 Hey guys, it's James here with a little discussion video. I've actually been wanting to do some more of these lately, but I just haven't gotten the chance to do it until now, and I'm doing it in this audio-only format just because I mean the camera that I've been using since I've started the show is... it's a decent camera, don't get me wrong, but it is also pretty old and it's not compatible with any other microphones, like I can't improve the sound quality with it at all, and that's coming into more and more stark contrast with my scripted stuff now that I have a better microphone with it, so I was just gonna try for this one video to just do audio and you guys let me know if you have a preference. With that out of the way, I want to talk about why I think that the Expanse television show is the greatest book-to-screen adaptation that has ever been created. Now, I'm not one of those guys that always goes around saying the book was better. There are a lot of people that do that, and don't get me wrong, I think that in a lot of cases they're correct because films and books have different limitations and different strength from one another, so sometimes it can be hard to get across the core message of the original work in an adaptation. You see this a lot in movies like, for example, the Harry Potter series. Now, those movies are fairly long, but the books are way longer, and that's always been the main problem that adaptations have faced when they get turned into films is that, well, they have a lot less time to work with, so there's less time for world building, there's less time for character development, there's less time for developing more complex bits of the story, and it can be very hard to get a lot of that across, and so the Harry Potter movies in particular, I mean, they aren't terrible, I think they're good movies, but there are a lot of points where the story gets simplified or characterization gets left out, and so sometimes they feel a little bit more hollow, and the emotions aren't quite as powerful as they were in the books. Like, for example, I think we've all seen the deleted scene from the Deathly Hallows part one, where Harry is leaving the Dursleys, and he actually says goodbye to Petunia and Dudley, and those are both very powerful moments, and they left them out of the original film, so you know what I'm saying is that sometimes they're just hamstrung, they're hamstrung by being adapted into a movie. Now the first obvious advantage that The Expanse has is that even though they're really, really long books, they have a television show, and that gives them a lot more time to work with, because you just couldn't make the story into a movie or a series of movies. It just wouldn't work, you'd have to leave out way, way too much stuff. But the television show has time to not only get across all of the plot points and world building and characterization that the books have, but it actually expands upon them and adds new ones, which really make it a better story, I would argue. Now the most obvious example of this is how they develop more minor characters a lot better. You know, people like Ghazi, the security, the security, sorry, security worker that works for Avasarala, he's barely even mentioned in the books, he's just kind of a guy that's there, a guy that, that works for her, whereas in the show he has an actual face, an actual voice, and personality that you can, you can connect with. And so, oh yeah, obviously there will be really big spoilers for the books here. I probably should have, probably should have said that earlier, but you know, whatever, there, there will be spoilers from this point on. So if that bothers you, you should stop now. Okay, so anyways, when Ghazi dies in season three, you actually feel really sorry for him. He goes out like a hero and you just have actually connected with him by that point. And not only that, you have people like a drummer who, while she is in the books, plenty, and she, she is very likable in there, in the show she actually gets a lot more time devoted to her. And you see her interactions with other side characters that aren't the main characters and you, you just feel more, well obviously you feel more connected to her, but even beyond that, you feel more of her strength coming through and more of her toughness and more of how, yeah, this is kind of a hardcore bitch, but she's, she's a genuinely good person beyond that. And the list goes on, you know, there's people like Bobby Squad, who you actually see them before they die. There's people like Diogo, who was again barely mentioned in the books, but now he has an actual character arc and personality. There's people like Dawes and Jules Pierre Mow, who just, just everyone in the show, almost everyone, has their character expanded upon and they generally get really good actors to play them, or at least solid actors, and so that just brings their personality to life, that brings them out more. Not to mention that for the main characters, their characterization is a lot faster and it's shown better, because, you know, in the books, they're, you know, you're in their head when you're following them around. When they're the POV characters, you get in their head, you know their thoughts, and so they can just sort of exposit their past and stuff like that, and it works okay. Whereas in the show, you can't do that, so you have to actually show it. You have to show it through conversation and through visuals, and they do that very well. Like for example, again, there's, you know, Bobby's dealing with her PTSD after her squad gets killed. That's a pretty obvious one. Another pretty obvious one would be Alex's relationship with his wife and his son, you know, like, you actually see them have some brief conversations in the show and you get that, okay, yeah, they're, they have a difficult relationship, but they do, they do love each other. And then there's Naomi, obviously, we don't have to wait until five books in before we know that, oh, okay, she