Adapting Source Material

It is a basic but artistically vital fact that changing elements of stories if they are brought from one medium to another does not necessarily mean that the adaptation or remake is of poor quality.  It is logically possible to deviate from source material and still create an excellent work in any medium.  Even if something does not adapt source material perfectly, the changes, depending on which ones are implemented, could genuinely be improvements over the original stories and ideas or equally competent despite the difference.  Adapting source material is still a highly controversial part entertainment that could have some fools set on criticizing any changes or any sameness, associating an utterly irrational set of contradictory expectations with many adaptations.

In the context of Christianity, this issue actually has even greater significance in light of how the Bible itself can be adapted into other books, films, shows, and games.  Philosophically and artistically (though this is just an extension of the former) engaging with source material of course has ramifications for how Christians and non-Christians alike bring stories from one medium, the Bible in its form as a set of written textual documents, to others that involve rewording or screens.  On one hand, Christians might wish for more cinematic/artistic attention for the Bible, but on the other hand, some of the same Christians will oppose objectively valid or deep adaptations of Biblical stories.

Ironically, it is not as if higher profile, explicitly Christian movies based on Biblical events like Passion of the Christ, made by those who identify as Christians, do absolutely nothing but portray the Biblical accounts without adding dialogue, locations, or imagery that is in no way present in the text itself, and yet Passion of the Christ is an example of a film that remains quite popular with even the conservative audiences that might lash out at other movies based on the Bible for doing similar things.  In many cases, there is an overt double standard that leads certain Christians to exaggerate differences between adaptations of the Bible and the actual Bible or to not recognize the legitimate philosophical and artistic triumphs of a given work.

This can be seen in how plenty of Christians handle movies like Noah--a movie that certainly goes beyond the Genesis narrative of the flood while still being immensely superior both thematically and artistically (again, not that these two are truly distinct) to the vast majority of entertainment made by Christians, even entertainment made for the sake of directly promoting or exploring Christianity as Christians.  Does Genesis describe Noah as almost killing his grandchildren?  No, but this inclusion does not make Noah a bad movie or even a shallow, useless attempt to tackle Biblically important themes and events.  Does Passion of the Christ add or change not a single thing about the gospel accounts of Christ's death?  No, but not only is this not the inherent point of adaptations, it also does not actually contradict any Biblical command to not make presentational changes when adapting parts of the Bible.

Unless it is intentionally meant to distort Christianity itself rather than just tell a story that the creators might understand does not perfectly match the source material in the Bible, there is not anything objectionable on Biblical grounds about adding or changing certain details about dialogue or other such factors of the stories when putting them in a new format (Deuteronomy 4:2 is crucially relevant once again).  It is not even as if most entertainment made by Christians for Christians--Christian filmmakers like Scott Derickson make movies that are geberay consistent with Christian concepts without sacrificing artistic quality or more mainstream appeal, so some Christian-led art does not qualify as Christian--does not do the very same thing!  With adapting the Bible or other source material, changing aspects of a story is not necessarily a betrayal of the original narrative, or even something that is artistically abysmal on a certain level even if changes always were a betrayal.