The Movie Wasn't Like the Book!

[robert eggleton]

Basically, I agree. However, there has to be some middle ground between true literature and profit motive, whether print or film. We are part of the first generation that ignores literature but pays close attention to commercialism. This is true not only in the arts, but also in industries such as retirement, insurance, clothing.... Read the labels, right now, on the clothing that you are wearing. Bet you a buck that you don't find American made, even on your underwear. Buy a new computer and you will find a large American symbol on the box, and in smaller font: "assembled in the U.S.A." American literature is not promoted, new works are obstructed, and films follow suit.

[MysFan]

I might get flamed for this, but I believe that some movies do the story better justice than the book does.

Now, I like wordy books (if you've read any of mine, you'd know), but the Lord of the Rings felt a little dry to me, a little too.... I hesistate to say, 'Biblical,' if you get me. Whereas the films blew me away.

our imagination is limited by our own experiences, our own concepts and things we've seen. Whereas in a movie you're looking at the director's/special effects team's/actors portrayal and, usually, it's fresh and completely different to how you imagined it yourself.

There are so many different viewpoints in this discussion, might get flamed by some. In reading all the posts I am now torn. I guess each book to movie has to be looked at from a personal perspective. And then there are the remakes and remakes!!

And then there are the special effects!!!! The addition of this tool changed everything. As did the newer techniques in makeup.

But some of the older films leave you on the edge of your chair with the suspense building and building. It seems to me these are more the older mysteries. Double Indemnity almost gave me a heart attack and the Maltese Falcon had a plot that kept shifting and shifting around until the end.

So.....

One of my favorites is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Reading the play it is almost impossible to imagine the characters and activities all happening simultaneously. I saw a very old movie version that was black and white and it was really horrible. But I have seen it on the stage at least five times and it was spectacular each time. The plays I saw followed the story line, but just seeing a portrayal makes the play come alive. I use this as an example as it one of my favorites, although it is not book to movie, but written play to stage play.

Lord of the Rings. That is another one that really can't be appreciated as well in written form as it can on the big screen. (At least from my perspective.)

And talk about flamed, I much preferred the movie version of Gone with the Wind to the book. I can only take so much description of clothing and plantations. And to me the book could never do justice to that one scene where the wounded soldiers were laid out on the vast piece of land; dead or dying. There may be authors who can convey this type of scene, but I either have not read them or can't remember.

I know how peeved Margaret Mitchell was about the film version and how so many of her thoughts were left out. I suppose I would be too as books are authors' children. And she had gotten quite a bit of acclaim for her book. Did not get much say in the making of the film. Then she probably had to read a lot about how the film was better than the book!!! Can't have been easy.

[cobooboc]

I think, one of the authors took a long time to write a book, to be reduced to a two-hour movie, no details, no thoughts of the author. So, compared to the film adaptation, I still like to read.

[she8178]

The one movie that was not like the book was Eragon by Christopher Paolini. It was like a totally different story from the book and barely had anything in it that could be connected to the enchanting tale of Eragon. The plot of the movie shares nothing with the book and the characters (the ones they actually decided to add) share no similarities to the book's idea of them.

[Bighuey]

Not many biopics are very true to life either. Coal Miners Daughter was one, Loretta Lynn said the movie was nothing like her life, but they threatened to cut off her royalties if she didnt keep her mouth shut. From what Ive heard, the Hank Williams movie Youre Cheatin Heart was one of the handful that was true to life.

[ldsrsc]

I don't mind if a movie takes liberties if the overall story is better. However, that's rare. The only time I can think of in which I enjoyed the movie more than the book is "The Man without a Face."

Personally, I think filmmakers should NOT make a movie from a book unless that book would translate well to film. "Water for Elephants," I felt, translated well. They got the overall story and didn't need to take many liberties.

I want to know how in the world they're going to make "Life of Pi" into a good movie. That's a book that I can't imagine would translate well to film without taking a ton of liberties or just being an incredibly boring movie.

