How do you judge a movie/tv adaption?

[JBatmanFan05]

The more I like the original story, the more harshly I am likely to treat any changes to it. It also depends how long did I like it before seeing the adaptation.

I agree in that I consider both, particularly the first one: The more I like the original story, the more harshly I am likely to treat any changes to it.

Examples:
1) Todd McFarlane's original Spawn comics...they're the originals, they're important, but not so terribly great. Ergo, Spawn: The Animated Series's changes I hardly care about. That animated series is in fact superior to Todd's original comics.

2) Song of Fire vs Game of Thrones.....some (not all!) of Game of Thrones's streamlines and changes were more acceptable to me than others because the Song of Fire & Ice novels aren't as great to me as they are to some fans. Fire & Blood (and The World of Ice & Fire) is actually my favorite Martin book, so I'm gonna be a lot harsher on House of Dragons's changes (if I even watch the show).

Blade Runner and the Shining would be the two films I'd use to illustrate my above point, both take drastic turns from their sources...but they are both absolute masterpieces of film.

Other things I consider:
-Is the "drastically inaccurate" adaptation a masterpiece of film/TV? For me, I can acknowledge both that 1) I greatly prefer King's book to Kubrick's film but that 2) Kubrick's film is a masterpiece of film.

[mathew101281]

I love this trend of "Gender-Swaping" old, tired out of touch classic characters for a more modern taste/sensibility. Batwoman is a rousing success & is loved by all. Doubtful? Look at the glorious results of Ghostbusters 2016! Talk about reinventing the wheel, what a triumph for everyone involved.

Can't wait for the sequel(s).

Sometimes gender swapping a character can work. I feel Carol Danvers is more popular then what she replaced. I feel it works better with lesser known characters though. I feel you have issues when you try and replace icons. Iconic characters have built so much momentum and image recognition that new characters trying to take up the mantle can often be crushed under the weight of expectation, and comparison.

[phonogram12]

I'm not gonna lie, as far as superhero movies are concerned, the MCU (of which I consider the Netflix shows a part of as well) set the standard for me. For the most part they haven't let me down with the exception of a few sparse instances. I mean, you can meticulously recreate panels (re Snyder), but ultimately, that's a shallow adaptation at best when you still get characterization and tone all wrong.

As far as novels are concerned, 2000s High Fidelity. It may've changed location entirely, but the original story's heart was on the film's sleeve in every scene.

[Powerboy]

First and foremost is it good on its own merits. The better the work overall the more the deviations from the source material are tolerable and can even be improvements in some cases. Jaws is an example of a movie which is much better than the book it's based on and where pretty much all the changes were for the better. New Mutants is now my go-to example of a film which is terrible on its own merits and where pretty much all the changes to the source material were for the worse.

This. Honestly, if I was a writer, I would never want to write a pre-existing character that is well known because you may do a great job and half the diehard fans will care about nothing except it isn't their image of the character or a decades old version.