CLASSIC STORIES THAT HAVE BEEN CONVERTED TO MODERN MEDIA
Defining any story as a classic is immediately a subjective topic and there isn’t much in the way of a hard definition. Different people have a lot of different criteria, ranging from the age of the piece down to personal emotional reactions. The most clear-cut and universally agreed classics, however, tend to come back again and again in many forms, and today we’re looking at those stories that have been transformed into modern media.
Fantasy
The world of fantasy can be a broad or narrow category, depending on who you ask. For some, the genre is limited to anything involving only sword and sorcery, while many also include things like science fiction or alternative history worlds. It’s a debate that’s been going on for more than a century at this point. The clearest defining feature by any measure is the inclusion of features that are impossible in our world, and whether that’s magic or incredible science, it’s usually a feature that makes fantasy a prime target for media adaptations.
When most think of fantasy, big names like Game of Thrones are usually the first that come to mind, packed with dragons and magic everywhere. In reality, a lot of older and more traditional fantasy stories have generated the most adaptations, with a prime example being Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. This world has multiple movies and TV shows under its belt, with the range of media extending as far as casino games. Under the latter category, the mythos has been used as the basis for a long list of slot games over the years, continuing today with versions like the Adventures Beyond Wonderland live game found at https://casino.betfair.com/game/live-adventures-beyond-wonderland-cptl and many other large casino providers.
Adventure
There has often been a great deal of overlap between the adventure genre and the fantasy genre, not least because adventures usually travel into the unknown, and fantasy worlds have often made the easiest unknown backdrop. With that said, the two genres are separable by the extensive library of stories that are rooted in the real world, including those based on true stories and the adventures of real people like the movies found at https://www.holidify.com/pages/10-movies-based-on-real-life-travel-adventures-1681.html.
While there have been more modern ‘real’ adventure stories along the lines of The Life of Pi, the most commonly referenced adventure stories in media date back a hundred years or more. We’re looking more at things like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or maybe Moby Dick, the latter of which is endlessly referenced throughout TV shows if not directly adapted. These stories are so ingrained within our culture by this stage that they frequently get used as core episode plot points in shows like Star Trek and Futurama, even if none of these classics have gotten a dedicated production for several decades at this point.
Horror
For as long as we’ve had stories of fantastical worlds and epic heroes battling against the forces of evil, there have also been those stories about the terrible things hiding in the dark corners and going bump in the night. Horror stories are one of the most consistently popular kinds of literature around the world and are one of the few types of tales that endure as much in the oral tradition as the written one. Every nation in the world has its own ghost stories and urban legends as you can read about at https://jacksflightclub.com/travel-hub/dont-read-these-urban-legends and modern media draws on these just as much as any established literature.
For as many TV and movie adaptations as we get from Frankenstein or The Haunting of Hill House, there are also huge productions that use folklore as a base. Some of the most memorable movies in the last few decades have been drawn directly from cultural stories, such as The Curse of La Llorona drawn from Mexican folklore, or the vengeful Japanese spirit stories made iconic through films like The Ring or The Grudge. These are all originally folk stories with versions going back hundreds of years, albeit rarely written down. Then there are the cases of things like H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos, a set of stories about ancient and usually evil gods that have been endlessly extended, adapted, and referenced in all kinds of media to the point of almost going back into folklore itself.
Drama
This is another category that tends to overlap a lot with other genres, given that drama is a natural component of virtually any mature story out there. What we’re looking at in particular are those classic dramas that seem to have endured the passage of time and entered into the world of cultural staples. For this, we have some of the oldest written stories of any genre with the works of Shakespeare whose dramas are still being reimagined and retold close to 400 years after they were originally written. Romeo and Juliet alone has more than a dozen movie adaptations from the directly named versions in 1936, ’68, ’97, and as recent as 2013, to blockbuster works like A West Side Story and Shakespeare in Love which use the same core plot points.
Shakespeare’s home, however, has and always will be on stage first, but don’t be fooled into thinking that theatre hasn’t also become modernised. Just recently in 2017, the Royal Shakespeare Company introduced something groundbreaking in the form of 3D projection technology for a production of The Tempest. We’re often seeing more and more of these technologically advanced shows, combining modern special effects alongside traditional options, with some theatres even implementing things like virtual reality and augmented reality. In these cases, it’s interesting that modern media itself has been adapted to fit an existing story instead of the other way around.
Whichever genre it is, humanity has a love for familiar stories like these and for better or worse, it’s unlikely we’re going to stop any time soon. As times and cultures change, it’s all many of us can do to see what the next version will look like or just how creative the next director can be.
