Movie adaptations are desired by people who truly fall in love with the novel that is being converted into a film. They are eager to see the characters, scenes, and settings that they have vividly pictured in their minds finally come to life. However does this desirable build up to finally seeing the Movie adaptation set it up for failure without even giving it a true chance? I believe that when someone is truly in love with a novel, the movie adaptation will never live up to their standards. For maybe even years they have an image in their mind of what the movie will be and no matter what the directors do it will not live up to what their imagination has created.
For example, The Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling are widely known throughout the world. I finished the last novel in the series a year before it came out onto the big scene. I had an image in my head of how I wanted them to portray the novel. The whole movie pleased me very much, except the final scene. The main character did something completely different than what he did in the book. The change was so drastic to me that it ruined the whole last message the Movie was trying to get across. However, a common person who read the book without to much thought or a real deep tie to it wouldn't have noticed or have been to upset with the change in the final scene like i was. Since I was truly in love with the series I was able to pick up on this little thing and that caused me to think the adaptation was lacking in the end.
My love for the final book of this series set the adaptation up for failure. Even though I loved the majority of the movie the one changed I picked up on ruined the ending for me. Instead of concentrating on the rest of the movie and how I enjoyed it I was unable to movie passed the ending. Through my experience with reading novels in depth and watching their film adaptations, it makes me believe no one will ever be truly pleased. Even if they say it was a wonderful movie, there will always be something missing for them that did not play completely into their vision of what the adaptation should have been like. There are so many components that go into an adaptation and people who love the novel are looking to pick it apart to see what they did wrong. I believe if you are not crazy about a novel you will enjoy the adaptation much more because your expectations are not as high as those who are so in love with the novel, they are not able to see passed a little detail that was changed by the screenwriters. 
I agree with your point. Yes, there are movies that I though were made extremely well, however, I have not yet seen a movie that conveys every single point about the novel clearly and inspirationally. One major reason for this outcome is most likely due to the fact that it is virtually impossible to make every detail mentioned in the book about a characters backgroud or plot fit into an estimated two hours worth of film. If this were done the film would probably be so strayed and condusing from the main plot. For example, in a book one paragraph might imform the reader that the protagonist lives with two sisters and their grandma. However to add this into a movie you would have to show scenes of the household and create extra dialog between characters that isnt really necesary (in most cases) to the rest of the film. Also, to play devils advocate I can see that producers and directors try to appeal to a much larger audience to make more money. For this reason they probably change certain events so that more people are satisfied with the movie and it is looked at by the audience as correctly portrayed.
ReplyDeleteI have both been disappointed and quite pleased with movie adaptations of books. For my page to screen novel, my small group read the Kite Runner and watched the movie. The book was over 300 pages, but never boring. There was always something going on, whether it be for the plot or character development. When I watched the movie, I was not satisfied. After analyzing it, I came to the conclusion that although the essential plot and subplots followed that of the novel, the characterization and emotion was not there. I believe that this is because of Groselle's point that movies need to be shortened from the book. If the director wanted to obtain the same emotional effect as the book, then it would have been a three hour film.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I was happy with the film adaptation of 'Perks of Being a Wallflower'. After falling in love with the book, I was not at all disappointed with the movie. I believe that this is because the book was quite short. It may have only topped 100 pages. Because of this, the director did not have to cut plot points, character development, or the overall emotion from his film. Pleasing an audience of a top selling novel is a hard thing to do, but 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' shows that it can be done.