We’re talking about books being adapted into movies this week at redbox and redblog, and obviously it’s a massive subject. (See Erika’s kick-off intro here.) In fact, I started to hash out a “short” “think piece” on the subject and was quickly at 1,500 words and just getting warmed up. (My thoughts on Jaws, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lord of the Rings alone could fill a textbook.) So I believe I’ll deprive you fine folks of listening to me yammer on endlessly and instead break it down into a series of discussion topics over the next couple days for you, the readers. (It’s interactive! It’s involving the readers!)
Let’s start with this:
When adapting a book to film, how important is it that the film be faithful to the book?
–Should a film adaptation try to keep in as much of a book’s plot and characters as possible? Or is it okay if a film just tries to capture the spirit of a book?
–What’s the best case of a film being very faithful to the book and still working well as a film? Worst case?
–Conversely, what’s the best case of a film taking massive liberties with a book but still being a great film? Worst case?
–What kinds of changes from book to film irritate you the most? What kinds are you usually okay with?
My Thoughts on the Matter
What? You didn’t think you’d get off scot-free with no yammering from me, did you? I get paid by the yammer!
Any filmmaker has to ask him or herself, am I making a movie for the fans of the book or am I making a movie for fans of movies? I have no problem with a writer and director making even major changes from a novel if it makes the film work better. The film maker’s first charge has to be making a good movie.
I loved Stephen King’s The Shining when I was a teen, and at first I was baffled and annoyed by Stanley Kubrick’s film version—it didn’t have all the stuff, follow all the story points I found so effective in the book. But as a film lover I soon came to appreciate the choices Kubrick was making—they made for a better film, not a more faithful adaptation. Seventeen years later The Shining was remade for TV, honing much more closely to the book. Remember that? What’s that, you don’t? Oh right, because the faithful TV version with Steven Weber ended up passable but mostly forgettable.
Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line follows the events and characters of James (From Here to Eternity) Jones’s semi-autobiographical novel, but goes off in a much more meditative, poetic direction—while still arriving at some of the book’s heavier themes about men at war. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now may jump ahead centuries on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but it keeps all the novella’s grim themes alive, and has creative fun transferring various events in the book from the Belgium Congo into Vietnam. And which version of Jane Austen’s Emma was more successful as a film? The relatively faithful one with Gwyneth Paltrow or the modern-day one with Alicia Silverstone?
Doin’ the Middle-Earth Shuffle
When it came to Peter Jackson’s film version of The Lord of the Rings, many fanboys and fangirls were ready to storm the Black Gate of Mordor in outrage over the axing of things like Tom Bombadil, the parlay with Saruman, the face-off between Gandalf and the Witch King, the Mouth of Sauron, and the Scouring of the Shire. And they were equally disturbed in advance by the addition of the warg attack and subsequent separating of Aragorn from Theoden’s army, and the building up of the love story between Aragorn and Arwen (done both to add some box-office-friendly romance and to try to involve more female characters in what is admittedly a boys-club-y tale). But guess what–for the most part those were smart, well-thought-out and effective changes by Jackson and his co-writers Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh. (And in the case of Saruman, the Witch King, and the Mouth of Sauron, reinserted back into the Extended Editions.)
And Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential takes James Ellroy’s complex and often intentionally confusing crime novel and strips out a lot of subplots and characters (killing off Exley’s father and his involvement in the building of Disneyland-like theme park)–however, screenwriter Brian Helgeland inserted the brilliant “Rollo Tomasi” plot point, simultaneously bridging over narrative gaps left by the cuts and at the same time creating a fantastic little dramatic twist in and of itself.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 10:37 am
The author makes good points and sometimes I have liked the film better than the book. But for the most part if they deviate too much it is a huge let down.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 10:43 am
I most often am let down if I have read the book prior to the movie. If I am CERTAIN that a movie is in the works, I will postpone reading the book until after I see the movie. I find that I am less disappointed in the movie AND I enjoy the book because there is usually content that didn’t make the cut.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 11:09 am
Adrian’s Personal Picks:
1) “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Happy Fiftieth)
2) “Clockwork Orange” (Kubrick got that one note for note…)
3) “Fail-Safe” (it was)
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 11:26 am
Like I said in the intro page, I don’t mind if books to movies are fairly loose in there adaptations. Blade Runner being my favorite loose adaptation, and I don’t know, the newest Planet of the Apes being the worst :3 It’s definitely fine with me to trim excess plot and characters to make a tighter movie, refer to Locke’s article on Lisbeth Salander for that point ( http://blog.redbox.com/2010/07/chicks-who-rock-lisbeth-salander-on-dvd-and-film.html ) because even though I truly enjoyed the books, if they crammed all that stuff into it’d be very boring. The only thing I cant stand is when they alter a main character in some great way for whatever reason, things like personality and back story, those are things that shouldn’t be changed. It annoyed me to no end that they changed Louis’ origins in Interview With A Vampire because the way it all happened in the book really set the stage for the type of vampire he became, it ended up being cliched and uninteresting in the movie, and I know they did it to shed time off the story, but it still hurts my view of the movie.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 2:34 pm
John Irving is one of my favorite writers, and I enjoyed The Cider House Rules as a book. Fortunately, he edited his own work to create the screenplay for a much better movie of the same name, leaving out the secondary story line about a bullying lesbian orphan character. She’s in the movie, but in a much more subdued and likeable role. The film was much better for the changes.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 3:07 pm
1984′s Dune. I have to say it. It was incredible. And also very unfaithful. But the movie worked well anyway.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 3:10 pm
one of the changes that i liked in the movie ‘The Shining’ was that they changed from mallet to axe… one i hated was ella enchanted…. they just took the general idea of the book and told a whole different story… in the book her dad’s still alive
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Fiirvoen, I am SO not going to get into that whole Lynch/1984/Dune argument with you again! LOL Last time I did, I ended up actually WATCHING it again! Though I will admit, Lynch’s version does make a compelling case for director’s vision versus fidelity to source material.