Tip to film studios: Just because a book is a bestseller doesn't mean it'll make a box office smash. Choose wisely.

[robert eggleton]

The film will just add a lot of special effects and free 3-D glasses.

[ldsrsc]

We don't need more of that.

If you can't make it well, make it in 3D, eh?

[Leonardo Noto]

On set of films that I thought did any exceptionally good job of staying true to the books was The Lord of the Rings triology. The only major thing that they left out (that I noticed) was Tom Bombadill. I'm looking forward to seeing The Hobbit but it's kind of hard to see how they're going to stay true to such a short book with three films...we shall see.

A film that I thought did an especially poor job of staying true to the book was Rising Sun (Michael Crichton).

[robert eggleton]

I agree, that one was very poor.

[MysFan]

I hate to see studios purchase the movie rights and give the author the impression that they will be following the story, or that they will have some say in the way the film is made, and then just go ahead and do what they want. Some have been disasters.

Of course today most bestselling authors have lawyers to make sure the details are spelled out. But I still see authors who are very disappointed. It is perhaps that they see something else happening, or the actors not getting the characters the way the author perceived them to be.

It always seems to me that movies about real people are always off, like the whole deal with Loretta Lynne. I don't know her entire life story, but I had heard she was raised in a coalmining town, they were fairly poor and that her husband not only abused her, but that he was tremendously greedy when she started making money. All of this of course with her standing up for him. But that article might have been based on the movie. And so both were inaccurate.

Another thing that is really horrible to me is when someone writes a tell-all book after a celebrity is dead and cannot defend themselves. And then making matters worse, a movie is made of the story. Of course since I don't know any of the people in these books or movies, guess it is not my place to say if they were accurate or not. But it seems it would be much more fair to do this when they were alive to defend themselves. (But then of course the writers would be facing lawsuits so.....)

[Fran]

IMO some authors are a bit precious about their work, if they sell the movie rights & are happy to take the money, then they have to accept that a movie is a different genre and anyway you cannot possibly just film the book as it is written.
A movie is one or maybe two (the director & the screenwriters) collaborative interpretations of the book.
In a sense every reader makes their own movie in their head as they read and what I, as a reader, envisage may be totally at variance with the author's intentions but it's my perfectly valid interpreation of what I read.

That said, I do get cross when directors don't pick actors that suit my image of a character .... for example IMO Leonardo DiCaprio was totally wrong in Shutter Island, nothing like my image of Marshal Teddy Daniels! And I don't like when they change the ending of books I have loved .... so I am really dreading what Keira Knightley does to my beloved Anna Karenina. But if it brings new readers to the book it will worth my suffering.

[robert eggleton]

Nothing is worse than the end of literature -- not even entertainment.

[WittyK]

I think it would be impossible for a movie to include virtually everything that is in the book because what a writer can put down in a few paragraphs would be very costly to replicate on the movie screen. A good screenwriter attempts to capture the essence of the book while judiciously editing out scenes which do not contribute enough to the main plot line.

In my opinion the finest adaptation of a book to screen was To Kill A Mockingbird. Even in this movie not all of the book was included but the screen writers were VERY deferential to the book and Harper Lee was pleased with the outcome. I suppose that is the litmus test of all screen writing - when the author him/herself praises the movie ... which Harper Lee, in this case, did.

I agree with DATo. However, the movie version should be very close enough (in detail) to the original book version for the movie watchers who does read the book to enjoy and appreciate it.

If the movie version varies very much from that of the book version, surely so many negative criticisms from the viewers they will get.

Bottomline is, movies should be enjoyed by the public and not by the ones who made them.

[robert eggleton]

Bottom Line: Both books and movies must contribute to the evolution of a generation's literature that is respectable by future generations or there is no point -- may as well buy a game boy, or masturbate to computer porn, what makes the difference-- it's just a couple of tissues that will be inconsequential as we destroy this planet.