian besides Morrison's B&R could be adapted into that roadmap"
the answer is simple: maybe some, maybe none. the fact that there so many options, so many stories that could be adapted shouldnt be a limitation but the opposite.
Just pick and choose.

Yeah but DC has for some reason decided to have all those movies placed in the same continuity, and that can necessitate a lot of changes.
I mean I haven't seen Hush, but for Judas Contract they had to do massive changes since the team is in their continuity made up of completely different characters then in the original story.

But I think some of the movies (for example the Justice League ones) are also pretty accurate.

One reason might of course be that DC wants to promote their new characters (Damian, Blue Beetle ...) and uses the popular stories to generate interest for the movies.



An interesting case is btw. Gotham by Gaslight, that was changed despite being a stand alone movie. But that was probaly for the better.
spoilers:

In the original it is so obvious who the bad guys is, that you now basically right from the start what the twist is end is ...

end of spoilers

ofcourse, but all of this is hipotetical
If DC/Warner had the right people making the right decisions they would adapt a big number of stories
Its kind of crazy when you think of how many comics come out each year and we get almost none of them outside of the medium
a huge untapped potential

[Frontier]

I actually really enjoyed Batman v Robin. I don't mind when they make changes. I even expect it now.

It's an adaptation not a faithful retelling that's why the words are different.

I don't think a faithful beat by beat retelling of these stories will be as profitable as Manga adapted into Anime because it's not the same. There doesn't seem to be that big a demand for these movies and what demand there is seems to be from the general viewing audience making it difficult to just adapt the one run.

I don't think it's a bad idea. I'd love to see a beat by beat of Tomasi's B&R but the general audience won't be able to get into it because unlike Manga which adapts the whole property you are adapting just one fraction of a property smack bang in the middle.

I actually preferred BvR to Bad Blood if only because the plot and characters weren't as all over the place (I haven't seen Hush yet).

I didn't look at it as a Court of Owls adaption. They were basically just an element they took for the story, and that's it.

[Aahz]

adapting anything that interwines with a crossover would be pretty hard to do
but on case like "storyline A told by X writer" then "storyline B told by Y writer" not only it is doable but it is perfectly common on TV series thee only thing needed is a roadmap

That depends, if you for example would want to adapt everything that happens with Batman post rebirth, you would run in the problem, that you have several series that completely contradict each other. Kings Batman ignores for the most part that there are tons of other Batman charctrs in gotham Batman works together in other series.
While the other writers mostly ignore what King is doing.

like with Damian's example, I dont think there are many stories told by other writers besides Morrison before he became robin, the only big exception that pops in my head is Tony Daniel's Battle for the Cowl and for the most part you could try to adapt everything from Batman & Son to RIP/Final Crisis and then do an adaptation of BftC and then go Batman & Robin(wouldnt that be supercool?)

If you want to do a sigle origin movie for Damian even just doing Morrisons stuff is to much. It took about 3 years from Damians introduction until he became Robin.
And especially the part hoe he became Robin in the comics is kind of messy imo (and is just a side plot). As stand alone Origin for Damian the movie works imo better.
And imo adapting everything from from Batman & Son to BftC it wouldn't be super cool, since RIP and Final Crisis are imo both an unreadable mess and BftC is just terrible (but I know that other people have a different Opinion about it).

[Arnoldoaad]

That depends, if you for example would want to adapt everything that happens with Batman post rebirth, you would run in the problem, that you have several series that completely contradict each other.

ofcourse, but the solution is simple: just dont adapt everything
just pick and choose and form a timeline that makes sense, this is doable

Kings Batman ignores for the most part that there are tons of other Batman charctrs in gotham Batman works together in other series.
While the other writers mostly ignore what King is doing.

ignoring and contradicting are pretty different things

since King started his run the only contradiction or retcon that I have read so far is what King did with KGBeast vs what Snyder did

pretty much all other batman comics do feel that they exist in the same continuity

If you want to do a sigle origin movie for Damian even just doing Morrisons stuff is to much. It took about 3 years from Damians introduction until he became Robin.
And especially the part hoe he became Robin in the comics is kind of messy imo (and is just a side plot). As stand alone Origin for Damian the movie works imo better.

This would depend of what it is being adapted to what
I agree adapting Morrison on its entirety would work on a movie but It would work on an episodic series

And imo adapting everything from from Batman & Son to BftC it wouldn't be super cool, since RIP and Final Crisis are imo both an unreadable mess and BftC is just terrible (but I know that other people have a different Opinion about it).

RIP is perfectly adaptable with almost no major changes

Final Crisis not so much, that would be interesting to see though. also pretty much all you need is Batman shooting Darksied and then going back on time, then we can have the Return of BW for the SEASON FINALE!!

BftC is actually pretty terrible but it was a necesary story at the time, nevertheless this is one of those stories that if adapted I wouldnt mind if its done with some corrections here and there.

[Aahz]

ofcourse, but the solution is simple: just dont adapt everything
just pick and choose and form a timeline that makes sense, this is doable

But then you are again going away from a 1:1 adaptaion like done in manga/anime.

ignoring and contradicting are pretty different things

But both lead to problems if you want to bring everything in an coherent order of events. Espacally since Year of the Villain brings them now all back in to the same point in time (theoretically).

pretty much all other batman comics do feel that they exist in the same continuity

Tec doesn't really feel to me like it set in the same continuity as Batman. And Justice League and Batman also don't really work together.

[Arnoldoaad]

But then you are again going away from a 1:1 adaptaion like done in manga/anime.

I was talking about sagas
like from specific writers, not the entire continuity of all the books, thats nonsense

so for example, if you adapt all of Morrison's run, adapt all of Morrison, no need to have the Tec, or justice league or Birds of Prey. just adapt that story

a better example
want ot adapt Snyder's run?
start with Court of Owls
grab the trade and make an animation of that
then grab the City of Owls
then Death of the family
then Zero Year
then you could do Batman Eternal after that
and so forth

you cant tell me those trades arent complete stories in such a way that they NEED other pieces, and even if they do need it, just grab those pieces.

Now I wrote what is on top and found out something interesting, I was checking the trades since I couldnt remember exactly what was trade 6(Trade 4-5 were both for Zero Hour, Trade 7 is Endgame) and discover that trade 6 is named Graveyard shift which is pretty much a collections of single issue stories, but of trade 6 the most important story is possibly Requiem, which is the immidiate story after the death of Damian.
which means that the end of Morrison's run is around this time.
so how would that be adapted if we include Morrison in the mix?
and keep in mind, it isnt technically needed
or Tomasi's run? since he is the one who brings him back later

this is what I meant about a road map, its just a matter of picking what to do and when to do it
if you want just Snyder, adapt those volumes that I mentioned
if you want more, then its just a matter to fit what to do and when

But both lead to problems if you want to bring everything in an coherent order of events. Espacally since Year of the Villain brings them now all back in to the same point in time (theoretically).

I guess this depends of what is getting adapted because right now we are touching both Kings run and Snyder's JL and Year of the Villain event, None of these are close to be over right now so its pointless to argue the order of events until all are done
and this not even including what is going on with Doomsday Clock

Tec doesn't really feel to me like it set in the same continuity as Batman. And Justice League and Batman also don't really work together.

I disagree
we an argue all day about timing but I dont necesarily see anything on King's run that doesnt fit with Justice League or backwards or with Tec.
it all depends of the order of the events