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“The book is always better than the movie.”
“I won’t read anything unless it has a movie or TV show.”
“I’ll wait until it’s turned into a movie or TV show.”
I’ve heard all of these things from real, living, breathing people and it’s had me thinking about books to film/television for a while. I won’t jump up and scream that I always prefer the book over a movie. Many times I’ve enjoyed both even though they didn’t perfectly match up and other times I’ve picked one over the other. Yet there’s a really big ‘battle’ between book-lovers and movie-lovers when it comes to adaptations.
Funny thing is that it is ALWAYS about books to film/TV and never the other way around. I remember seeing several movies and then finding the novel adaptation when I was younger. ‘Blade’ and ‘The Mask’ are two that ring out to me because I remember reading them and going ‘that wasn’t in the movie’. There were entire scenes that were added to the books much like you chop and condense stuff in a movie, but there was no rage about such a thing. I never heard of any rage about this, which is probably because people really don’t really read books adapted from films. So starting off one can see that this isn’t a two way street. Screw with movies when turning them into a book, but god forbid you change the look of a cat in ‘Hunger Games’.
How could it go wrong with a tagline like that?
I’ve never really thought much on why people get furious about changes to books. Many are justified like the atrocity of ‘The Vampire’s Assistant’, which is the movie I use to threaten my wife with since she loves the book series. Still you have people crying over missing scenes in Harry Potter and those movies are already long. ‘The Hobbit’ trilogy comes under fire a lot for additions and drawing stuff out. You see huge articles about all of these . . . wait . . . you really don’t see many ranting about ‘The Vampire’s Assistant’. I know people who hated it, but you don’t see the same mob levels.
The reason is the size and scope of the fandoms along with the level of respect given to the source material. I’ll get to respect in a little bit. You see the bigger and more dedicated the fandom, the more scrutiny the movie adaptation is under. This is obvious, but there is a wrinkle here. Rarely is the movie made for fans of the book. The makers tend to assume the readers will go, so they focus on drawing in non-readers. At least that’s how it seems to me. Still a large fandom needs to be factored in to some extent because they will be part of the grassroots, word-of-mouth push. You see how this balancing act works? Well it inevitably tips over because many fans want a direct translation. No hair color changes, snow at the wrong time is a killer, and any tiny move away is cause complaints. I know this because when my sister and I went to the midnight showing of ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ there was a row of guys with flashlights and the novels. They were fact-checking the book as the movie went along.
This brings me to level of respect, which is different from pure adaptation. The truth that many dedicated fans (myself at times) forget in their fervor is that not everything in a book will work in a movie. You have to cut for time, some things might be impossible to show without an insane budget, and many other factors cause changes. Some people get it right like with ‘Game of Thrones’ that I hear is totally off-script from the books, but people still love it. Others get things wrong like the lawyer in ‘Jurassic Park’ living through the book and dying in the movie. Others totally destroy the source material as if it’s simply in the way like . . . do I really have to keep naming the above movie?
The trick to the adaptation isn’t to do a word-by-word or scene-by-scene, but to retain the bulk and the essence. Something will inevitably be left out or added and I’ve come to accept that when I go to a movie that started as a book. It makes things a lot less stressful and it turns the movie into an alternate story. Kind of like how there are two ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ series that run in different directions, but are both entertaining.
There’s no point in going into a film or book ready to tear it apart because you’re going to find everything wrong that way. At least wait for it come on TV and not waste money on admission if you’re going in expecting your book to have been bastardized. It’ll inevitably happen because you’re a fan and love the books. Yet, I’m sure if the biggest fan of a series made it into a movie there would be other fans that hate it because it doesn’t fit their own vision.
Anyway, that’s my initial rant and thoughts on the subject. Feel free to let your thoughts known. For an added challenge, try to do it without mentioning ‘Twilight’.
