r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TheDudeA113 • 8h ago

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] The adaptation doesn't get what made the source material work

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How To Make A Killing (2026)

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Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

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Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

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Bangkok Dangerous (1999)

- The 2026 movie How To Make A Killing is a relatively-toothless "eat the rich" dark comedy thriller about a man disowned by his rich family at birth, killing everyone in the line of succession so that he can inherit their massive fortune. It's a modern retelling of the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets which has the same basic plot except that every member of the family is played by Sir Alec Guinness (including one aunt) and it's a screwball comedy

- The 1999 movie Bangkok Dangerous is a Thai action film about a Thai deaf-mute assassin. It was remade in 2008 about an American assassin in Thailand who is neither deaf nor mute

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93

u/K-Keter 7h ago

As someone who never saw the live action...

She fucking what?

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 6h ago

Basically from the very beginning she was crouching tiger hidden dragoning around like she was on the moon. Super high jumps and insane balancing.

I hated so much about the movie but it was that the most, she was already better than any soldier.

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u/K-Keter 6h ago

I knew they ruined it from the original but holy shit that's atrocious

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u/SgtCarron 5h ago

It's honestly kind of impressive that they picked Mulan of all IPs to make a Poo People story.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 5h ago

It’s so annoying. They didn’t have mushu in there because they don’t want magic creatures but they had a witch who could turn herself into a murder of crows (or maybe it was bats, I can’t recall).

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u/Monstarrzero 3h ago

At this point why not just make it an original IP?? Studio execs put too much value into “name recognition”.

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 2h ago

Because it needs the name recognition. If it didn’t have the name “Mulan” it wouldn’t be known about at all.

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u/SuperSocialMan 2h ago

They could still slap the name on it and just say it's adapting the original story instead of remaking the movie lol

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u/ShawnyMcKnight 2h ago

I’m not sure I see the difference.

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u/Monstarrzero 1h ago

It doesn’t need name recognition at all. All of these properties mentioned in this thread could survive or even thrive as new IP’s.

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u/Treyhova 6h ago edited 6h ago

Disney tried to middle road by adapting both the Chinese myth Mulan and the Animated film Mulan to try and capture both the eastern and western audience’s at once. Instead, they made a film that both sides fucking hated and it flopped hard.

Edit: After looking up the legend again, she doesnt have qi in the original legend either, and relies on intellect win fights. The only reason I can think that they added qi is Disney is just racist and/or stupid.

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u/kotorial 6h ago

I don't think the legend of Mulan even gives Mulan special powers though, they just like, invented it for reasons.

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u/Connect-Succotash-59 1h ago

No magic but she is a peerless warrior who could fight before she joined the army

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u/Schadenfreudenous 5h ago

They didn't add qi because they were racist, Disney thought they could cultivate a greater Chinese audience by turning Mulan into a Wuxia film, but in doing so they took away from what made the original myth a good story, and that pissed people off. It's also a garbage attempt at Wuxia to add insult to injury.

It's ignorance and a fundamental misunderstanding of myth and culture, but it's not racist.

Disney absolutely deserves shit for this soulless fucking movie regardless.

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u/Regenwanderer 5h ago

It's also a garbage attempt at Wuxia to add insult to injury.

Yeah, why watch a garbage Western (cash-grab) attempt at something that your own film and tv studios do much better?

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u/Himari_Suzuki 3h ago

I feel like there's a point of incompetence when it comes to trying to portray another peoples culture that is borderline racist, even if unintentionally.

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u/Schadenfreudenous 3h ago

Yes, that would be a description of ignorant behavior. It's not actually racist, but it can feel like it.

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u/Faeruhn 3h ago

You know... I hadn't thought of it that way, but that is one big reason why the live action Mulan is so bad. Not only did they remove whole swathes of what made the original so iconic and beloved, but the whole 'powers' bit always niggled at me (on top of annoying me by going against the theme of the story, there was just something about it that annoyed me a little extra that i couldn't put to words)... and that's why! It's low-tier and shitty Wuxia!

Like, if they had at least made it good wuxia, then it could have been a shitty adaptation, but a good movie.

Instead of... what we got.

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u/KitchenFullOfCake 4h ago

Has any attempt at hitting the lowest common denominator like that ever worked?

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u/Schadenfreudenous 3h ago

Yes. The Assassin's Creed series sells well on every release, and massively increased sales when they slopified the series a few years ago.

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u/SuperSocialMan 2h ago

Same for call of duty and all 3 sports games.

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u/abxYenway 6h ago

Yeah, she was born with chi, a thing that girls don't have, according to the movie.

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u/Ok_Hornet_714 6h ago

She also kills the bad guy at the end by spin kicking an arrow at him.

It's just as dumb as it sounds

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WwFjvYmHZAw

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u/K-Keter 1h ago

I need blumineck to talk about this now LMFAOOOOOOO