Adaptations always have a hard time: Not only do they need to satisfy the fanboys, but also the millions of viewers that have never heard of the source material. Well, at least that is what they should do: Most adaptations you will see will primarily focus on the second group, the casual TV viewers, as there are much more of them. This means that cryptic, complex story-elements get thrown away and we often get much more shallow plots that don't take risks at all. But despite to popular belief amongst the fan community, changing the story to something more fitting to the TV format is not necessarily a bad thing. I'll give you two examples: Harry Potter and Spiderman. The Harry Potter books are simply too long to make them into an exciting movie kids will watch. What they did is take the main plot, make as little adjustments to it as possible, and then put it on the big screen - Nothing wrong with that. Spiderman (2002) went the opposite direction: They only adapted the source very loosely, scratching out even some of the main plot developments - And it worked just as well!
The reason I posted this is simply to prove my point about this topic: It's possible to make adaptations that don't make fanboys too angry but also work as movies. I saw the Spiderman movie before I read the first comic and I saw the first Harry Potter movie before I read the book - And guess what, I enjoyed all of these things. I can't stress this enough: A good adaptation should still be enjoyable for people unfamiliar with the source material. It should still work as a movie or TV series without being cramped to the limit with obscure references to some comic books.
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