One Detail Of This 22-Year-Old Discworld Book Makes It The Ideal Story To Adapt

An important detail of this 22-year-old book in the Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett makes it a great story to use for a potential adaptation. Many of the books within the series showcase a wonderful combination of love for the fantasy genre and a strong ability to satirize it, allowing the best Discworld books to be enjoyable to a wide audience and memorable due to its unique worldbuilding. However, those qualities and the structure of the series make choosing a story to adapt within Discworld difficult, as the several attempts at doing so over the years have shown.

While a Discworld TV show or movie would introduce new audiences to Practhett’s work, finding the proper place to begin is a trying task. Discworld’s books all have plots focusing on different groups, but some of those plots end up intersecting with others, making an adaptation of just one section hard to accomplish without that context. Fortunately, one book’s largely standalone narrative makes it both easy to adapt and a great introduction to some of the most iconic characters in the series: Monstrous Regiment.

Monstrous Regiment’s Standalone Story Makes It One Of The Easiest Discworld Books To Adapt

The Book Features Several Of Pratchett’s Most Prolific Characters In Its Contained Story

The Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment is one of the easiest Pratchett books to adapt, as it has a self-contained story and features some of his most notable characters in supporting roles. As mentioned, Discworld’s books can work as standalone stories, but audiences may lose vital pieces of context and worldbuilding if they focus on one group, such as The Night’s Watch. Monstrous Regiment does not have that issue, as its story focuses on the land of Borogravia and its conflicts over the series’ location Ankh-Morpork. This makes it perfect for an adaptation as audiences do not need that background information.

Monstrous Regiment also features characters who, along with having their own central narratives, appear in many other Discworld books, making this adaptation the perfect opportunity to introduce them to unfamiliar audiences. Samuel Vimes, one of the series’ biggest protagonists, plays a minor role in the story, highlighting many aspects of his ongoing arc. Other classic characters, including Angua von Überwald, William de Worde, and Otto Chriek, are also featured, continuing their arcs in the background. Those appearances and its standalone format are not the only reasons Monstrous Regiment would work, though, as the story’s heart speaks to what Discworld is.

The Themes Of Monstrous Regiment Would Make A TV Show Or Movie Even More Compelling

The Novel Focuses On Themes Of Feminism, Religious Belief, And Political Corruption

A Monstrous Regiment TV show or movie would be able to showcase why Pratchett’s Discworld books are so poignant through the major themes and messages of the narrative. The story’s main plotline following a group of women who enlist as men due to the limiting laws for women in Borogravia acts as the main catalyst for the book’s stance on feminism, highlighting the group’s complexity, capability, and desire for change. Polly, the novel’s protagonist, pushes that theme through her perseverance, humor, and cunning, allowing the book to balance its comedic tone with these issues, which are still relevant today.

Monstrous Regiment also tackles themes of religious belief and political corruption through the city’s odd laws and worship of a long-dead deity whose followers make up their doctrine. An adaptation of this work would allow those ideas a chance to grow as, despite the over twenty-year gap, Monstrous Regiment’s themes are still within the zeitgeist, just with new details. Ultimately, an adaptation of this Discworld book can capture what the series was meant to do: make audiences both laugh and think about the world around them, which can sometimes be stranger than fiction.