In , YouTuber 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Patrick Willems introduced “The Super Mario Super Spectrum of Adaptation Fidelity.” At one end of the spectrum, Willems placed the 1993 Super Mario Bros., a movie that resembled the video games on which it was based in almost nothing but name. At the other extreme, he placed 2023’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which did little but earnestly attempt to reproduce the Mario games as faithfully as p🐷ossible in film 🎐form. One was a more interesting movie, one was more exciting for fans.
To Be Canon, Or Not To Be Canon
Given how 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:big video game adaptations have bec🐬ome in the past few years, Willems' scale is a useful measurement. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us was a gargantuan hit for HBO, The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the second highest-grossing movie of 2023, each Sonic the Hedgehog movie is bigger than the last, and Fallout ꦺhas already been renewed for a second season. Though the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic the Hedgehog movies are closer to ‘90s-style adaptations — with familiar characters placed in a new setting alongside human characters that don’t appear in the games — the rest are extremely faithful to the source material. But, within that faithfulness, there is room for sma🎃ller choices that radically shift how the property’s most rabid fans perceive the series. One of those issues is how they handle canon.
defines canon as "a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works." Whe♏n we talk about the canon of a fictional world, we mean the works that actu💟ally count, the ones that contain the events that actually happened.
Fallout fans have paid a lot of attention to how the series approaches the established timeline of the games. There was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:debate for days after the premiere about whether the show had made fan-favorite game 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New Vegas non-canon. The message from Bethesda is that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:everything is canon. New Vegas is canon, and the show is canon within the world of 🌱the games. Though the Falꦯlout TV series is a work of adaptation, its creators are also positioning it as a seamless addition to the existing video game world.
It's an interesting tactic, and reminds me of The Wachowskis’ transmedia approach to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Matrix. The movies were canon, the games were canon, and everything was part of one big, ongoing story. This is distinct from the approach most adaptations take. The MCU mines the comics for material, but the comics exist in a separate continuity from the movies. In fact, the comics often exist in separate continuities from each other. I bought a bunch of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man comics as a kid and they were often in completely different sub-seriesꩲ with different names. Ultimate Spider-Man was distinct from The Spectacular Spider-Man, which was distinct from The Amazing Spider-Man, which was distinct ꧑from…
Given that the Fallout games are choice-based RPGs, decꦅisions have to be made about which player choices will becanonical and which are not𒉰. That has been one of the more interesting as🐬pects of the adaptation for Fallout diehards.
The Last of Us is more in line with the MCU's approach to adaptation. It threw the possibility of the Fallout tactic out in the very first episode, when it moved the date of the outbreak from 2013 to 2023 - a logical decision. The game was only set in 2013 because that was the year it was set to release. If showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann had stuck with 2013 when bringing the game to television, it would have lost its immediacy. "What if this happened now?" would become "What if this happened ten years ago?" But in doing this, it meant that this Joel and Ellie were a different Joel and Ellie than we met in the games.
The Fallout Of Adaptation
That was inevitable with The Last of Us in a way that it never was with Fallout. The Fallout games don’t have one main character with an arc extending from game to game. They have player-created characters that slot into an existing story, but can pull and push it as they go. It’s easy to tell a new story that sits within the existing canon, just because that’s basically what everybody is doing in their own playthrough.
But Joel and Ellie are distinct characters with established personalities, backstories, a▨nd arcs. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey’s Joel and Ellie couldn’t be the same as Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson’s unless the showrunners made an adaptation that strictly brought over every moment from the game. That would be boring, but that’s what they would have to do for the two series to occupy the same canon. It would all be one canon, but it wouldn’t be much of an adaptation.
As more and more games get adapted in Hollywood’s gold rush for bankable IPs, more showrunners and filmmakers will be confronted with this same choice. As in the Fallout games, many different choices are viable, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have consequences. They will have to fall somewhere on the spectrum.
ജ Video Game Adaptations Being Hyperꦕ-Faithful Isn’t Any Better Than The Old Way
The Last of Us on HBO looks just like the game. Is that a go🦄od thing?
