And it’s done, out, published, ready – the first of my Sanctum-inspired books, “The Power Of Creative Paths!”  Thanks to everyone for your support!

The book, the first of several, is my guide to improving your creative abilities.  The idea is that you can identify how you create, and then expand your horizons to use other creative methods and work well with people who create differently.  Through advice, exercises, and examples, it’s a way to get better and dreaming things up and reaching those valuable Big Ideas.

So go on, give it a shot!

– Steve

The animated adaptation is an odd duck.  The requirements of a cartoon can be at odds with the original work.  Sometimes, the results can be head-scratching, such as the Rambo animated series*.  However, not every decision comes from left field.  In 1991, Universal Studios wanted to break into family entertainment, and decided to create an educational series based on Back to the Future, the third movie of the series having been released the previous year.

Back to the Future starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as Doc Emmett Brown.  Set in Hill Valley, the movie starts with showing the trouble that Marty’s father has with his employer, Biff Tannen, played by Thomas F. Wilson.  His mother isn’t faring much better, being depressed.  Marty meets up with his friend, Doc Brown, who is either a crackpot or a brilliant mad scientist.  Doc has a new invention, a flux capacitor built into a DeLorean, turning the car into a time machine.  To achieve the 1.21 gigawatts** needed to power the flux capacitor, Doc had stolen plutonium from Libyan terrorists, who arrive to retrieve the material.  Doc and Marty get in the DeLorean to escape the Libyans and achieve 88 miles per hour, triggering the flux capacitor.

Doc and Marty arrive in Hill Valley of 1955.  Without spare plutonium, they need to find the Doc’s younger self to get his help to produce the energy needed to activate the flux capacitor.  Time travel can be tricky, though.  Marty meets his mother’s younger self, and accidentally changes history and risks his own existance as his mother becomes infatuated with him.  The energy is easy to find; the town’s clock stopped working when it was struck by lightning.  Restoring Marty, though, requires making sure his parents meet and fall in love.  Biff unwittingly provides the circumstances, and after Marty’s father decks him, Marty’s own existance is saved.  Doc takes Marty back to 1985 before taking the DeLorean to the distance future of 2015.  The movie ends with Doc returning, needing the help of Marty and his girlfriend, Jennifer, to fix a problem with their children.

Back to the Future Part II picks up where the first movie left off.  Marty’s son is being pressured into crime by Biff’s grandson, Griff.  Marty poses as his own son, preventing his arrest and resulting in Griff being taken into custody instead.  Afterwards, Marty picks up a sports almanac that includes the results of matches after 1985.  Jennifer, though, discovers that her future marriage isn’t as wonderful as she’d want.  The future Marty is being goaded, much like his son was, into a shady deal.  The future Biff notices the time machine and steals both it and the almanac and travels back in time to give the book to his younger self before returning with Doc and Marty none the wiser.

When Doc and Marty return to 1985, Hill Valley is not like it was when they left.  Marty’s father died in 1973 and Marty’s mother was forced to re-marry, this time to Biff, who is the wealthiest and most corrupt person in the town.  Marty and Doc escape, using the DeLorean to go back to 1955.  Realizing what happened, Marty retrieves the almanac from Biff while avoiding being seen in the middle of the events of the first movie.  Before Marty can join Doc in the DeLorean, the car is hit by lightning and disappears.  Moments later, a courier arrives with a letter from Doc in 1885.

Back to the Future Part III, filmed with Part II, continues right where the previous movie left off.  Doc’s letter details where the DeLorean can be found and, with the help of 1955’s Doc, the car is repaired.  However, Marty notices Doc’s tombstone dated six days after the letter; Doc was killed by Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen, Biff’s ancestor.  Marty travels back to 1885, arriving in the middle of a cavalry charge.  The fuel line is damaged, so Marty hides the car in a cave and walks into Hill Valley.  Marty runs into Buford, but is rescued by Doc.  With the knowledge of his fate, Doc agrees to leave 1885, but he needs a way to get the DeLorean up to 88mph, since gas isn’t available yet.

