Page to Screen: Giving Flight or Cutting Wings?
This post is the fourth in a series on contemporary popular literature.So I know you’ve all noticed the massive trend towards making huge powerhouse movie sequel machines lately. And what better way to go about doing this than looking to books. Some of the most successful book series of all time have exploded into massive sequential hits. Just look at Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and The Twilight Saga. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is yet another trilogy being scripted and cast for the big screen as I write.
But setting franchise considerations aside for another time, I’d like to talk about what makes taking stand-alone books from the page to screen success vs. failure stories.
A lot of the time, it’s unfortunate but true, the books that were once great, become sore disappointments on screen. Often, it is the most interesting, complex, and rich works that just don’t translate successfully into the relatively short media format of movies. Just look at Eragon—what was a huge literary success was pretty much a flop among fans for straying so far from the original intent of the work.
The remedy? Make sure you let go of as many expectations as possible before you go to the theater, these will only drag you down when things start playing out differently from what you originally imagined. And lets face it, no matter how great special effects have become, the human imagination truly is limitless, leaving lots of room for disappointment when things fall short. Even movies that are actually decent interpretations are often clouded by eyes too tied to the original work to appreciate a movie rendition.
I keep having this problem with movies, and though I try to train myself not to get too excited about movie adaptations of books, I often can’t seem to keep my hopes subdued enough to give the movie a fighting chance. In my experience, when such high expectations absolutely can’t be beaten down, second viewings often fair better. Once fanciful visions have been dispelled by first viewings, reasonable expectations for the second viewing descend. If you are especially disappointed the first time around, on second glance, you may be surprised to find you can actually appreciate what the director interpreted differently.
The biggest success stories often seem to come from books that were just okay to begin with. Often books have interesting and compelling ideas that never reach their full potential on the page; whether readers clash with an author’s story-telling style or the writing is simply sub par, such stories make excellent candidates for movie interpretations.
Stardust the novel vs. Stardust the movie
In my opinion, an excellent example of such a phenomenon would be Stardust. I have read the book and seen the movie. Interestingly, I didn’t read the book until after I saw the trailer. I was so amped for the movie after the trailer that I went out and bought the book directly. You can imagine my disappointment when I found Neil Gaiman’s approach wasn’t for me. The depth I usually look for in the novels I pick up simply wasn’t there. Gaiman would gloss the most exciting adventures and intriguing characters, leaving me wishing I could infuse at least 20 more pages into the novel every time this happened.
The movie was the perfect window into these unexplained, unopened parts of the book. This is where movies can gain an advantage. They have the potential to open up a book in a way that can more effectively touch readers the second time around. To some extent, it’s like a really sophisticated piece of fan fiction.
Though I’ve seen a lot of duds when it comes to transforming a written novel into a film, for me, it is all worth it when I find a movie adaptation that manages to exceed the original work and my own expectations (which as I mentioned before, can at times be freakishly high). Even though I know most attempts to bring favorite novels to the screen will fall through, on opening night you’ll find me sitting in the theater with my fingers crossed.
What are your favorite book-to-movie projects? Your biggest disappointments? If you had the power to take any book and make it into a movie, which one would you choose? Let me know below!
That’s funny that you used Stardust as an example of a movie that improved on the book. I’m a big Gaiman fan – but I found Stardust (the book) to be disjointed, superficial, and pretty lackluster (I did find out later it is supposed to be more like four short stories, which may explain the disjointed bit). But I enjoyed the movie quite a bit (Ricky Gervais most especially, and a quite-funny De Niro as the cross-dressing ship captain). So I’m right there with you on that one.
I’m pretty darn good about completely avoiding comparing a book I like or even love from its screen adaptation. (although I like to sport my Threadless tee that says “Movies: Ruining the Book Since 1910.”) For example, the tv series Legend of the Seeker varies quite a lot from the tone and storylines of the Sword of Truth novels on which it is based, but I absolutely love the tv show on its own merits. Definitely an interpretation done right, and made accessible to more fans.
Most recently, I had some trepidation about the Alice in Wonderland “sequel” by Tim Burton. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass are two of my favorite books of all time. I didn’t know if the movie would feel too much like just another Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie, but I really enjoyed their take on it, and found it to be more true in some ways to the original books, much more so than the Disneyfied version. Now I’m just waiting for movie versions of Frank Beddor’s “The Looking Glass Wars” novels, which, since he comes from the world of graphic novels, are well-suited for movie adaptations.
I wouldn’t agree that it is a matter of simply lowering expectations, but rather stepping away from a wrong-minded expectation. A movie is simply a different kind of work of art from a book. Hollywood doesn’t just make bad movies from good books; it also makes good movies from bad books. For instance, a number of book critics thought that Bridges of Madison County was basically a load of kitsch, but according to other critics, the movie was pretty good.
And even when a good book becomes a good movie, it isn’t necessarily the same story. A Beautiful Mind is a good book which was “made” into a good movie, but in key ways they’re actually not the same story.
Obviously a good painting won’t always be made into a good novel and a good symphony won’t always be made into a good ballet. A good director will realize that the movie is a separate work of art; it is not a “videobook”.
Okay, that is a bit glib for certain types of novels that are highly adaptable to the screen, for instance Jane Austen. But even then, one major issue is simply length. Even a relatively short novel has room for a longer story line than a long movie. Many of the best movie adaptations of books are miniseries rather than one-part movies.