As somebody who enjoys storytelling, it is only natural that I find myself thinking about the “book to movie” trend that seems to be so prevalent in cinema, nowadays. I am especially curious given that the book-movie adaptation so often gets attacked based on the way that it adapts its original, source material.
And so, after learning more about why filmmakers make the choices they do whereby they deviate from the source material, I’ve come to two conclusions on the matter.
i Film is an inherently different medium than its source material’s and thus, requires that source material be molded in order to fit that medium.
Sometimes it is characters that needs to be changed.
If you’ve read the Lord of the Rings, you know that Aragorn’s character is rather different than he is in the film. In the books, he’s much more static than he is in the films. But you know what, a 1:1 recreation of Aragorn from the novels would be so much less interesting than than Peter Jackson’s Aragorn. And thus, Viggo Mortensen does not go around flaunting the fact that he’s the (future) king of Gondor, brandishing Andúril every chance he gets. Instead, we have an Aragorn that focuses more on his legacy in relation to the ring and in relation to the history (and future) of Arda/Middle Earth, e.g. his particular lineage and the race of Men and thier place in the world.
Sometimes plot elements need to be changed, too.
Films are short compared to books. If you honestly think that there is enough time to include something from every chapter of J.K, Rowling’s Harry Potter Series, then its a good thing you’re not writing films, quite frankly.
This goes hand in hand with the issue of pacing.
Peter Jackson cut the Scouring of the Shire because why would you have the film come to a neat conclusion and then open up a whole new plot line?
The answer: You, don’t, obviously, because it just doesn’t fit with the narrative pacing of the film. You can do something like that in a book, perhaps, but for a refined and streamlined medium like film it just cannot work. To paraphrase Michael Tierno’s Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters, “when a film ends, it ends.” There is no need to tag-on extraneous material, if it does not pertain to the film’s natural conclusion.
Let’s be honest, nobody wants to watch Tolkien as written, or Dracula, as written, or C.S. Lewis, as written, or J.K. Rowling, as written etc., etc, etc.
Screenplays and Books are different animals all together. And while cats and dogs make excellent pets, often times for similar reasons, there are always going to be inherent differences between a cat and a dog.
ii. Having accepted the idea that change is almost always necessary, one can instead choose to focus on more important, core ideas of the original work and how they were (or were not) conveyed by its film adaptation.
Looking at the bigger picture, then, you can either accept those changes as still keeping with some core values of the original material in an inoffensive manner, or dismiss the film as a bad adaption on the grounds that it fails to do just that.
Because of this approach, I really do believe that even a diehard fan of the original material can find it in their heart to accept a non 1:1 adaption. Real fans of a work typically understand that a work’s strength is not necessarily in the way that material is presented, but more so in the prominent themes and tone that is presented; more often, it is the big picture that matters.
Unless that adaptation fails to adopt some fundamental overarching theme, plot device, characterization, or other inexcusable trait, without justifying it by adopting an equally as important or more important element in its stead, there tends to be some conscious effort to connect with those elements that make the original source material captivating in a way that does justify deviation.
In the Lord of the Rings Films, Gimli is not characterized the same way that he is in the novels. In the novels, he rarely laughs and is super serious, but in the film he is, in ways, comic relief.
But what makes this change excusable is the fact that it i) does not deviate drastically from his characterization in the books (he is serious most of the time and has his dwarfish qualities) and ii) helps highlight other important (and dare I say more important) themes such as prejudice, the love that is friendship, and fellowship.
In the final Harry Potter film, the last memories of Severus Snape conveniently exclude the idea that the only reason why he did what he did to protect the Potters was because he loved Lily but did not really care for the lives of her Husband and Son.
But while we can get past this in the novel because we have more time to deal with this facet of Snape’s character and thus accept him as vindicated, there simply is not enough time to do so in the film.
But we need to vindicate Snape because that is fundamentally important to (the novel) Deathly Hallows’ story. Thus, we take that bit out and simply make it seem as if Snape wants all the Potters to be hidden.
Deviations? Yes. Justified by its attempt to present an important concept? I think so. Bad adaptations lose sight of the original source material in a fundamental way. And, by all means, hate on the bad adaptations –they deserve it; I agree.
But, looking at a film having accepted that changes are going to occur, we can constructively (key word, there), decide whether or not the filmmakers did an acceptable job of bringing whatever story to the big screen, without simply chastising adaptations for changes that they’ve undoubtedly been reasonably compelled to make.
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