The solution is to have a locomotive push the car to the needed speed.  While exploring a rail spur that could be used, Doc and Marty see a runaway wagon.  Doc rescues the passenger, Clara, played by Mary Steenburgen.  They fall in love.  During a town festival, Buford tries to kill Doc, but Marty intervenes.  The name on the tombstone disappears, but the date doesn’t.  Someone is fated to die, but who it is unknown.  Doc tries to explain to Clara that he’s from the future, but she doesn’t believe him.  He goes to the saloon to binge, has one shot of whiskey and passes out.  Buford arrives, but Marty, having learned his lesson from the previous two movies, refuses the duel.  Buford has his gang kidnap Doc, forcing Marty to fight him.  During the fight, the tombstone is broken and Buford is defeated.

Clara, heartbroken, leaves town.  On the train, she hears about Doc in the saloon and how sad he was.  She heads back to town to Doc’s home and sees the model of the time machine.  Realizing that he was telling the truth, Clara chases after him.  Meanwhile, Doc and Marty have acquired a locomotive and are getting it in position.  Doc has created explosives to give the locomotive the boost it needs to reach 88mph.  Clara catches up and boards the locomotive just as Doc climbs into the DeLorean.  Doc goes back to help her, but the DeLorean reaches 88mph, sending Marty back to 1985.  Doc and Clara, though, escape the locomotive’s demise thanks to the hoverboard Marty picked up in 2015.

Back in 1985, the DeLorean arrives in front of a diesel locomotive.  Marty escapes the car, but the DeLorean is destroyed.  He returns home to discover that the timeline has been restored to the way it was after the second movie.  The next day, he and Jennifer return to the wreckage of the DeLorean.  The warning signals start, though no train can be seen.  Moments later, a steam locomotive appears, with Doc, Clara, and their sons, Jules and Verne.  Marty’s future has changed, and the future remains unwritten.  Doc leaves with his family in the train to an unknown time.

The Back to the Future cartoon continues the adventures of the Brown Family, with Marty tagging along.  Doc and his family have returned to Hill Valley of, well, if not 1985, shortly afterwards.  The DeLorean has been rebuilt, and the locomotive is also around.  Both vehicles are used to get the Browns and Marty to the adventure.  Christopher Lloyd returns as Doc Brown for the live action segments, and Mary Steenburgen and Thomas F. Wilson reprise their characters in the cartoon.  Playing Marty is David Kaufman, who also took over another Michael J. Fox role, that of Stuart Little in the TV series of the movie of the book of the same name.  While Lloyd was in the live action segments, Dan Castellaneta played the voice of the animated Doc, sounding so much like Lloyd that one episode had a jump cut from the animated Doc speaking to Lloyd as Doc commenting without being jarring.

The change of focus from Marty to the Brown Family takes advantage of Doc being a mad scientist.  Educational content is easier to introduce when the starring character is a scientist.  The episodes aren’t just educational, though.  Over the two seasons of thirteen episodes each, the Brown Family uses the time machines to visit different eras.  The eye to detail for the different years helps with the series.  The episode “Swing Low Sweet Chariot Race” features dialogue in Latin that sounds authentic***.  Fashion is appropriate for the years featured.

Characterization, critical for an adaptation of any stripe, is kept.  The characters are recognizable by their actions.  Even the character designs are decent.  Marty looks like Marty, and, given the live action segments, Doc looks right.  Even the various Tannens, from Biff to his ancestor, Lord Biffington of Tannenshire, are recognizable.  The animators put in an effort to create designs that could be animated without losing who each person was.

Each episode stands alone, unlike the movies.  This is more from the nature of an educational animated series that could be rerun out of order than from anything else.  However, the series avoids using time travel as a deus ex machina.  Time travel is just as often the cause of problems as anything else, and only once is a time machine, in this case, the locomotive, used to fix a problem.  Even then, the solution needed the locomotive more than it needed the flux capacitor.  Do the episodes feel like watching the movies?  Not really, but that’s a function of the time available.  Thirty minutes, including commercials and science segments, isn’t enough to delve into complex temporal mechanics.  The format works against the adaptation, even taking into account that the Brown Family is scientifically minded to begin with.  There isn’t enough time to delve into the use and abuse of temporal mechanics and deliver a physics lesson while still working in a bit of adventure.  The writers did make the effort, though.

