Adaptational Nonsapience

Casey Jr. in the original Dumbo and in the remake: from talking anthropomorphic train to ordinary vehicle.

A character who was able to talk in the original no longer has the physical capability to form and communicate complex ideas in an adaptation.

See, life can be pretty hard for non-human characters. In addition to being treated as more disposable, some higher-ups seem to believe that these sorts of characters reduce the believability of the work. So if they aren't cut wholesale to reduce the effects budget, they tend to be reduced to a non-speaking role.

Talking animals and monsters tend to have an intellect reduced to those of normal beasts, by fiction's standards anyway, while robots and A.I.s will be reduced to something along the lines of a normal computer. Depending on fan reception of the character in their original form, this will either cause backlash or joy.

An extreme form of Adaptational Dumbass and Adaptational Personality Change. Something of a reverse Anthropomorphic Shift. Not to be confused with Formerly Sapient Species.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend is an expansion of the Doraemon short, "Goodbye, Kibō!", expanded from a 10-page short to a feature-length film. Kibō himself notably goes from having the ability to speak after being taught by Doraemon and Nobita, even conversing fluently with the other major characters, to being reduced to Pokémon Speak where all he can say is "Ki, ki, ki!" for most of his screentime. He only gains ability to talk after coming back from his apparent Heroic Sacrifice after the climax.
• Gundam
  • Inverted in Kidō Senshi Gundam-san, where some mobile suits from Mobile Suit Gundam are sentient. The Gundam, Big Zam, and Gyan are depicted as females.
  • Also inverted in several SD Gundam stories that have Super-Deformed versions of various mobile suits depicted as Mechanical Lifeforms or Ridiculously Human Robots. The Mobile Suit SD Gundam series in particular has human characters from the early Universal Century interacting with sentient versions of the mobile suits they piloted in their original anime.
• Soukou no Strain is an anime based on A Little Princess with characters from other Frances Hodgson Burnett books (Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden) appearing as well. Most of the characters have little in common with their book counterparts.
  • Ram Dass is an Indian assistant to the rich man who saved Sara from Miss Minchin's abuse in the book. In the anime, Ram-Dass is a Humongous Mecha. In a way, it retains its role as Sara's protector.
  • Zigzagged with Emily, who's just a doll in the book. In the anime, the Emily that Sara found is a Mimic, a machine fused with brain cells taken from a Reasoner before birth. To further explain the Technobabble, Reasoners are mecha pilots while Mimics are "keys" for the titular Strains, which are Humongous Mecha biometrically locked to those with Mimics and superior to those mecha that don't require it. The Mimic enables a Psychic Link with the person from whom the brain cells are taken from. A Reasoner who lost their Mimic can no longer pilot a Strain. Sara lost her personal Mimic but, somehow, she was able to use the Emily Mimic to pilot the Ram-Dass Strain. It's then revealed that Emily is a Mimic of an alien race who consisted of pale-skinned identical girls, all of whom share a telepathic connection to one another and the Emily Mimic that Sara found contains the mind of one of two surviving Emilys.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT: Mixed with Adaptational Species Change for Yuuno. In the original series, Yuuno has the ability to turn into a ferret, retaining his sapience in that form. In INNOCENT, Yuuno's ferret form is his regular appearance, and he becomes Nanoha's nonsapient pet.

Comic Books

• While Wonder Woman's jet doesn't always have actual sapience (only explicitly being considered a living thing in Volume 2) even from its first appearance it had a fairly advanced AI and was originally called her "robot plane" rather than her invisible plane. In The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) the plane is an experimental B-17 with no AI or thinking capacity with the only remarkable thing to set it apart from other B-17s being an invisibility booster for stealth applications, and simplified nose glazing.
• Shazam!: In the New 52 era, Tawky Tawny is just a normal tiger at the zoo, though at one point Billy makes him a (still non-sapient) Animal Superhero. DC Rebirth reintroduces the anthropomorphic version. Likewise, Hoppy the Marvel Bunny is Mary's pet, although he also gets empowered.
• Ultimate Spider-Man: In this continuity the Venom symbiote has no intelligence of its own and is driven solely by instinct.

