The worst adaptation (is a pretty decent video game)

I have a general rule, to not judge adaptations as adaptations, in other words to not consider the original work when I am considering an adaptation and treat it as an original work. If you were to judge an adaptation primarily as an adaptation, then I can't imagine there would be any adaptation so contrariwise then the 14th century epic poem the Inferno and the 2010 video game Dante's Inferno, an adaptation that does not just make changes by actively is opposed to the moral and philosophical lessons the original poem was expressing.

 

For reference, I think Dante's Inferno the video game is a pretty decent game. 

By contrast, The Inferno by Dante is my favorite literary work, one of my favorite works and if I was trying to be objective I would say it's probably the greatest work of fiction ever made, the closest man has ever come to divine revelation by himself. It is a work of such perfect grandeur, dignity and unity that it boggles the mind. It is said that the history of western civilization is the unique hybrid of the cultures of Athens and Jerusalem and if that is so, Dante was the first man who managed to successfully hybridize the two into one cohesive world.

The second of those two thoughts does not invalidate the first. That said in so far as their stories can be compared, Dante's Inferno the game does everything it can to contradict the world as depicted by The Inferno by Dante. Let's do a side by side comparison.

Dante:

In the Poem, Dante is an every-man. That is VERY important. The poem begins "Midway on the journey of OUR life", Vergil actually refers to Dante as "man". Dante was distinct from the Christian Saints and Greek Heroes that preceded him by being wholly unremarkable, a highly fallible very not larger then life man (though in fairness the real Dante was actually kind of a badass serving as a cavalry for his city Florence). The redemption of Dante is the redemption of all mankind. This was a radical departure for the time, and it carried with it such importance that it would echo through history. Stories deserved to be told not just of the greatest or most tragic of men, but of anyone. Everyone is a person worthy of writing an epic about, the type devoted to great heroes. Dante's empathy for the common person just makes my heart race!

Comparatively the game Dante is not so much that. Game Dante was a crusader who fought for Richard the Lion-Hearted against Saladin. Instead of being deliberately feeble and humble, game Dante is a big powerful warrior. Ok, that's a noticeable deviation but not too much, right? But it doesn't stop there, Game Dante is not just a mighty warrior, he's also apparently without hyperbole THE WORST SINNER IN HISTORY. Near the end of the game Satan states that no one before Dante had a soul black enough to free him. Game Dante is not the relateable, unexceptional every man representative of humanity but instead a nigh-unstoppable demigod whose soul is so especially vile that no one else in history rivals it. The redemption of Game Dante is not the redemption of humanity via coming to realize the nature of good and evil, it is one crusader having to atone for his personal sins by killing lots of demons. 

Satan:

Poem Satan is a deviation comparable to Dante's. Poem Satan is evil surely, he is the exact mirror of God, who is all loving and all good and so Satan is all hating and all evil, the representation of sin. There wouldn't be an even vaguely sympathetic portrayal of Satan until AFAIK Paradise Lost 300+ years later. What was different about Dante's Satan was that he was an idiot and nigh-powerless. His Ignorance and Impotence mirrored God's Omniscience and Omnipotence. Cast into Lake Cocytus, Satan continually tries to fly back to Heaven, his giant wingbeats freezing the water and keeping his stuck. His own endless pride thus keeps him trapped in Hell. Mankind, made in God's image, is represented as between Satan and God, bearing some power, some knowledge and some love, and these three traits in accordance would redeem him to Heaven. Satan's complete weakness before humanity is representative of a man's ability to defeat evil and rise above it. Dante's depiction of evil also practically radiates the idea of personal responsibility. Evil is not some overwhelming force or insidious trickster that drives man to sin. It is excuse-making (like all the sinners in Hell are), dumb and beastial. The Divine Comedy's faith in humanity entails a level of responsibility for our actions, a level of responsibility that does not allow for excuses like the Devil made me do it. 