The live action segments feature Lloyd as Doc Brown, either introducing the episode or setting up the science experiment.  Lloyd remains in character through the segments, even while narrating the experiment.  The experiments themselves were created by and starred Bill Nye the Science Guy, and were based on an aspect introduced in the episode proper.  While temporal physics weren’t touched, possibly because of difficulty recreating temporal experiments in a kitchen safely, the sciences involved were physics and chemistry.  The experiments could stand alone as part of a lesson.

The Back to the Future cartoon was ambitious for its time.  Universals first foray into family entertainment and educational cartoons worked, thanks to the core characters from the movies.  The result was entertaining, though time travel wasn’t used as thoroughly as the movies.  The animated series had some rough spots, but it did make the effort to keep the feel of Back to the Future.

* A cartoon aimed at the pre-teen crowd based on two R-rated movies.
** Or possibly jiggawatts.
*** Though someone more familiar with Latin should weigh in.

So what’s the next generator planned?

Well, first a bit of a warning – I’m changing apartments so I might get a wee bit busy depending.  Now I’m an old hand at moving, but this time I’ve got a roommate (first time in 4 years) so I don’t know if this means it’ll be easier (help) or harder (more stuff).

But the next generator at least is going to be a food one – a bit more silly than the Reality Show Generator (which at its core involved serious linguistic analysis).  More something to create those ridiculous dishes that we see in experimental menus, or assorted Food Atrocities people whip up and post videos of.  Cheeseburger Pizza and Fried Kimchi on a Stick and so on.

It’s strange I haven’t thought of this as I like to cook (I even post about it at my blog), so it should be fun to build a generator close to my heart.  I might even try some others related, depending!

– Steve

One of the weird things we face in creativity is that we never really have time to bring all our great ideas to life.  Even people who claim to be blocked are blocked on that one idea – and usually have a dozen more to go.

And we’ll never act on all of them.

Creatives aren’t all troubled at the same level on this – some find it more painful whereas others barely think about it.  But I hear this complaint of “I have too many ideas” way too often.

It’s up to each of us to cope with this in their own way, but it’s a peculiarity of the human condition.  Here we are creative, our entire heads filled with worlds and dreams, and we can only realize but a fraction of them.  It’s an irony.

– Steve

This is it folks, the countdown to my first book on creativity, The Power Of Creative Paths!

The book is going to drop on Saturday the 30th.  I’m lining up some reviewers right now (and there’s a chance to get in on it) to help give people an idea of what’s in it from a reader’s viewpoint.  Only six more days!

So what’s in this book?

Basically, after years of working with Seventh Sanctum, I’d realized that creativity fit certain paths – ways we get to our “Big Ideas.”  Most people had one or two default paths, and not everyone knew how to get along with people different than them.  So I put all my findings into one book, a handy guide to help you get off of Creative Paths you’re a bit too stuck on and onto others, as well as how to work with people different than yourself creativity-wise.

A lot of this comes from my curious observation that the generators at Seventh Sanctum fit specific patterns, or certain little tweaks, trends, or sets of data seemed to inspire people surprisingly.  In time I began to see that these general observations fit specific trends, and formed a useful theory around it.

I’m pretty pumped as this will be the first book based around my work here – to be followed this summer by the Way With Worlds books  . . . and maybe a few more things over time.  I figure after some 16 years of doing this, it’s time to put my ideas and findings and advice into a new format!

So hang in there, it’s almost arrived . . .

• Steve

Technology is constantly changing, updating and upgrading as new techniques are discovered.  As has been mentioned before, new technology has been the motivation behind remakes and adaptations.  The advent of computer animation has made some expensive or time-consuming effects of the past easier to do today.  Stop-motion animation has given way to CG animation.  Practical effects, though, still exist.  It can be easier to film a practical effect and enhance it with CG than to start from scratch with computer animation.  That said, the use of CG animation can sometimes lose the charm of a work.  The temptation to tinker can be great, but too much tinkering can lose the audience.  It’s a fine line.