J.T. I keep meaning to mention Irving in one of these posts–as a teen, John Irving was one of the first “contemporary literary” authors I really started to read, right about the time Garp and Hotel New Hampshire were being made into films. (The first review I ever had published was of the BOOK Cider House Rules.) And Irving makes a VERY interesting case study for books into film as he has been, as you’ve noted, more involved than most authors in the screen adaptations of his novels.
And don’t worry, Blade Runner and ESPECIALLY Mockingbird will get their due later this week when I talk about my all-time favorite film adaptations of books.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I totally remembered the remake of “The Shining” and I must admit that it was better than the first one. I don’t care what you say. The smallest detailed made the movie. The croquet mallet vs the bat! How hard was that to keep? Seriously! It was a tv movie! It’s like saying who remembers the transformers show to the movie. You don’t know what you’re talking about with that one. Jack Nicholson is what made the first film. I’ll give you that. But the wife was so damn annoying and the kid was just awfully awkward. Redrum. Redrum. I think names aside, the remake was way better. However, the first one got away with more cos it was a theatrical release. The woman in the bath tub was probably the creepiest scene ever. You’re not mentioning what made it not so good. You’re saying it was straight up better. They both had their faults but I think the second had me glued to the screen better, for two days! Furthermore, if the first one was so good, then why did stephen king make it a point to join the screen writing process for all his adaptations after the original “The Shining”? It’s like saying the Karate Kid (2010) is definitely the same as the original but tweaked a little! Hello, it was Kung Fu, not Karate.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Jorge, your bringing up King’s involvement with the TV Shining (and his open dislike of the Kubrick version) gets at another VERY important point to discuss: authors are NOT always the best judge of their works on screen. Of course authors LOVE absolute fidelity to their sacred written word. But that doesn’t mean they always know what’s best for a FILM. Yes, there will always be exceptions–writers who do a good job of adapting their own works to screen (David Mamet and Rebecca Miller leap to mind). And some writers WELCOME changes from page to screen–Maurice Sedak LOVES Spike Jonze’s version of Where the Wild Things Are, despite it going VERY far afield from his original work.
Kubrick’s The Shining may not be the book adaptation King or some of his fans wanted, but it IS a masterpiece of modern horror film making.
Posted on July 28, 2010 at 10:35 pm
i’m mostly irritated by details that are made into *such* a big deal in the book, and completely disregarded in the movie…
most recently (and e knows how mad i was over this), i was annoyed by “The Time Traveler’s Wife”… in the book, the main character “Clare” has fire-engine red hair… they bring this up countless times in the book… in the movie, it ends up being more auburn/brown…
why?! all it would’ve taken was a box of hair dye or even a wig to remedy the situation…
it’s like harry potter not wearing glasses, or having a his signature lightning shaped scar…
Posted on August 4, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Yikes! I hadn’t read this post when I piped in on the other thread about King adaptations and Apocalypse now.
I wonder how you feel about John Irving adaptations. Seems to me that The World According to Garp was one of those faithful adaptations that everyone who hadn’t read the book absolutely loved but everyone who loved the book felt let down by. Of course it’s success meant that every (increasingly weird) Irving book got made into a film, none very well.
The oddest, and perhaps most successful, case is probably A Prayer for Owen Meany. When I read that book and heard it was going to be made into a movie and rated PG I said “impossible”. And it was. Simon Birch was a sweet and interesting little movie that shared about half its plot with the source book; you can’t even consider it an adaptation but I think it works on its own terms quite nicely. Plus Ashley Judd.