Fan Works

• In the Better Bones AU, an Alternate Universe Fic of Warrior Cats, badgers are no longer sapient, talking creatures capable of coming together and strategizing to form coalitions. This is to avoid canon's implications of them being an Always Chaotic Evil species who the cats are justified in driving out of their homes unprovoked.
• In the Fate/Grand Order fanfic Heaven and Earth, instead of carrying a teddy bear with Orion's personality, Artemis (after hijacking his Saint Graph to keep him from being summoned) carries a normal teddy bear that she insist is Orion whenever the moon is in the sky. It's only during the New Moon that she realizes what it really is, along with remembering that she gave Orion a Mercy Kill so he wouldn't be forced to become a God, changing the love he had for her.
• Inferior or Superior: While the sapience of Soundwave's animal cassettes is continuity-dependent, Rumble and Frenzy are always depicted as intelligent Transformers who just happen to be small. The fic's version of Rumble is treated no differently than any other Pokémon and is just as articulate as one.
• Scooby Doo can't speak in the Scooby Doo rewrite now that i can see your face (i can stand up to anything.).
• Henrietta isn't sentient in The Stories of Sodor due to lacking a face, and thus is only known as "Toby's coach" and plays no significant role.
• In the The Owl House fanfic There's No One Like You, Hooty is interpreted as a particularly disturbing sculpture on Eda's shop since it's a Modern AU Fanfic. Luz mentioned feeling like it could swallow her whole. She replaced it with a sign saying "The Owl House Consignment" before the start of the fic.

Films — Animation

• The Mystery of the Third Planet: Downplayed concerning the indicator. It's not sapient in the original novella, but it has a very high level of intelligence, most notably being an Evil-Detecting Dog towards the diamond turtle and understanding a lot of what goes on during the climactic scenes, so much that one of the villains' mooks mistakes it for a sapient creature and tries to handcuff it. In the movie, however, it only displays the most basic Color-Coded Emotions and does nothing plot-relevant.
• Pinocchio: In the original novel, it was not unusual for there to be sentient puppets. Disney's take makes all of Stromboli's other puppets non-sentient, making Pinocchio all that more marvelous and spectacular, and all that much more valuable to him. In addition, the boys turned into donkeys originally all spoke, but Disney made the majority of them only able to bray.
• The Sword in the Stone: The part where Arthur is turned into a fish by Merlin and has to escape a pike in the castle moat is loosely based on a scene from the book The Once and Future King. There, however, the pike was the tyrannical ruler of an entire underwater kingdom, and he tempts Arthur with the promise of a "might makes right" philosophy.