In 1964, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the minds behind Supermarionation, created Thunderbirds.  The series featured the Tracy family and International Rescue, an organization dedicated to helping people in danger.  Jeff Tracy, the family patriarch, funded the organization and its vehicles, piloted by his five sons.  Aiding the Tracies were Kyrano, his daughter Tin-Tin, the engineer, Brains, and International Rescue’s London Agent, Lady Penelope and her butler, Parker.  Together, International Rescue performed daring rescues and battled the nefarious Hood.

The Thunderbirds themselves were the stars.  Each vehicle had a dedicated purpose.  Thunderbird 1, piloted by Scott Tracy, was a hypersonic rocket plane, capable of reaching any place on Earth quickly.  Thunderbird 2, piloted by Virgil, was the heavy lifter, ferrying rescue equipment and modular pods where needed.  Thunderbird 3, piloted by Alan, was a re-usable rocket used for space rescue.  Thunderbird 4, piloted by Gordon, was a submarine, typically carried by Thunderbird 2 to where it’s needed.  Thunderbird 5, manned by John, was a space station used for monitoring communications for calls for help.  Lady Penelope had FAB-1, a pink six-wheeled Rolls-Royce as kitted out as anything 007 would drive.

The series was filmed using Supermarionation, using marionettes as the cast, with the sets built to scale.  For close-ups of hands, real hands were used, allowing characters to manipulate objects as needed.  The special effects were scaled down for the miniatures in use, looking very much like effects used in films.  Thunderbirds ran for thirty-two episodes, each running, with ads, for an hour, and has been referenced by other works, including Reboot.  Thunderbirds has been remade a few times, including the anime Thunderbirds 2086 and the 2004 live action movie.  A new CG series, Thunderbirds Are Go is the latest adaptation.

Thunderbirds Are Go first aired in ITV in April 2015.  The series brings back International Rescue, updating the show’s concept to reflect the changes in technology since Thunderbirds first aired.  The two-part pilot episode, “Ring of Fire”, introduces the characters to a new audience while showing what each Thunderbird can do.  There have been some changes; Jeff Tracy has gone missing, leaving Grandma Tracy as the head of the household.  Brains is now Indian, and his stutter is less pronounced.  Tin-Tin is now Kayo and the head of security for International Rescue, but her family secret is still kept.  The vehicles have been updated as well, though still recognizable.  FAB-1 reflects today’s car stylings, but still has the gadgets to keep Lady Penelope safe.  Thunderbird 5 shows the greatest change in design, reflecting developments in space stations and featuring a rotating ring to simulate gravity and a stationary control area that lets John float around while monitoring communications.  The Thunderbirds, though, aren’t CG; instead, they are miniatures, as are the sets.  The mix isn’t jarring; the use of both CG and miniatures harkens back to the use of marionettes and models in the original.

“Ring of Fire” starts with a runaway hot air balloon caught in a storm, its passengers, a father and his son, calling for help.  Out of the storm clouds, Thunderbird 2 appears, matching course with balloon.  Virgin comes up topside and helps the son into Thunderbird 2.  Before he can get the father, though, a gust of wind up ends the balloon.  Virgil calls John up in Thunderbird 5 to get the father’s vector, and has Thunderbird 2 dive to get beneath.  He’s able to grab the father and bring him inside before reaching the ground.  Meanwhile, Thunderbird 3, with Alan and Kayo, are working on correcting the orbit of a satellite, allowing John to relax while watching his favourite TV series*.

