You Say Vinyl, I Say Leather-Bound
17th June, 2009 7 Comments
It so often happens that when a movie comes out everyone tells you the book was better. Even knowing this, fans of a particular book will still go to the movie just to see if it does any justice to the book at all.
Different books are successful or not on different levels. With Lord of the Rings (book), my dad and I both agree that the movies are a beautiful interpretation of the books. They feature key information and leave out scenes that we might want to see but have little home in the story telling (Tom Bombadil). In the case of the LotR, some things seemed to be presented better in the movie such as the battle of Helm’s Deep, which makes more sense in the film’s presentation than from what actually happens in the book.
Some movies are simply well-suited to becoming movie adaptations such as Jurassic Park (book). Others, like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (book), are well-suited. However, their popular and cult status in the jokes results in a send-up to the fans, forgetting about the plot in an effort to include every punchline that leaves new inductees scratching their heads. The Painted Veil (book), meanwhile, is a stunning story that has an ending not well-suited but alterable for the movies so that a similar message is kept.
Then there are movies that are just bad or mangled in the transition from page to film. I Am Legend (book) the movie changes details resulting in missing key messages that are presented in the book, while War of the Worlds (book) just seemed a mess.
Those same movies and books might be beloved or hated by people with different opinions then my own. Books are extremely personal–we interpret the words in a manner so that characters and places have a certain look to them in our minds. No one else has this exact image in their head. Movies seem to kill a lot of the creative bonds that form between each reader and their version of the story, and there’s no way around the fact that the nature of making a movie is to ask for one person’s interpretation (maybe a few more if you consider the screenwriters and director). The version of a story presented on-screen so often becomes one version with the beliefs of the screenwriter and director foisted upon the characters. The Harry Potter (book) movies and stories are great, but I cannot think of them without seeing Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.
When you walk away from the movie, you walk away with the images you just saw taking the place of the ones you cultivated on your own. This is one of the reasons I would almost always rather read the book before seeing a movie version. I’ve debated both sides of the issue with myself: the movie is never as good as the book, so engage in the one of lesser quality first vs. create your own images and interpretations then go see someone else’s interpretation.
I’d rather create my own images first. One of the most difficult things to render onto screen for the makes of Lord of the Rings was the Ents. There is just no creature in real life from which to draw inspiration. All we know is that they are “tree-like.” Weta and New Line didn’t have a chance in Mordor of pleasing every fan with the Ents. They did a nice job, but they are not at all like I pictured. The photo above is one I took at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden the other day. (I go every Sunday providing the weather is nice). That photo is more what I had in mind as I read the books. Meanwhile, their Gollum was my Gollum.
The difference between a movie and a comic (where the images of characters and places are provided for the viewer) is that the comic is original. A movie is taking someone else’s story and words and formatting them for a different medium, whereas the comic artist (and writer, if different people) is creating the story from scratch. When I read a comic book, I feel my imagination working just as much as when I read a traditional book. When watching a movie adaptation, I feel spoon-fed. To cover my ass, I’m not saying that the people who make movies are in any way not creative–I just think that something is lost in the translation from book to script to film that makes me prefer books.
If you can’t see the face, click the image and see the notes I’ve added onto the Flickr version to help you out.
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Tags: imagination, movie adaptations
Posted on: June 17, 2009 by Christina
Filed under: Contemplation
7 Comments
Marcelo
June 17th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I think the problem with a lot of movie adaptations is that they think their job is merely to be faithful to the book and render it in “movie form.” To me this was one of the problems with the LOTR movies (which in general I didn’t like). They didn’t add anything to the story that wasn’t already in the books. There was no reason for making those movies except that we have this weird cultural desire to see “movie versions” of everything we get in print. That leads to the problem you mentioned of locking in actors and production design choices into your books as you read them.
It’s also why the HP movies are kinda lifeless for me, with a few exceptions they’re pretty much literal transcriptions of the books.
I think for a movie adaptation to be successful it should treat the book as source material and attempt to find a new angle on it, to reinterpret it in some way that’s unique to the film. The undisputed master of this was Stanley Kubrick, who based nearly every one of his films on previous source material and whose adaptations were so far off the original intent of that source material that some of those authors were kind of miffed. Kubrick’s version of “The Shining” is an absolute masterpiece, WAY better than the original book, but a lot of that is because Kubrick tossed out everything except the skeletal underpinnings of the plot and made the rest of it his own. Other movies that did this to some degree of success are “Starship Troopers,” “Children of Men,” and Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” which you think is a mess. Funny enough, I really like it. I think it’s Spielberg’s best movie in years and by far his most underrated. He took the original plot of the book and made it about today and the world we live in right now.
What’s neat about this approach is that the movie versions that can divorce themselves from the obligation of following the source material exactly can break free and be judged on their own, and fans of the book can enjoy the book without being bound to the visual design choices some filmmaker made. It allows both media to thrive on their own.
I think what’s most important is that the movies in question, whether they’re faithful or not, be able to survive on their own without needing the book. If you need to read the book to understand what happened in the movie then the movie didn’t do its job. If the movie works, but only works because of a significant plot or theme change (like Starship Troopers, which turned Heinlein’s space opera into an antifascist satire), then I’m fine with it. What I don’t like is when people criticize movies merely for not being enough like the book.
Finally, “Coraline” is a really interesting and unique example because the movie is actually an expanded version of the book with extra characters and more encounters with the Other Mother, etc. The book seems to start halfway through the movie. This was probably necessary to flesh out a feature film’s worth of material, but it makes the book and movie two VERY different beasts. Also the visual design of Coraline the movie is so radical and awesome with the 3D and the puppets that you can read the book without being locked into how everything looks beforehand. The book’s language is much more reality-based and doesn’t lend itself to imagining animated puppets, so you still get to make up how your real human characters look.
Wow, this was a long comment.
Christina
June 17th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Remind me to never post on a whim about things you are very knowledgeable about! You got to the crux of what I was trying (poorly) to say.
Also, it’s been a while since War of the World – I did like the take on moving the setting into modern times and looking back think I was probably quite jadded about Tom Cruise. I believe that was around the Oprah couch jumping time. The movie was just really difficult for me to connect with.
I haven’t seen The Shining, but I think the change to The Painted Veil might fall into that same catergory of completely changing scenes for the purpose of getting a message/feeling across that doesn’t necessarily translate well.
Really I just wanted to post my Ent photo.
Karel
June 17th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I love your Ent!
Care
June 18th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Love the ENT photo! This subject is endlessly debatable. I only wish it were possible to experience both: read-book-see-movie -OR- see-movie-read-book and see if you can still enjoy one or the other or both. You are right about once you see another’s image for a character, it is hard to erase. And I want to agree with Marcelo, also, that using source as a jump off point to a new spin on the story often works the best for a successful ‘adaptation’. (ie, the whole debate of The Orchid Thief – which I love,love,love.)
.-= Care´s last blog ..Library Loot: June 10-16, 2009 =-.
Kelly
June 18th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I see what you’re pointing out as the Ent’s features but all I’m seeing is turtle.
Ari
June 19th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I tend to be weird in that when I read a book, I never really “see” how the characters look. But when I see a movie, I just know whether it’s right or not.
I do like the Harry Potter movies, although you’re right about Dumbledore.
.-= Ari´s last blog ..Playing catch up… =-.
Christina
June 19th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
There definitely are some books where what I see is of the more “vauge dark character” from a dream type image. It’s alwys surprizing how what you see as looking right in a movie can look horrible wrong to someone else.
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