had a son and she used to be a member of the OPA, like, they kind of just come right out and say that earlier on in the show. And honestly, that was one of my issues with the books is that it took forever to get Naomi's backstory. It took forever to get Amos's backstory. And, you know, we had some hints about it, but in the show, they actually just give it to you sooner, so there's less time just spinning your wheels. Another huge, huge advantage that this show has just because it's visual is that it can show off a lot of worldbuilding visually, you know, you can actually see the inside of the belts, you can see Eros and you can see the difference between, okay, this is the rich area and this is the poor area and you can see like, okay, yeah, this is how belters live. I understand why they would feel more resentful towards people on earth. And you also see people on earth, you see the poor, you see the rich, you see just, you see a lot of stuff that they don't really need to explain all that much to you. You see, you know, incoming equality. Well, I keep coming back to that. I'm sorry. But you really get that. And there's also one really, really simple moment from just the pilot episode that always has stuck with me. And that's when Naomi and Holden are on the canterbury and they go on an elevator and they push a button to go down. But then the screen sort of glitches out and frees out. So they just bang on it for a second. And then it starts working again. And that gets across that, okay, yeah, a lot of ships in this universe are really old and barely holding themselves together. That's not something they need to explain. That's just, it's just shown to you. Not to mention that at this point in time, visual effects have advanced to the point where they actually can give a show like this justice, you know, you can show things like the ring. I mean, the ring coming off of Venus and also the way it looks when it's out in the middle of space. That just looks fantastic. It looks alien. In fact, everything about the protomolecule actually looks alien. They really did justice to that from translating it from page to screen. Like the way those little fireflies go around that's, I mean, that's just perfect that you really couldn't do that any better. And then there's stuff like the slow zone, which just looks like, yeah, it doesn't look like something from our universe. It makes you feel uncomfortable just like the characters are. And then, you know, obviously I mentioned that there's stuff like you see how poor some of the belters are. But even beyond that, when you actually look at the belters, the way they're dressed and how they all have crazy tattoos on their faces and shit, like you really get an idea that, yes, this is a separate culture, and you do actually feel some sort of divide between them and the people on the inner planets. And of course, there's stuff like, you know, the spaceships and the space battles, those are, those are obviously pretty great. And while they don't really improve upon what the book was doing, they, they do it justice, you know, like that that's all an adaptation really should do is do it justice. And the expanse is actually kind of unusual in that it improves upon it in a lot of ways. But the last way that I think this show not only does its original source material justice, but it actually improves upon it is it just gives it a bigger feeling. Because think about it, if you've read the books, you know that all of them are generally focused on a couple of characters, like the first book only has, I think, four POV characters, and two of them were just the prologue and epilogue. So the vast majority of it is just with Holden and Miller. And the thing about that is it works great to give them characterization, and it does still show the story from multiple angles before they eventually meet up. But I mean, there's a lot of off screen events throughout the solar system, which you don't really get to see that well. Whereas the show, it actually is able to focus on minor characters for a scene or two. And so you actually get a better feeling of what's going on all around the solar system, not just with these couple of characters. And so what that does is that it makes the whole world feel bigger. Like it makes you realize that, yes, this is an entire solar system. There are billions of people there. There's a whole bunch of crazy shit going on. It just works way, way better in that regard than the books ever could really even hope to, I think. It really does take advantage of the fact that it has more time to develop everything. So that's about all I have to say. Overall, I'm just saying that the Expanse TV show, it keeps the spirit of the books intact. Like it doesn't damage them in any way. It doesn't really change anything that doesn't need to be changed. The only couple of things that it's cut out have been pretty great actually. Like they cut out the character of Bull, but that meant that they got a lot more screen time and a lot more development for Drummer. That was great. And the show also expands upon a bunch of stuff. I don't think I really need to go into any more detail about that. And it really does deliver the same themes. It gives you the same feeling that, yes, the universe is huge and there's something else out there and we don't know what it is or how it works, but we're humans, and so we'll find a way to fight back against it. And to me, that is maybe not the core of the series, but it's very, very close to the core of the series. So that's everything. If you liked this new video format, then let me know, because I'm not sure if I want to keep doing this, but you know, I do like doing these discussion videos. They're more off the cuff. It'll allow you to, you know, talk it out in the comments and everything. And speaking of which, if you have not already liked the video, subscribed and commented, please do that and check out my Patreon if you want to help me make more stuff like this. I'll see you later.