After a breather, International Rescue gets a call from an undersea lab that has suffered damage after a seaquake.  Virgil and Gordon respond with Thunderbirds 2 and 4.  While approaching the lab, Gordon discovers the source of the quakes, a device that creates the seismic disruption.  Worse, several more quakes occur, caused by similar devices.  Lady Penelope and Parker investigate and find a warehouse with a note and a button.  On pushing the button, a mysterious figure hijacks the airwaves and makes his demands; the Hood will end the quakes upon being given the Thunderbirds.  International Rescue ignores the demands.  With the sealab’s scientists rescued, IR work on finding the Hood.  Alan and Kayo head to the satellite to try to track the Hood’s location.  On the ground, Scott and Virgil rush to Taiwan to prevent a solar reflector, misaligned because of the quakes, from frying Taipei when the sun rises.  Alan and Kayo discover the frequency the Hood is using, allowing Brains to trace the villain’s signal.  Kayo performs a high-altitude, low-opening, or HALO, jump from Thunderbird 3 to land at the Hood’s hideout.  The Hood summons his men to deal with Kayo, but she also has backup, having alerted the Global Defense Force to the Hood’s location.

The production team is making an effort to be faithful to the original’s feel while still updating the series for modern sensibilities.  There are nods to the original Thunderbirds, including the episode “Fireflash”, a remake of the first original episode, “Trapped in the Sky”.  Both episodes feature a supersonic jet that is in trouble and needs the assistance of International Rescue to land safely.  The sealab from “Ring of Fire” resembles a damaged Eagle from Anderon’s live action series, Space: 1999.  The series even has David Graham returning in the role of Parker.  Thunderbirds Are Go runs thirty minutes, including ads, or half as long as the original, but the writing is kept tight, not letting up on the tension until the rescue is complete.

Thunderbirds Are Go makes use of new technology, but doesn’t let it take over the core of the series.  There are changes, mostly to reflect the realities of today, but the heart of Thunderbirds has been kept.

* The show John watches is Stingray, another Supermarionation series, with a clip of the opening credits being shown.  In a clever touch, the slip is shown in reverse to the audience, meaning that John is watching it the correct way.

A few weeks back, Lost in Translation looked at adaptations of tabletop RPGs.  While there haven’t been many RPGs adapted to other media, the reverse is far more likely.  Many popular franchises have been adapted for gaming, from Star Trek to Supernatural.  The result is a licensed property created by game designers who are also fans.  With The Force Awakens turning into a powerhouse beyond expectations, now is as good a time as any to look at the Star Wars roleplaying games past and present.

Role-playing in an established universe is more than just letting the players take the roles of existing characters.  With a setting as vast as the Galaxy Far, Far Away, there’s room for any number of characters, from scruffy rogues to naive farmboys to dashing conmen to dangerous bounty hunters.  Adding to the complexity, Jedi and Sith lurk, depending on the era.  The goal of the games is to provide an experience that would fit in the Star Wars setting but still giving players the flexibility to play what they want.  There have been three published RPGs for /Star Wars/, detailed below.

Star Wars: The Role-Playing Game, West End Games
The first Star Wars RPG, released in 1987, used WEG’s Ghostbusters: The Role-Playing Game‘s core mechanic, modified for the new setting.  Determining success or failure was based on rolling a number of six-sided* dice based on the rating of a character’s skill, with a differently coloured die designated the wild die.  The wild die could allow for amazing successes or crushing failures, depending on its value.  Players could use character points to add dice to the roll.  To account for the Force in Star Wars, players also had Force points.  Spending a Force point allowed players to double the number of dice they could roll for a skill, allowing feats such as firing a proton torpedo into a two metre exhaust port without the aid of a targeting computer.

Because it was released three years after Return of the Jedi, there was little information about Jedi, beyond that they were rare after the Emperor destroyed the Order.  At the time, Star Wars wasn’t the big franchise that it is now.  The Expanded Universe consisted of the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies; Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire would be published in 1991, a year before the RPG’s second edition.  Jedi were limited to what was shown on screen and what the WEG writers could extrapolate and get approved by Lucasfilm.  However, the more earthier characters, like Han, were supported, with all starships, from starfighters to Star Destroyers, being written up.  The Revised and Expanded edition, released in 1996, became the definitive version of the RPG.

