Adaptation

So movie adaptations of books have been around since the beginnings of film. My favorite movie, The Maltese Falcon, was even the third adaptation of the book. From 1994 to 2013 58% of the top grossing movies were adaptations, so it has been a pretty big chunk of the industry for a long time. I don't think that everything needs a movie adaptation. The fact that we got a rock em' sock em' robots movie and a battleship movie is depressing. Especially because we already got the best board-game to movie adaptation in 1985.

People have weird feelings about film adaptations and I really get why. People put a lot of investment into books. When you read a book, you are not just comprehending words on a page. Books require far more input form the reader, which is something a lot of people love. Rue from the hunger games movie wasn't what I was expecting after reading the book because I had an image in my head of the character I read about. The problem arises from what a movie is and what a book is, and how its hard to distinguish the two when they are based on the same thing.

If I wrote a book I could be vague about some details, forcing the readers to interpret somethings on their own, but in a movie you can't do that easily. Movies need to be more subtle in different ways because they effect different senses. My favorite example of this is from an adaptation that I loved: "Shutter Island". Spoilers Ahead: In the movie the guards are visibly nervous at the fact that Daniels has a gun and is walking around freely. This was not something that was easily shown in the book because the narrative didn't focus on the background characters in a way that films can.

I think the only time a movie version of a book gets "bad" from a narrative perspective (bad acting and directing can happen to original IP movies too) is when it looses what makes most books important. The message. All in all I don't have a problem with an adaptation as long as it stays true to the reason the book was written.That being said, if you make the movie all about the special effects and flare and big name actors and less about the story being told it will be bad, regardless of the source materials origins. Examples of failure: The Golden Compass, The Hobbit, The Great Gatsby, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Examples of Success: No Country For Old Men, The Maltese Falcon, and an Honorable Mention to Jeeves and Wooster (because fuck yeah Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie).