Adaptational Heroism in Animated Films.
- Astaroth in Christian folklore is the Great Duke of Hell who tempts men into damnation via sloth. In The Amazing Adventures of the Living Corpse, he is the kindly lord of the afterlife, who sends John on his quest to stop the zombies.
- In the animated version of the Asterix story The Mansions of the Gods, the Roman couple that gets coaxed into taking residence in the title mansion ends up befriending and helping the Gauls (the husband is crucial in rescuing Getafix and the wife is briefly seen bashing Romans soldiers along with the Gauls), while in the comic they were mainly used as comic relief and overall Butt-Monkey.
- The CGI Astro Boy film completely changed Tenma's personality due to making him a Decomposite Character. In the manga and its anime adaptations he rejects Astro as a failed Replacement Goldfish because he can't age and doesn't act enough like his son. Tenma ultimately becomes the Big Bad due to his resentment towards Astro. In the film adaptation, Tenma grows to love Astro by the end. Canon Foreigner President Stone instead is the antagonist.
- Barbie movies:
- In Barbie as Rapunzel, Rapunzel's parents didn't steal anything from Gothel, nor did they give up their daughter to her. Instead, Gothel kidnapped the baby girl in order to punish her father for not marrying her.
- Everyone in Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses gets a morality upgrade, and all the negative traits are conferred on Duchess Rowena, who did not exist in the original story.
- Anything associating the underground realm with Hell is gone; here, it's a lovely haven for the princesses from their wicked governess. The enchanted princes are statues brought to life by a wish, not demons or real people the princesses are holding hostage.
- It cuts the "do or die" part of the original fairy tale, and the drugged wine is only briefly alluded to with a plot point about the late queen's goblet. The princesses are not complicit in anyone's deaths, and their father does not order anyone to die.
- The king's reasoning for controlling his daughters is never explained in the fairy tale; here, he's a doting single father who tasks Duchess Rowena with helping them become "proper princesses", and every cruel act she undertakes happens behind his back. He concludes the story by saying he was wrong to ever try to control them or change them.You are each special, beautiful princesses, and you'll do great things in your own way, just as your mother always told me.
- Instead of stalking the princesses, exposing them to their father, and taking the eldest for his bride without her getting a say in the matter, the soldier is now the royal shoemaker and an old friend of the twelve sisters. He and the seventh sister, Genevieve, have a mutual crush, but neither of them can spit it out. He follows them into the underground realm on a mission Genevieve sent him on to learn more about Rowena's schemes. The sisters can never return to the underground realm for reasons completely unrelated to him, and he and Genevieve end the story happily and consensually married.
- The Pharaoh of the Exodus (given the name "Ramesses") gets this treatment in The Prince of Egypt. While still the villain, he's portrayed in a more tragic, sympathetic, and all-around human light than his Biblical counterpart. He's clearly torn up about having to go against his brother, hoping that they can work things out, but ultimately decides they can't and refuses to see things any other way. Some scenes ended up having to be re-written from the original drafts of the script because Rameses came across as too nice.
- Disney Animated Canon:
- In the original stories and plays by J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan was one of The Fair Folk and came off as a Sociopathic Hero - he didn't show much concern for his "friends," and took nightmarish pleasure in killing pirates. The Disney version, understandably, left out this aspect of Peter.
- Hercules:
- Anyone who knows their Greek mythology knows that Zeus is a self-righteous, womanizing jerk and rapist. Here, he's pretty much a cross between Grandpa God and Bumbling Dad who certainly loves Hercules and stays loyal to Hera, making his status as a Top God of Mt. Olympus and Big Good of the series a lot more plausible.
- Hera herself is this. She is just as mercurial and temperamental as Zeus and made a lot of problems for Hercules by giving him plenty of moments of unstoppable anger (though she stopped when he saved her life). Here, she's as kind and caring as Zeus. Probably helps that Hercules is her biological son here.
- By modern standards, the Hercules of Greek Myth wasn't exactly a paragon of heroic virtue. He killed more than one innocent person simply for being too close when his temper got the better of him (however, he was always remorseful and it's implied much of his temper problems come from Hera, as mentioned above), and he would go stage a huge war for a mere verbal insult one day, although he did go to great lengths to help his friends and his deeds did the world a lot of good. The Hercules in this movie is a wide eyed boy scout who doesn't have much, if any, vices. The worst thing he does is lash out at Phil for trying to warn him about Meg being in league with Hades, but he immediately comes to regret that.