Game Satan is powerful force that creates elaborate schemes to escape that involve tempting people to do evil. This one does not really need much explanation I think. Giving Satan agency, giving evil power is completely contrary to Dante's faith in humanity to have the capacity to rise above evil. The game only once comes to this theme, which is after defeating his abusive father Alighiero, Alighiero sarcastically says "Go Ahead, use me as an excuse." referring to Dante's sinful nature and how he probably will just blame it on his upbringing and not take responsibility for not rising above this evil.

Beatrice:

Probably the closest, honestly. Historical Beatrice was the lady Dante was in love with before she died before he could enter a relationship with her. In the Poem Beatrice watches over Dante in Heaven and sends Vergil at the beginning to help guide him when he goes astray of the right path. Beatrice in the Poem is a perfect angelic woman. She is not a major character in the Inferno, and won't be really until the Paradiso. That said Dante's love for her, particularly in Paradiso slowly transforms him into a better man, representing the power of love to make us into more noble humans. Dante loves her because she represents all that is to be loved, as evidenced by the fact that as they get closer and closer to God she gets even more beautiful representing how love and knowledge make the loveable things in the universe even more beautiful. 

In the Game Dante's love for Beatrice is, in a Greek tragedy sense, Dante's redeeming virtue, the one good thing about his sinful nature. Game Beatrice is saintly though corrupted by Dante's betrayal. In some sense this is a logical extension of the two worlds. What is a bit strange is the game makes the story one giant "romance" of Dante chasing after Beatrice who was kidnapped by Satan rather then the poem where Dante was just a normal man lost but guided by his love watching him from beyond death. These aren't opposites like a lot of these, but it is a notable departure. 

The Damned:

I found poem Dante rather relate-able. One trait especially, his empathy for the damned. Dante several times bemoans the horrid fate of the damned, even fainting at times out of sheer horror. Dante must be scolded by Vergil that the damned are not tragic victims of fate, but have done this to themselves and are there by the perfect wisdom of God. Dante is caught between empathy for the damned, his desire to see the nobility in these shades that used to be humans (and even geeks out when he sees historical figures he is a big fan off) and his understanding that sin is a personal battle and the ways of the universe are not for him to control and that those who fall are not all tragic victims of circumstance, but justifying their evil to themselves.

In the game the Damned are turned into literal monstrosities for Dante to scythe through. The unbaptized babies trapped in limbo that Dante weeps for are turned into scythe-armed baby monsters. The lustful which are trapped in an endless whirlwind representing the lusts they let themselves be carried by and which Dante faints at the pain they suffer are turned into nearly-naked women making sex sounds which giant blade penis tentacles for Dante to slice. Ironically the game actually does let you show empathy, sort of. At times you are given the chance to either punish a damned soul or forgiving them which sends them to Heaven, which if you notice means you are in charge of their destiny not them which the Poem was ALL about. That said empathy for the damned is reserved only for special characters that they give a backstory rather then the general fallen state of damned humanity in general that drove the poet to tears and fainting. 

This is scratching the surface obviously but I feel the point is obvious. Dante's Inferno the video game is easily the worst adaptation of anything I've ever seen if I was to judge on that metric. Everything that was the appeal, that was special or unique, that was important in the Poem is either altered in it's meaning drastically or outright inverted to be the opposite meaning. 

Do I hate Dante's Inferno the game. No I thought it was pretty decent. It has fair symbolism and themes that I could analyze, it's characters, while somewhat simple cliches are fairly effectively and while it's gameplay is fairly similar to God of War, I am also a fan of that, sooooooooooo

This is getting to what I wanted to talk about, namely I don't understand how and why people think the way they do about adaptation. At all. People seem to assess series based on how similar an adaptation is to it's original as a marker of quality and I can't see how that makes any sense or is useful.

