adaptation | the m0vie blog

421. Snow White – Ani-May 2025 (#—)

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week with special guests Luke Dunne and Ciara Moloney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This week, Mark Webb’s Snow White.

In a magical kingdom, an evil queen plots the murder of a beautiful young princess, who is forced to flee into the woods and find shelter with the most unlikely of allies.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The Bottom 100, This Just In | Tagged: 2025, adaptation, agency, audience expectations, celebrity PR, characterizations, Christopher Nolan, ciara moloney, cinema, conspiracy theories, creative collaboration, cultural implications, cultural significance, disney, evil queen, female agency, film artistry, film critic, human experiences, imdb, Irish diaspora, luke dunne, mark webb, Mary McDonough, PhD completion, podcast, polarizing reactions, production history, Rachel Ziegler, representation, snow white, social issues, socio-political dynamics, storytelling, The 250, The 250 podcast, themes, tom cruise, traditional characters | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Creed III” Brings Anime to Hollywood…

Posted on March 6, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release and success of Creed III, it seemed like a good opportunity to look at what makes the film stand apart from what came before.

Actor and director Michael B. Jordan has been quite frank about the influence of anime on his approach to Creed III, and that influence shines through. However, it’s also part of a larger trend in modern Hollywood. The industry spent decades trying to directly adapt anime properties for American audiences, with minimal success. However, recent years have seen the emergence of a generation of artists who grew up with the form as a standard part of their media diet, and it’s bleeding through into works like NOPE, The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. It’s a fascinating trend.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adaptation, anime, creed, creed 3, creed iii, hollywood, in the frame, influence, michael b. jordan, rocky, Rocky Balboa, ryan coogler, the escapist, translation | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “The Last of Us” Shifts from Joel to Ellie…

Posted on February 28, 2023 by Darren

I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. This week, the show’s seventh episode.

It’s an interesting proposition, adapting a serialised narrative after it has already been completed. In some ways, any serialised narrative is a first draft, a creative team making it up – to one degree or another – as they go along. As such, there is something very interesting in any subsequent adaptation of the work, as the adaptation has the luxury of a vantage point that can take in the completed work as a holistic entity. Left Behind was an add-on to the original video game version of The Last of Us, but the television series has the luxury of folding it into its ongoing narrative in real-time, as it were.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, escapist, left behind, the escapist, the last of us | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Sundae Presents Bonus Episode 4 – “Miami Vice”

Posted on February 7, 2023 by Darren

Look, I’m a fiend for mojitos. I was delighted to be asked to join the wonderful Dean Buckley and fantastic Ciara Moloney for an episode of their film podcast, The Sundae Presents. I was especially honoured to join them for their first episode with a guest. So, no pressure!

The premise of the podcast involves one host inviting the other to watch a movie that they have not yet seen, and getting the reaction to that. Ciara and Dean had never seen Miami Vice, so it seemed like the perfect subject for a discussion like this, Michael Mann’s fascinating study of the breakdown of boundaries and identities while inventing new ways to make movies with a digital camera, it seemed like a good fit for the premise.

You can listen directly to the episode below or by clicking here.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adaptation, borders, boundaries, crockett, globalisation, meaning, miami, miami vice, michael mann, signal noise, the sundae presents, tubbs | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “The Last of Us” Establishes the Rules of the Game…

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Darren

The Last of Us is an interesting piece of adaptation. It comes with a weight of expectation. There’s a sense in which the show needs to proves its adaptational bona fides to fans, by proving that it can faithfully adapt both the world and the internal logic of the source material. So the show’s second episode is an interesting fusion, a clear attempt to directly translate the experience of playing the source video game to a television series.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, horror, infected, logic, story, the escapist, the last of us, Video game | Leave a comment »

New Irish Independent Column! On Whether “The Last of Us” Can Beat the Video Game Curse…

Posted on January 19, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Irish Independent last week. With the release of The Last of Us, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the history of video game adaptations.

There’s a lot riding on The Last of Us, and HBO have really gone all-out on the show. It stars Pedro Pascal of The Mandalorian and is written by Craig Mazin of Chernobyl. It’s an interesting approach, in large part because video games have frequently posed a challenge to studios longing to adapt them to other screens. Just based on Hollywood’s experience with the medium, The Last of Us poses a significant challenge to any production team hoping to translate it to another medium.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, curse, game changer, irish independent, the independent, the last of us, video games | 1 Comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Last of Us” as a Character-Driven Apocalyptic Narrative…

Posted on January 11, 2023 by Darren

Although it takes a little while to get going, with its first two episodes largely given over to exposition and worldbuilding, The Last of Us is an incredible accomplishment from HBO. The show is clearly the result of a great deal of care and attention, and a substantial investment from the service. It’s a show that benefits from the best possible talent and from the freedom afforded to that talent, to find a distinct angle on the end of the world. It’s a charming, emotional and deeply moving character study at the end of the world.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, bella ramsay, escapist, hbo, last of us, pedro pascal, Television, the escapist, the last of us, Video game | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “White Noise” and the Human Death Drive…

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of White Noise on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to discuss Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s classic postmodern novel.

White Noise has long been considered unadaptable. However, Baumbach zeroes on a consistent throwline that guids his weird and eccentric adaptation through its various shifts and turns. White Noise is fundamentally a story about death. It is about the way in which so much culture – sex, media, consumerism – is designed as an effort to drown out the encroaching and inescapable sense of mortality. Baumbach presents a broad and cartoonish exploration of man’s inability to grapple with that universal certainty. In doing so, he tells a strangely moving story.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adaptation, awards, column, consumerism, death, don delillo, in the frame, netflix, Noah Baumbach, Oscars, sex, white noise | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Sandman” and the Art of Adaptation…

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist yesterday. It’s a big weekend for media releases, and one of those new releases was The Sandman from Netflix, an adaptation of the comic book series from Neil Gaiman.

The Sandman is a remarkably faithful adaptation of the source material, often lifting images and dialogue directly from the comic. However, it’s also an interesting illustration of the art of adaptation as it purtains to ten-episode seasons of streaming television shows. It’s interesting to see how the source material is tweaked and altered to make it fit that familiar template, and what the adaptational choices say about what the streaming service and the production studio want from the show.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: adaptation, Comics, dc, dc universe, neil gaiman, netflix, streaming, the sandman, warners | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “The Sandman is a Reminder of What Made the Comic So Beloved”

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute television review of The Sandman, which is streaming on Netflix now.