The newest trailer for Resident Evil has just dropped, and surely, people will be normal about this one. The first trailer sent gamers and fans of the franchise into a tizzy because Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong, Ethan Winters, and others were not present. Instead, Zach Cregger was going for an original tale set in the Resident Evil universe.

The controversy of adapting something without taking direct story elements is not new, but it seems to be peaking right now. The trailers for Cregger’s movie (speaking in advance to the inevitable backlash to the second trailer since it just came out) and The Odyssey have sparked debate about how one should adapt something.

Have we all forgotten what it means to adapt?

Adapting Resident Evil, The Odyssey, and More Means Changing the Sources

Below, you will find the second Resident Evil trailer ahead of the September release of the film. Zach Cregger did not hear the backlash and retroactively decide to include Leon Kennedy, Claire Redfield, or Mr. X this time. It is not a story any gamer has played before.

The first trailer sparked backlash, and this one will, too. The Odyssey has sparked some backlash, with critics questioning Christopher Nolan’s version because it’s different from Homer’s. Even translators for the poem have questioned the choices Nolan made. The internet is hot with debate right now (though most agree the movie is great, even if they’re unsure of how well it works as an adaptation).

I wrote recently about the definition of adapting something. To adapt a work literally means “to make fit (as for a new use) often by modification.” Modification means to change something. When you adapt a work, whether it’s a video game like Resident Evil or an ages-old poem like The Odyssey, it must be changed. Otherwise, it’s a copy, and that’s not even possible most of the time.

There is concern that Zach Cregger doesn’t care about the gamers he pretends to be making this movie for. There is concern that Christopher Nolan just wanted to make his own story and use The Odyssey as a base for his thoughts and feelings.

Both instances are wrong, and it stems from the central idea that adapting something means being as close as possible to the original. That is a foolish definition of an adaptation. We’ve seen the stories of the Resident Evil games before. We’ve played them. We’ve read Homer’s The Odyssey. It is ingrained in our culture.

We can argue about the value of a different take on something or an original work being set in the universe of its source material all day (I find both to be smart ways to adapt something for a new audience). But regardless, when an adaptation of a source material is different than said source, it is because it has to be. Adapting is changing.

Whether or not changes are good is certainly up to the audience. One might think that changing Odysseus’ feelings about the Trojan Horse is a bad change. One might think not including Claire Redfield in Resident Evil is a bad change from the games, although that comparison doesn’t fit quite as well.

But this idea of “good movie but bad adaptation” is nonsensical. If it’s a good movie and it’s adapting something, it’s a good adaptation. Just because it’s different does not mean it’s bad, because you cannot recreate a source material in a different medium (and why would you?). It must be different; it must be changed. That’s the definition of an adaptation.

So in Resident Evil‘s case, the changes are to leave out story elements that have been explored in the games (and the other movies that no one liked anyway). In the case of The Odyssey, it’s to view the original story in a modern, different lens. Both are valid adaptations, though I’ll avoid repeating the mantra about what it means to adapt one final time.