My favorite series is Sailor Moon. You know what one of the big complaints about Sailor Moon Crystal was. It was too SIMILAR to the manga. Not too different, it was too similar. Most Moonies are fans of both the 90s anime and manga which are highly different stories and enjoy highly different alternate retellings. 

I got asked on this topic recently if I would not feel sad if there was a Sailor Moon Film with Usagi as Sailor Jupiter instead of Sailor Moon. You know what my immediate thoughts regarding that was? I thought that would be a cool what if and immediately started thinking of what it would be like. It reminded me of that DC Elseworld where Baby Superman was found and raised by the Waynes and so Batman was Superman. I mean one of the most popular Sailor Moon fanfics I've read was basically just what would happen if the Senshi swapped civilian lives. Usagi Hino still makes me all tear-y, how little Usagi tries so hard to make her politician father proud of her. 

It's like some people expect that this adaptation is the same universe and not a parallel universe. If you look at some of my favorite series; Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, CLAMP, DC Comics, all of them regularly make new continuities and universes and it's really cool to think of what ifs and parallel timelines where things are different. 

It's perfectly fine to not like a universe or timeline of a franchise, but the reasoning that you don't like because it's different from what is a separate universe is to me a seemingly irrational reasoning, a reasoning that expects sameness from two things that are explicitly different. I also to be honest find it a super limiting philosophy, a philosophy that says you can have infinite possibilities but of all them, the only acceptable ones are one story with whatever permutation limits you find acceptable. 

I will test my own opinion on this by taking it to extreme. To find contradiction in a rule, take it to it's logical extreme so one can see how the rule holds up to the most extreme outliers.

My claim is that adaptations shouldn't be judged by similarity to source material. Let's say a new adaptation of SM came out that had literally nothing to do with the original manga. None of the same characters, none of the world-building or plot. If it was advertised as being at all similar to anything else in the franchise, I would consider it false advertising. I would probably think it's bad marketing to market what is essentially original story as part of an existing franchise, since fans of the franchise will likely prefer the pre-existing stories and people looking for an original story won't think it will be an original story. That said I would be perfectly capable of judging the story as a story completely separate from the rest of the SM franchise. Judging such a series without the consideration of the rest of the franchise seems not just doable but fairly easy. Yeah I can say it shouldn't be part of the same franchise because it has nothing to do with any of the other series, but at the same time, that doesn't affect the actual series quality.

But perhaps that is not the extreme. There are some adaptations that are thematically opposed to the original. What if there was an SM story opposed thematically to the original. Well let's consider an example as a hypothetical. I would argue the primary theme of Sailor Moon is isolation versus togetherness. Let's imagine a version of Sailor Moon where Chaos is right, where existence and the company of something else is weakening and hurtful, where isolation is the highest state of being. That would be super nihilistic, but I would be interested, it's an interesting perspective flip. It's comparable to the above example of the Inferno and Dante's Inferno and I like both of those, albeit one much more then the other. 

I hesitantly think this is a western thing that I am not getting. There is some conception of the "eternal" being of the character, that some things are necessary for a character for it to be that character, that some things are necessary for a series for it to be that series. And truth be told but I would agree but on a very ontological level. You need to be character A to be character A. Character A*, the Universe* version of Character A, is not Character A and should be judged as a separate character. Alternate forms of a series are not that series.

There's something there that I vaguely understand they are talking about but I don't think is articulated very precisely yet. Some sense of character as representation of something eternal and ideal. But if my intuition of the nature of what is being said is correct, then I can't agree with that either. By that reasoning the eternal ideal Platonic Form is an abstract entity distinct from any particular representation, and there is no need for any character to exactly represent that Platonic Form, or be any closer or more distant from that representation.

What I'm trying to get at, I guess, is allowing adaptations to be separate from their source can only be a net positive for both the series for you and seems to me more rational. If you have to critically judge things by a separate metric then you are increasing the chances you won't like it, where if you just let things be, you will still presumably like all the adaptations you DO like, and you'll possibly like more that aren't quite the same as the original.