Starship Troopers

The original novel by Heinlein is essentially a conservative glorification of war and military propaganda, with flavours of racism, masculinism, totalitarianism and fascism in general. When Paul Verhoeven, a man who lived his childhood in the German-occupied Netherlands during World War II, adapted it into a movie he decided to only keep the basic aspects of the plot and make a satire of pro-war movie. Showing the horror of war and a fascist society through the eyes of characters glorifying it, giving this sentiment of unease. To quote Verhoeven: “All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, 'Are \[the characters\] crazy?'". He even admitted he tried but failed to read the novel, finding it uninteresting and too politically right-wing. Yet this movie is by far the most famous version of Starship Troopers and considered one the best movies of Verhoeven

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck

The original creator of Scrooge McDuck, Carl Barks, was a proud capitalist (yes, “Carl Barks”) and his stories often portrayed the character as a cool self made man who became rich because of his will alone while Donald is poor because he’s lazy. There’s even a comics (Voodoo Hoodoo) In which Scrooge casually admits he is followed by a zombie named Bombie as a curse after he hired mercenaries to burn an African village, and it’s pretty much played as a joke. When Don Rosa decides to write and draw a series of comics about Scrooge’s Youth, “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck”, he instead criticises the capitalistic aspect of the character. He makes him more and more inhuman as his greed increases, it even reuse the “Bombie the Zombie” storyline, but this time in a horrific way, showing him burning the African village as the point of no return. The series end with Scrooge becoming the richest duck in the world, but also the more lonely as his family abandoned him because of his actions.

Pinocchio (Guillermo Del Toro)

(well, in multiple adaptations actually but this one is my favourite). The original novel was pretty much written by a guy who hate kids, with the main theme being that if you’re a child you should behave and obey or else awful things will happen to you. In the Del Toro adaptation, the story is set during WWII, and add themes of struggle against oppression. There is a scene where Mussolini says he likes Puppets (as a metaphor for obedient population) and there’s even a sub plot about a boy having to learn disobeying his Nazi father. The adaptation says “sometimes it’s okay to disobey” and even at one point “sometimes it’s okay to lie”

The best version conveys a message opposite to the original