- The Enchantress from Beauty and the Beast is a curious example. In the original tale, she was a wicked fairy who cursed the prince for no good reason. The film has her curse the prince after he refuses her shelter and shows himself to be selfish. While not presented as a heroic character, her spell served to teach the prince about love rather than anything malicious. Still pretty callous though in regards to the servants and castle staff who got transformed into sentient housewares because they happened to work for a guy who needed to learn a lesson about being selfish.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney):
- Captain Phoebus is transformed from a dishonest cad to a genuinely heroic figure, being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at worst.
- Quasimodo is a lot less of a bitter Jerkass and more of a Wide-Eyed Idealist.
- Esmeralda is even more compassionate to Quasimodo. In the book she still shrank away in disgust when he tried to kiss her hand, in the animated film she happily kisses him in thanks after he frees her from Notre Dame.
- In Tarzan, Kerchak is deeply suspicious of the title character, but only because he considers him a potential threat. Other than that, he's a heroic figure and good leader. In the original books, on the other hand, he was a straight-up Killer Gorilla who was responsible for the death of Tarzan's father.
- In Treasure Planet, Silver is a lot nicer than in the original book: he keeps his charm and intelligence, but he saves Jim here because wants to do so, not because he needs him. Additionally, Mr Arrow goes from a useless drunk to an upright officer who's unfailingly loyal to Captain Amelia, refusing to hear a negative word said against her; when he dies, she's clearly deeply affected by the loss, in stark contrast to the book, where Mr Arrow is barely mourned.
- Rapunzel's parents in Tangled. The father steals lettuce from a witch's garden in the original tale, simply because his pregnant wife had a craving for it. Rapunzel's parents also disappear from the story and never seem to bother about the whereabouts of the daughter they gave up (although there are some alternate interpretations that the parents died out of despair). In the film, the mother is dying and, rather than knowingly stealing from the witch, they find a golden flower that the witch had been using to make herself young to heal the former. Then, when the witch finds out that the baby — Rapunzel — has her hair imbued with the powers of the golden flower, the witch kidnaps her so that she can continue making herself young. Rapunzel is also reunited with her parents at the end — and her parents are implied to have been searching for her all her life.
- The titular character of The Snow Queen is very much an example of The Fair Folk, stealing Kai after the mirror shards take away his ability to see and feel positivity. Her counterpart in Frozen, Elsa, is a Not Evil, Just Misunderstood Composite Character of the Snow Queen and Kai, who runs away because she's scared of her own powers. This is the result of the movie's long stint in Development Hell going through many drafts prior to the end result- some previous conceptions of Elsa were even more antagonistic than the original Snow Queen.
- Oliver & Company contains a fair amount of adaptational alignment-shuffling, but probably the most blatant is Fagin. In the original book, Fagin was a straight-up villain, equal partner to Sykes. In the Disney version, he's straight-up heroic, working for Sykes only to pay off a massive debt, and genuinely caring for his adopted orphans - er, animals.
- The Fox and the Hound takes significant liberties with the source material, which is a Xenofiction novel that presents the animal characters as having very inhuman thought processes and (lack of) morality, which for some comes across as a story of Evil Versus Evil and for others as a story following two very alien protagonists. The Disney film makes the titular fox and hound more straightforwardly heroic, though it's telling that it still manages to be one of the studio's darker films.
- The titular Pinocchio is made more sympathetic than he is in the original novel, most notably actually listening to Jiminy/The Talking Cricket instead of throwing a hammer at him, killing him by accident.
- In How to Train Your Dragon, Snotlout Jorgenson is shown to be the biggest bully among the teenage Vikings, making fun of Hiccup for being weak and clumsy, and actively belittling and ostracizing him. Like the other teens, he gets better in the end. Meanwhile, in the original books, Snotlout was Hiccup's cousin, who repeatedly tried to murder him in order to become next in line for chieftainship. The Adaptational Heroism is pushed even further in the TV show, Dragons: Riders of Berk, where Character Development kicks in and gradually reveals Snotlout to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- In The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Burbank Animation), Phoebus is a much nicer guy who genuinely cares for Esmeralda. However, he passes near the location of Esmeralda's execution without speaking, but it all ends up as a double subversion: he reveals the truth to the angry mob at the end.
