The Tricky Question

Sorry for the lack of columns recently, but a bout of illness and a rush at work has meant that most other things have fallen by the wayside. But I am here once again, ready to tackle subjects relating to books and literature. And boy do I have a good one for my triumphant return: Is there such a thing as a GOOD book to film adaptation?

People tend to just accept that a book will always trump a film based on the book. The justification is that a film has to condense a lot of the content to fit it into a two hour movie and this in turn dilutes the story. Then you have people arguing that an actor/actress assigned to certain roles don’t marry together with the descriptions given in the book of that character. Or, and this is even worse, that the scriptwriters add in scenes that didn’t exist in the original text.

And online lists of good books turned into bad movies, or bad books turned into worse films or good films that made amazing films have been compiled and argued over for years.

I have to admit, I have complained about all of these in the past. As a book lover, I am precious about what I read. I devour it, spend days immersing myself in the world on the page before me, emote with the characters and have that same feeling of closure they do at the novel’s end. So when a book has been “destroyed” by Hollywood writers, I can get a bit uppity about it.

Currently I am reading Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, which as the majority will know was released as a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese earlier this year. Although I am enjoying the book, I saw the film first and will forever picture DiCaprio as Teddy Daniels, which is another of my Hollywood making books into movies bugbears.

Anyway, one thing I noticed when reading Shutter Island was how close to the text the movie’s writers had stuck. Paragraphs of dialogue had been carefully transferred over to the screenplay, scenes lovingly retained and the general tone of the story complemented. And this filled me with hope that there were some good adaptations out there.

The early Harry Potter books definitely fall into this category. Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets were practically copied verbatim, with Prisoner of Azkaban moving slightly away from JK Rowling’s original offering. However, by Goblet of Fire, the size of the novels had increased substantially and this meant that the film’s writers had to cut out chunks of story, raising angry protests from fans claiming they had “taken out the best bits”. And by Order of the Phoenix the writers were including scenes not featured in the books.

Part of the problem that writers have in translating novels onto the screen is that there isn’t the same structure. Books include characters’ internal thoughts and feelings and often have a narrative voice running throughout. A film (on the whole) can’t do that, so there are often internal monologues which are chopped by editors.

Although hated by a lot of people, the first Twilight movie stayed loyal to the books. In the second movie, a lot was changed because in the books Edward Cullen disappears for about 400 pages and the screenplay writers were no doubt fearful about what a room full of Twi-hards would do when they discovered Robert Pattinson missing for about two hours of the movie. And this is another reason for changes to the story – a character minor in a series of books becomes popular, so the movies’ writers concoct new storylines that expand the role.

And although a comic and not a novel, Sin City was amazing in it’s dedication to stay true to the original artwork and dialogue. There were points in the film that I recognised as exact copies of panels from the comics, which really blew my mind. I can’t help but feel that it helps immensely if the director is a true fan of the work they are recreating on screen.

However, on the flipside of this is the horrendously bad reimagings. In particular I am thinking of Jurassic Park, where characters who die in the first book survive until the end of the third film. Park creator John Hammond is turned into a grandfatherly twinkly eyed old so-and-so, as opposed to the money-grabbing egotistical character of the books. Many scenes (particularly action scenes) were cut, and it dumbs down the paelentological jargon used in the book.

Other adaptations seem to take merely the name of the book and little in the way of story (yes, I am looking at you Fever Pitch). The Nick Hornby novel was about football in England and it spoke of the agony of being a fan of a sports team and watching your team lose. The Farrelly Brothers took it, added in that idiot Jimmy Fallon, turned football into baseball and removed any and all of the soul in the story. You never understood truly what being a fan meant to Fallon’s character.

So, as to whether movie adaptations of books can ever be very good, the answer is yes, but more often that not they won’t. There is too much compression of the story, distortion of characters and studio interference that will often sully even the most loving of projects by screenplay writers.

– Katy Gordon

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