The game played fast; the mechanics loose enough to let players swoop through space in a transport modified for smuggling while out running a flight of TIE fighters and maintain the feel of the Galaxy Far, Far Away.  WEG’s RPG still has an impact even today; Dave Filoni, showrunner for both CGI-animated series, The Clone Wars and Rebels has stated in commentary that he and his crew have refered to WEG’s Imperial Sourcebook and Star Wars Sourcebook for details on vehicles and droids used in the series.

WEG lost the license in 1999 after having to declare bankruptcy when its parent company, West End Shoes, drained the game publisher to stay afloat.  Speculation on the Internet on who would get the license next grew as the prequel movies were announced.

Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast, who also owned Dungeons & Dragons, picked up the license in 2000, a year after The Phantom Menace was released.  Wizards used a modified version of the d20 System, as used in D&D 3rd edition.  The result was a class-based system that covered not just the original trilogy, like WEG’s game had, but also the prequels and the Expanded Universe.  A second edition was released in 2002, a year before D&D 3.5, cleaning up some problematic rules.  The Saga edition came out in 2007, streamlining the d20 system more to keep the gameplay flowing.

As mentioned, the d20 System is class-based, meaning that every character falls into one of a number of character classes that define their abilities.  Instead of using the D&D classes like Fighter and Wizard, the d20 Star Wars games used classes like Scoundrel, Fringer, and Jedi.  The result was playable, but the sweet spot was between levels 7 and 12, where characters had the skills needed to pull off difficult but in-setting plausible stunts without becoming impossible to challenge without throwing a Star Destroyer at them.  Thanks to the prequels and the Expanded Universe, Jedi had more options than in WEG’s RPG.  Sourcebooks detailed the different eras of the Galaxy Far, Far Away, giving gamemasters (GMs) and players flexibility in play styles.

Wizards let the license lapse in 2010, after not just a large number of detailed sourcebooks but also a miniatures game that could tie into the RPG or be played as a stand-alone.

Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny, Fantasy Flight Games
Fantasy Flight Games picked up the Star Wars license with an eye to create both a miniatures and a role-playing game.  The first of the RPGs, Edge of the Empire, came out in 2013, followed by Age of Rebellion in 2014 and Force and Destiny in 2015.  Each of the games, while using the same mechanics, have a different focus.  Edge deals with characters on the edge of polite society; smugglers, bounty hunters, colonists.  Rebellion allows for characters in the Rebel Alliance, fighting against the Galactic Empire’s evil.  Force focuses on Jedi and other Force-sensitives.  The three games are set during the original trilogy, but can be adapted, with work, to other eras.

The FFG games need to use specialty dice marked for use in play.  It is possible to use regular dice** and convert the numbers to the special markings, but it is easier with the specialty dice.  The dice provide for more than just success and failure; they also add advantages and threats.  A failure could come with an advantage and success could come with complications.  Scenes from the movies, like Han stepping on a twig when right behind a stormtrooper in Return of the Jedi, can come from the mechanic, ensuring that the feel of the movies is kept.

Each game moves the timeline through the movies.  Edge is set shortly after the destruction of the Death Star in A New Hope.  Rebellion is set just after the events in The Empire Strikes Back.  Force is set after Return of the Jedi.  However, players and GMs aren’t limited to those eras.  /Force/ can easily be used for a group of Jedi padawans during the prequel era.  All three could be used for a campaign set during The Force Awakens.  Work would need to be done, such as re-skinning existing vehicles for the new ones seen in the new movie, but the amount of work needed is minimal.

Each of the above games had a different approach to the Galaxy Far, Far Away.  While each one had some areas that needed work, overall, the games remained faithful to the source.  Players could feel like they were part of Star Wars, which is the most important part of adapting to a game.

* Role-playing games use more regular polyhedrons than just the standard cube dice.
** Regular meaning six-, eight-, and twelve-sided, as used in other games such as D&D.

And hello again gang, I want to let you know I’m looking for reviewers for my first book on Creativity, “The Power Of Creative Paths.”  It comes out late January/early February, but I want to line up people who want to review it (don’t worry, it’s an eBook and it’s a reasonable size) and review it honestly.  If you’re interested contact me right away!

