This week the Weekly Geeks asked: I thought this week we could talk about books and movies. Do you have a best list? a worst list? Perhaps a why-oh-why list? Which movies (based on books) would you recommend most? Do you always compare the book and the movie? Or are you able to enjoy each separately? Does a film have to be faithful to the book to be good? Are there any films that you like better than the book? Has a movie ever inspired you to pick up the book? Are there any books that you'd love to see as a movie? Do you have a music playlist--soundtrack--for a book? My biggest pet peeve is when someone tells me that I didn't like a movie because I read the book. I've been reading books my whole life, I've always wanted to be a novelist. But I studied film in college, live and work in Los Angeles, and I fell in love with screenwriting. I think I have the mental capacity and background to form well educated opinions about books and movies and adaptations.
This is what I look for in an adaptation:
-It's a good movie. I need it to be well written as a movie first. That means the movie structure is there and the story and characters are understandable whether or not you've read the book.
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| Orlando Bloom is entertaining to look at. |
-It's entertaining. Movies that aren't entertaining very rarely keep an audience and what is entertaining in a book is not necessarily entertaining on screen. The filmmakers can't be afraid to make changes that will make the story a better movie.
Lord of the Rings was a great book, but it was also a great movie. It was easy to follow (which is helpful even for those of us who have read the books, because... hello, complicated!), beautiful to watch, and highly entertaining. But it kept the essence of the books; it really captured Middle Earth.
A very different example is A Series of Unfortunate Events. The books and the movie were so different but I loved them both. The movie changed a ton, because they combined the first three books. There just wasn't enough in one (very entertaining) book to make one (very entertaining) movie. But they kept the spirit of the books--that dark, dark comedy--and it made the movie work for me.
I usually only post about movies when things don't work, and even then I only post about it rarely. Check out my posts on casting Jennifer Lawrence in the Hunger Games, My letter to Chris Columbus after I watched Percy Jackson, and Why Part of me hated Harry Potter 7 (I know, I couldn't believe it either).
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I think keeping the "spirit" of the story is so, so, so important! LOTR did it well, as did Narnia, Count of Monte Cristo and others that I won't take the time to name specifically. I always say "books are books and movies are movies." They are different mediums, and what works well in one, won't necessarily work well in the other. However, you can stay true to a character, a story line and a "universe" while still maintaining artistic control and properly adapting to your medium.
ReplyDeleteWell stated :)
I agree with you. To me it is more important to convey the spirit of the story then keeping the book 100% accurate. I wrote a review a while back on Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. The book was very different from the movie because the movie was more visually satisfying because the screen writer wasn't afraid to make changes. Also, if you listen to the commentary for the movie the authors even say that there were changes made for the movie that they wished they would have thought of themselves.
ReplyDeleteWhat I hate though, is when a movie will label itself "Bram Stoker's Dracula" when the screen writers know they changed A LOT! Too much, in my opinion.