Stardust, Stardust, and the different types of fairytale

One day, my quest will be complete. After years of searching and wanting and hoping, one day I will finally hold Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s original illustrated Stardust in my hands, and thus will I become the proud owner of every piece of Stardust media out there, and I will be unstoppable. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Which is all well and good, but really the most important piece in this spectacular collection (1999 novel, 2007 movie, 2017 BBC radio play) is the movie, because it alone is an adaptation—that is, something that has changed to suit a new environment. The radio play hews pretty close to the source material and the illustrated edition is just that: pictures attached to an existing text. But though the film tells the same story—small town boy travels through Faerie to retrieve a fallen star—all the usual shifts from page to screen have made it a very different kind of story, and specifically a different kind of fairytale.