Films — Live-Action

• 101 Dalmatians (1996) is a mild example: it's a Human-Focused Adaptation and the animals don't talk to each other the way they do in the animated version, but they do have Amplified Animal Aptitude and clearly communicate with each other through animal sounds.
• In the 2019 film Aladdin, unlike the original movie, Iago speaks far less and is more prone to repeating what people say instead (although he's still smarter than a regular parrot).
• Bedtime Stories (2008) has an In-Universe example meant to exploit a literal Life Imitates Art, in a variation that involves an already normal beast turned into an inanimate object. Skeeter tries to abuse the power of a bedtime story (an alternate interpretation of the words of the story will happen in Real Life) by telling a Western where someone gives his Cowboy Author Avatar a red Ferrari (the horse) for free so that someone in real life would do the same for him but with a red Ferrari car. It doesn't work the way he expected.
• In Cinderella (2015), unlike in the animated version, the mice don't wear clothes and don't speak. Like Iago in Aladdin (2019), however, they are still smarter than average mice and play an important role in reuniting Cinderella with her prince.
• Dora and the Lost City of Gold has it happen to Boots the monkey. Later subverted when Danny Trejo's voice comes out of him in one instance just before the climax.
• Dumbo removes the ability of any animal to speak, while in the original, Animal Talk applied to all characters besides the mute title character. In particular, most of them don’t seem to have anything beyond real-world animal intellect. Casey Junior is also made inanimate.
• Frankenstein: Not only was the Monster in the original novel capable of speech, he was quite eloquent (and more than a bit broody). In the most famous adaptation, the 1931 film, and in most adaptations using that as a launch pad, he becomes a lumbering, thoughtless, non-speaking brute. (Though in the sequel to said movie, he does start learning to talk, but all other films in the series have him Snap Back to being mute)
• Harry Potter:
  • In the book version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione's cat Crookshanks is a fairly significant supporting character, and while not full-on capable of speech, he nonetheless has some considerable Amplified Animal Aptitude going on. Word of God would later explain that he's part Kneazle, giving him abilities beyond those of a normal cat. In the film adaptation of Azkaban, Crookshanks has a much smaller role and just seems to be a normal cat.
  • The centaurs in film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix are only heard grunting and neighing and seem to be no more intelligent than the half-giant Grawp, who is only able to communicate through simple Hulk Speak. Their book counterparts are perfectly able to speak and famous for their divination abilities, with one of them even getting a job as a divination teacher at the school (a plot point that doesn't appear in the film). In fact, insulting their intelligence or implying that they are "just animals" is a major Berserk Button of theirs, as Umbridge (who is highly prejudiced against anyone and anything that isn't a full-blooded human witch or wizard) found out the hard way after she called them "filthy half-breeds" and "creatures of near-human intelligence". Strangely enough, centaurs are portrayed as sapient in the film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
• In The Hobbit there are several Talking Animal characters, such as the eagles (especially the Lord of the Eagles), the thrush and the raven Roäc. While these animals all appear in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit film trilogy, they are relegated to relatively small, non-talking roles. The Wargs, who had their own language in the books and were even counted as a separate army at the Battle of Five Armies, also seem to be less sapient and presented as simple beasts ridden by the orcs.
• The Jungle Book's adaptations often remove the power of speech from several animal characters:
  • In The Jungle Book (2016), the elephants and the monkeys, who could both talk in both the book and the animated version, show no capability to speak. In the elephants' case it's not to make them seem less intelligent, but rather more mysterious and dignified.
  • Mowgli makes the same artistic choice as The Jungle Book (2016), making the elephants and monkeys (plus Rann the kite, who could also talk in the book) The Speechless.
  • The 1942 adaptation removes the ability to speak from all animals in the movie, except for the snakes, as does the 1994 movie, except for the snakes too having no lines.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • A Decomposite Character variation with Edwin Jarvis. Due to Age Lift, he is active in the 1940s to the 1970s, and thus doesn't fulfill his comic counterpart's role as The Jeeves to Iron Man and the Avengers. This support role is instead fulfilled by Tony Stark's JARVIS, which was named after him and began as a natural-language user interface but upgraded over time to a more advanced Artificial Intelligence and eventually uploaded to Vision. As JARVIS appeared in the MCU seven years before Edwin Jarvis did, this trope was played straight for some time.
  • The Falcon's sidekick Redwing, who was an actual falcon psychically bonded to The Falcon in the comics, is just a robotic drone with no signs of sentience in the films.
  • Thor: Ragnarok: Fenris is just a monster serving Hela. He could speak in the original comics and the myths they're based on.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, Black Dwarf (known in the movie as Cull Obsidian) and the Outriders are little more than mindless brutes. Which is a shame in the case of the former, as he was quite the eloquent talker in the comics.
  • Eternals portrays the Deviants as vicious, non-intelligent predators, whereas in the comics, they were fully sapient and civilized, if Always Chaotic Evil. However, one Deviant, known as Kro, becomes sapient after devouring the powers of at least one Eternal. Whether all Deviants can become sapient or not is unknown. Domo also goes from an Eternal to their inanimate space ship.
• The Mask: The titular mask in the film appears to be a blank slate, adhering only to the morality of its wearer. In the original comics, the mask is slowly confirmed to be sentient and determined to corrupt every wearer into an evil agent of chaos, no matter their good intentions.
• The Neverending Story: In the first movie, Atreyu's horse Artax is a regular horse and does not speak, while in the original book the two of them conversed.
• In the 1979 film adaption of 'Salem's Lot, the charismatic and cultured vampire Kurt Barlow is changed into a growling Nosferatu clone, with his familiar Richard Straker playing a bigger role, always speaking for him. However, the 2004 TV miniseries stays more faithful to the source material (at least where Barlow is concerned) finally allowing many of his iconic lines from the book to be brought to life (by the great Rutger Hauer no less).