-Steve

Hello everyone, a few quick updates here!

First the Reality Show Generator is good go, thanks for the feedback!

Secondly, there’s a Books section on the site now since I’ve got some upcoming creativity books, and the Sanctum played a huge role in them.

More to come so stay tuned . . .

• Steve

After three and a half years, Lost in Translation has built up a number of terms that haven’t been well defined.  The History of Adaptations forced the issue, running into works that were both sequels and adaptations and were sequels of adaptations.  What follows is a working set of terms defined as used so far, complete with examples.  The definitions may be a bit fluid; as more reviews are done, the better an idea I get of the breadth of adaptations there are.

Adaptations – A catch-all covering any form of media that is based on another work.  Adaptations include remakes and reboots, and can be in the same medium or taken from one medium to another.  The better known adaptation is the movie based on a novel or, especially lately, comic.  Also possible is the movie to TV series adaptation, such as M*A*S*H, and the international adaptation, such as Three’s Company, based on the British series, Man About the House.

Remakes – A work that re-tells the story from the original.  Typically done with movies, the remake takes advantage in advances in film technology, whether it’s the advent of sound, colour, or special effects.  The 1956 The Ten Commandments is a prime example, remaking the 1923 silent film of the same name.  The upcoming The Jungle Book from Disney appears to be a live-action remake of the animated feature based on the Rudyard Kipling stories.

Reboots – A form of remake that is typically found in series, whether a movie franchise or a TV series.  The reboot creates a new baseline for plots to work from and can feature a new cast.  Star Trek: The Next Generation is a prime example, as is the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series.  A sequel can be considered a reboot depending on how much time has passed between the original work and the new.

Sequels/Prequels – Works that continue, in the case of sequels, or set up, in the case of prequels, an original work.  Sequels and prequels are generally out of scope for Lost in Translation unless they are also adaptations.  Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a sequel.  The movie The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is both a sequel to the film version of The Hunger Games and an adaptation of the novel, Catching Fire.

Sequel of an Adaptation – A work that follows up to an adaptation without itself being based on an original work.  This is different from a sequel that is also an adaptation in that there is no original work the sequel is based on.  The 2004 movie Spider-Man 2 follows from events in the 2002 Spider-Man, but isn’t based on a specific storyline from the Marvel comics.

Partial Adapatation – Any adaptation that takes just a portion of an original work, whether due to time limitations or sake of comprehensibility.  Blade Runner is the best example; the movie takes just the android hunting from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep while dropping the religious subplots.

Loose Adaptation – A work that takes the premise of an original work and goes in a different direction.  Such a work is often said to be loosely based on an original.  Real Steel was such an adaptation of the short story, “Steel”, taking the idea of the robot boxing league but changing the story to one about a man and his son.  Often, the title is changed, emphasizing the difference, as seen with Alien from L.A.

In Name Only – A loose adaptation that doesn’t change the name.  Often happens when the adaptation fails to understand the appeal of the original.  The 1998 Godzilla is often called GINO, for “Godzilla In Name Only”, reflecting the adaptations failure to understand what Godzilla is.

Shot for Shot Remake – A remake of a film that duplicates the original.  While such a remake can work, especially when there has been improvements in film technology, the new film could just have audiences wondering why the new film was made, especially when the original is considered a masterpiece.  Gus van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho did use new technology plus colour, but the changes were subtle, and Hitchcock’s use of black and white was an artistic choice.  A shot-for-shot remake of The Last Starfighter today may be better received, taking into account the capabilities of CGI that the movie broke ground on when it was first released.

Tie-in – Derivative works that are licensed from a franchise.  Best known are the Star Trek tie-in novels, featuring original casts of each Trek series plus new casts, and the Star Wars expanded universe.  Tie-ins are out of scope for Lost in Translation, though there are exceptions.  The Nikki Heat novels by Richard Castle are Castle metafiction; the novels that the fictional writer is researching in the TV series, and do count as adaptations.