Since there isn't a general media section to this forum I decided to put this here. What are some bad plots that were done much better when adapted into another media? Why was the original bad and the adaption better?
I'd say an excellent example would be the Superior Spider-Man comic storyline. In the original comic book storyline, Doctor Octopus, one of Spider-Man's Rogue's galaxy and a particularly notable one at that was having their body badly failing after years of fighting superheroes. So he steals Spider-Man's body, somehow performs a turn to the good side (kinda) and goes parading around in it for several issues known as the Superior Spider-Man comic books.
There's a lot of issues with this storyline. For one, Doctor Octopus has done a number of heinous things over the course of his supervillain career, including trying to basically kill every person on earth at one point. His sudden turn to good even if he was going antihero and even under the influence of Peter's memories didn't feel believable for a moment due to this. For another, it required an avalanche of stupidity on the part of every other character in the story not to instantly realize that Peter had been brainwashed or replaced. In a medium where that kind of thing happens to a superhero somewhere like 3 times a week. This was particularly bad with the people who should know Peter intimately like his ex-wife and aunt, while someone who barely knows Peter at all (a painfully contrived Mary Sue love interest at that) does figure it out and does nothing. Another issue is it tries to justify Doc Ock staying Spider-Man through both some nonheroic actions like murdering supervillains (which I agree with doing but that's neither here nor there) while making Peter himself do the things he would never do (he's still in his body during most of this, it's weird) like risking the life of a little girl to conceal himself in order to make Doc Ock look better. Finally, though there's more, the storyline and the people writing it act like it's a permanent change.
Then there's the adaption of this storyline in the 2017 Spider-Man animated series. This series also did this storyline, but IMO did it much MUCH better. To start with, Doc Ock was an arrogant dick but he spent quite a while on the show not a supervillain and perhaps more importantly he didn't have a long history of atrocities and attempted atrocities, which made Ock becoming a hero much more believable, and SPOILER Ock eventually dies a hero here too. Everybody not figuring out what's going on was also much more believable because the animated series had next to no similar body swap incidents and people didn't put up with Peter-Ock's behavior for long either.
Probably most significant, the writers made it clear from the start that Peter was going to get his body back and took steps to facilitate that from the beginning of the storyline. Peter spent his time in a virtual world and spent the whole storyline trying to get out and get his body back. In comics there are very few permanent or even long term changes and everyone even vaguely familiar with comic books knows this. In both versions of this storyline Peter loses his body and eventually gets it back, but in this version they don't insult everyone's intelligence by acting like Peter wasn't going to come back so they don't write like Peter isn't going to come back.
Then of course there's just plain better written dialog and story in general, but that's the gist of it.
I'd say an excellent example would be the Superior Spider-Man comic storyline. In the original comic book storyline, Doctor Octopus, one of Spider-Man's Rogue's galaxy and a particularly notable one at that was having their body badly failing after years of fighting superheroes. So he steals Spider-Man's body, somehow performs a turn to the good side (kinda) and goes parading around in it for several issues known as the Superior Spider-Man comic books.
There's a lot of issues with this storyline. For one, Doctor Octopus has done a number of heinous things over the course of his supervillain career, including trying to basically kill every person on earth at one point. His sudden turn to good even if he was going antihero and even under the influence of Peter's memories didn't feel believable for a moment due to this. For another, it required an avalanche of stupidity on the part of every other character in the story not to instantly realize that Peter had been brainwashed or replaced. In a medium where that kind of thing happens to a superhero somewhere like 3 times a week. This was particularly bad with the people who should know Peter intimately like his ex-wife and aunt, while someone who barely knows Peter at all (a painfully contrived Mary Sue love interest at that) does figure it out and does nothing. Another issue is it tries to justify Doc Ock staying Spider-Man through both some nonheroic actions like murdering supervillains (which I agree with doing but that's neither here nor there) while making Peter himself do the things he would never do (he's still in his body during most of this, it's weird) like risking the life of a little girl to conceal himself in order to make Doc Ock look better. Finally, though there's more, the storyline and the people writing it act like it's a permanent change.
Then there's the adaption of this storyline in the 2017 Spider-Man animated series. This series also did this storyline, but IMO did it much MUCH better. To start with, Doc Ock was an arrogant dick but he spent quite a while on the show not a supervillain and perhaps more importantly he didn't have a long history of atrocities and attempted atrocities, which made Ock becoming a hero much more believable, and SPOILER Ock eventually dies a hero here too. Everybody not figuring out what's going on was also much more believable because the animated series had next to no similar body swap incidents and people didn't put up with Peter-Ock's behavior for long either.
Probably most significant, the writers made it clear from the start that Peter was going to get his body back and took steps to facilitate that from the beginning of the storyline. Peter spent his time in a virtual world and spent the whole storyline trying to get out and get his body back. In comics there are very few permanent or even long term changes and everyone even vaguely familiar with comic books knows this. In both versions of this storyline Peter loses his body and eventually gets it back, but in this version they don't insult everyone's intelligence by acting like Peter wasn't going to come back so they don't write like Peter isn't going to come back.
Then of course there's just plain better written dialog and story in general, but that's the gist of it.