- In Joseph: King of Dreams, Potiphar's wife (Zuleika) gets a mild form of this. After she gives her False Rape Accusation, Potiphar is about to kill Joseph, but she intervenes, insisting that he doesn't deserve death. It's only then that he's thrown in jail instead. This actually results in some slight Adaptational Villainy for Potiphar, since he seems to understand what she's saying but still punishes Joseph to save face (though Joseph forgives him for this later).
- Technically Joseph's brothers get a tiny bit of this: in The Bible, they originally planned to kill him, except that Reuben, the eldest, argued that they should just throw him in a pit; he secretly planned to rescue Joseph later. Here, even throwing him into the pit seems accidental, though they still leave him there and eventually sell him into slavery. Reuben's heroic role is cut out.
- Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge:
- Scorpion has a history of Heel–Face Revolving Door in the games and is often regarded as a villain and siding with them against Raiden's forces, before finally becoming good by the reboot timeline. Here, even before Quan Chi reveals he is the one who killed his family, Scorpion is a rather decent person and even allied himself with Liu Kang, Sonya and Johnny against Kano's mercenaries despite them being his opponents in the tournament.
- Bi-Han, the original Sub-Zero, is a minor case of this. While he's not on the side of the angels, he doesn't seem to have had any dealings with Quan Chi. In fact, where the 2021 live-action film transferred Quan Chi's massacre of Hanzo's family and the Shirai Ryu to Bi-Han, this film goes the exact opposite and gives Quan Chi Bi-Han's role in Hanzo's death in addition to the murder of Hanzo's family and clan, meaning in this version, Scorpion killed an innocent man. He also chastises Kano for his use of his goons to take out Raiden's warriors.
- NIMONA (2023):
- Downplayed in that Ballister was hardly even a villain in the original webcomic, but he still identified himself as such and engaged in morally-dubious schemes (albeit while still refusing to take a life) because he thought it was useless to try to combat the Institution's smear campaign against him. In the movie, Ballister is directly putting in the effort into clearing his name, and the official preview has him adamantly refusing to identify himself as a "villain" despite Nimona's claims.
- Played straight with Nimona, who was legitimately murderous in the original webcomic and had to be kept in check by Ballister until she finally embrace Then Let Me Be Evil and unleashed her Superpowered Evil Side on the Institute, wounding and killing many, while she's more of a general rebellious teenager in the movie with a dark sense of humor who is more interested in humiliating her opponents than actually killing them. She briefly does turn into a Kaiju like she does in the webcomic, but she's talked down from going on the rampage, with the resulting destruction of kingdom being the result of the Director's actions. Tellingly, when it seemed she perished in the fight, the kingdom honors her as a hero, while she was seen as a monster with only Ballister sympathizing with her at the end of the webcomic.
- Pinocchio (1992)
- Mangiafuoco (AKA Stromboli) of all people. His puppets are not sentient, so he is less ethically ambiguous than the literary one. He never intends to burn Pinocchio; and just scolds the latter for ruining his show.
- The Blue Fairy does save Pinocchio from the thieves (The Wolf and the Cat disguised) in the "midnight assault scene", unlike the one of the book, which alleged to be dead and was quite morally ambiguous. Also, she does not fake to be dead.
- The Wolf and the Cat have a downplayed villainy. In the midnight assault scene, they disguise as trees rather than as assassins, don't scare Pinocchio to give up the money and never try to attack him. Those two things indicate that they wouldn't have hurt Pinocchio, unlike their book counterparts.
- In the Shrek movies, The Big Bad Wolf is a good guy, and is best friends with the Three Little Pigs. It counts with Shrek himself, whose book counterpart is a Villain Protagonist. The exact opposite happens with Prince Charming and the Fairy Godmother, however. Puss in Boots appears to be the opposite at first, but this is quickly subverted once he befriends Shrek and Donkey.
- In the Super Mario Bros. games, Cranky Kong was a Retired Monster who was the original Donkey Kong that kidnapped Pauline in the first game. However in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, he's done no such things and is a benevolent king who's more mischievous than mean-spirited unlike his counterpart.
- While in both The True Meaning of Smekday and Home (2015), the Gorg was the only one left of the his species, in the former, his species wiped themselves out and the Gorg were characterized by invading planets for no good reason and were Jerkasses to the point where they started a long civil war over a parking space. Here, the Gorg only attacks the Boov to repopulate his species with the children taken by Smek.