Literature

• Animorphs: Combined with Characterization Marches On, one could argue this happens to the Gedds over the course of the series. Early on they seem to be sapient (Temrash's former host had a name, for example), but later references make them seem more like animals. This coincides with the Yeerks becoming more sympathetic: if the Gedds aren't sapient, then infesting them could be seen as morally acceptable, and the Yeerks only became villainous when they moved on to other species.
• In the storybook adaptation of the Thomasand Friends episode "(James Goes) Buzz, Buzz," the bee that stings James is changed from a cartoon bee to a realistically-drawn bee.

Live Action TV

• In the finale of B-Fighter Kabuto, Mother Melzard goes One-Winged Angel and transforms into the serpentine Jadow Mothera. In Beetleborgs, Jadow Mothera is adapted as Repgillian; a non-sapient Kaiju in the employ of the villains.
• Salem in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina doesn't speak, unlike his counterpart in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. However, he still seems capable of intelligent thought as Sabrina's familiar.
• Power Rangers
  • The three component Sentai for Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers - Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, Gosei Sentai Dairanger, and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger - had fully-sapient Mechanical Lifeforms as their Humongous Mecha, but were regulated to "magical robots" in the adaptation. Their carrier Zords were still stated to be sentient, however. The 2017 movie strikes a balance; where while still not sapient, the Zords seem to be close to actual dinosaurs in terms of sentience and behavior.
  • In Kyūkyū Sentai GoGoV, Liner Boy was fully capable of independent action without a pilot thanks to being equipped with an AI unit, even able to talk like a normal person. The Max Solarzord in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue was given to the Titanium Ranger to pilot, and later remotely controlled from the Aquabase, removing any trace of personality or sentience.
  • Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger had its titular Bakuryu able to speak to the Rangers through their Transformation Trinkets, an ability lacking in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. While the Trinoids and its counterpart can mostly able to talk, the Giganoids lack the ability to speak (except for Giganoid 2: Eroica) in Abaranger while these counterparts in Dino Thunder can able to talk normally.
  • The inverse happens in Power Rangers Mystic Force. The first set of Monsters of the Week in Mahou Sentai Magiranger, the Hades Beasts, are non-sapient creatures who communicate through growling or screeching. Their counterparts in Mystic Force are able to talk normally.
  • The Partner Engines that are on par with humans in intellect from Engine Sentai Go-onger are adapted into the nonsentient Zord Attack Vehicles that Dr. K made in Power Rangers RPM.
  • Also in RPM, the majority of Attack Bots are largely incapable of speech, only able to communicate in growls. Meanwhile, the Barbaric Machine Beasts of Go-Onger are all capable of speech.
  • Samurai Sentai Shinkenger had DaiGoyou, a lantern that could transform into a support robot created by Genta to aid the Shinkengers in battle, which similar to the Liner Boy example above had sentience and personality. These traits were completely left out in Power Rangers Samurai with the LightZord.
  • When Saban Brands adapted Machalcon, a son of two Partner Engines from Go-onger, into Power Rangers Super Megaforce as Turbo Falcon Zord, it was given a beastly Artificial Intelligence.
  • Most, but not all, of the Kishiryu in Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger, were capable of speech. Their zord counterparts in Power Rangers Dino Fury, all lack this ability.
• The Beast Fighter Zorugeru in Voltes V was, unlike most Beast Fighters, a sapient being able to speak and even converse with its creators and disagree and debate with them. Its live-action counterpart Zoldier from Voltes V: Legacy shows no such personality or capacity of speech, acting as merely a mechanical weapon.

Theatre

• In Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier, Ja'far's pet Bird (based on Iago from Aladdin) is a non-sapient parrot.

Video Games

• Epic Mickey: The Phantom Blot, known as a criminal mastermind in the Mickey Mouse Comic Universe, was turned into an inarticulate Blob Monster that escalates into a force of nature. This character change resulted in the game's blot being rebranded as the Shadow Blot in its final release.
• Super Robot Wars T: Wendy from GUN×SWORD has a pet tortoise named Kameo that she wears like a pendant around her neck. In this game, she never brings up that she has a pet, but she has a pendant in her character sprites that resembles his shell. Kameo's role is replaced by other contrivances that occur (e.g. In the anime, he blocked a bullet intended for Wendy with his shell but in this game, her gun blocked it).
• Terrain Of Magical Expertise RPG: All science fiction and science fantasy elements have been adapted out of the TOME video game, in stark contrast with the webseries. This means that all Artificial Intelligence characters have either been made into humans (like Gamesoft, formerly Gamecrazed) or In-Universe Non-Player Characters (like Kajet).

Webcomics

• In The Owl House, Grom is a monster that doesn't seem to have any motivation beyond scaring people and appears to be incapable of speech when not shapeshifting into someone's worst fear. MoringMark - TOH Comics on the other hand depict it as a witch who succumbed to an Archivist Curse like the one that Eda and Lilith have and is shown to be perfectly articulate once she's able to return to their true form (in addition to being a trained historian).

Web Original

• Mystery Incorporated (2022): Scooby is not shown to speak with Shaggy talking for him in their conversations together.

Western Animation

• A Decomposite Character example for Barbara Gordon in DC Super Hero Girls. While she is still Batgirl, her Oracle personality (an identity she first took when The Joker crippled her) was given to a computer A.I.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • Tootsie the Triceratops was a Nearly Normal Animal in DuckTales (1987). In the reboot, she is completely non-anthropomorphic and given a realistic appearance to match.
  • Bushroot of Darkwing Duck is now a plant monster incapable of speech and only makes screeching noises.
  • This happened to Butterbear and Rhinokey of The Wuzzles. The episode "The Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker!" depicts them as a magical fusion of non-sapient animals, and Butterbear is also colored realistically.
  • Poe's raven form is depicted as a normal raven, unable to speak. This overlaps Death by Adaptation, as this means his transformation amounted to Death of Personality and said raven ends up flying off and never seen again.
• In the original Looney Tunes shorts, Taz the Tazmanian Devil was as sapient as the other Civilized Animals, he was just violent, stupid, and prone to wildly spouting gibberish. In The Looney Tunes Show, Taz is purely animalistic (unlike the other animal characters), and even walks on four legs. Except in the Merrie Melody "Tasmanian Meltdown" and the episode "Ridiculous Journey" where he's shown walking upright, and speaking clear (if broken) English.
• Magilla Gorilla in Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? is now a normal gorilla that doesn't speak. He is still fairly intelligent though, bordering on Speech-Impaired Animal.
• Snarf in Thunder Cats 2011 can now only say his name and is treated more like a pet.
• In Young Justice (2010), Captain Marvel names a giant, mutant tiger he fights "Mr. Tawny." Tawky Tawny is an anthropomorphic tiger (sometimes reimagined as some sort of tiger spirit) in the original comics.
• In the original She-Ra: Princess of Power, Broom is a walking, talking broom. But in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Madame Razz treats her ordinary, inanimate broom by that name, reducing him to a Companion Cube to a old lady that's probably not right in the head.
• Both The Adventures of Tintin (1991) animated series and the 2011 movie remove Snowy's private talks from the comics.
• Unlike in the comics, in any animated Charlie Brown production, Snoopy is never seen thinking (let alone talking) in human language ^note although there's been a few very rare examples of him writing down what he wants to say, like in "It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown". Snoopy, Come Home and the adaptations of the musicals You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!! are exceptions.. He relies on making unintelligible noises and miming, same as Woodstock.
• Transformers: Animated: Metroplex and Fortress Maximus, two giant transformers who typically turn into cities in other adaptions, are seen in the show as buildings, Metroplex being the headquarters of the Autobot High Council and Fortress Maximus being the Headquarters of the Elite Guard, with no indication that either is a Transformer. In the tie in comics Trypticon, typically a similarly city sized Decepticon, is portrayed as an Autobot controlled prison, again with no implication that it can transform. Had the show had a fourth season, at least one of them would have been brought to life by the AllSpark.

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