Enjoying the Adaptation

In most cases, I feel that the book is always better than the movie adaptation. Even if I enjoyed the movie, it still doesn’t measure up to the book. There are a few expectations to this, but I find that I, and most others that I know who have read the book and seen the movie, usually feel the movie is second rate in comparison. The most common comments people make are: it doesn’t have the same depth of characters, my favorite parts were cut out, essential scenes were cut out, the way certain events happened were changed, or everything was rushed. As a reader, we tend to like the parts the moviemakers ‘got right’ or were closest to the book. We want a carbon copy of the book along with the same emotions that are involved when we read the book. Unfortunately, film is a different media, so it can’t be the same as the book no matter how much we wish it. However, this does not mean we can never experience a great adaptation of the books we enjoy.

The first way to enjoy an adaptation that is done well (let’s face it, some are just done poorly) is to go into the viewing of the adaptation with limited or low expectations and with the mindset to not actively compare the movie to the book as much as possible. I know this is asking a lot, especially with the fantasy genre, since there is so much detail and world building involved. However, if you hadn’t read the book or if the movie content was originally written as a movie, you might actually enjoy the movie as it is. The main reason you have problems with it is because of the comparisons and previous love of the book. If you decide to have low expectations, it has the potential of being better than you’d hoped which elevates the enjoyment of the movie. If you go in with high expectations, it is unlikely the movie will be able to meet your standards. The same can be said of making comparisons. The less you try to point out the differences between the two versions, you might enjoy the good points that are brought out in the movie adaptation.

Another way one might enjoy an adaption is when the film is vastly different from the original story. A great example of this is Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Trilogy (even though this isn’t a fantasy). Pretty much all fantasy movie adaptations that I have seen have tried to ‘remake’ the book into a film by following the same plot points with the same details as much as possible. The closest exception I can think of is the adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but those movies still tried to be like the book. The differences came from adding more events from other works related to the same world, not by trying to branch away from the original storyline. With the Bourne Trilogy, the movies took the main characters and story concept, but threw away the overall plot. Instead, they took the concept in a completely different direction that had no relation to the books. This helped me enjoy the movies and the book equally because each one had a unique story to tell. I didn’t spend all my time comparing what should have happened. Instead, I appreciate the great storytelling provided in each medium, and the movie was able to tell a story that worked better for being on screen. This can be much harder for the fantasy genre since the storyline and the world are both much more complex. I understand completely why most fantasy movies do not try this method, but I think it would be very interesting to see if an adaptation would be more enjoyable if they only took a world, concept, and the main characters of a story, and tried to do their own plotline. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t. But, it would help us readers to differentiate between the movie and the book and, if done well, enjoy each for being its own thing.

I also feel that adaptions and their success depend on what book is being adapted and how the reader feels about the original work. For example, the only movie set that I believe is absolutely better than the books (my personal preference only, of course) is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I’m sure some of you are disagreeing with me right now, but that is the point I’m trying to make. I love the story hands down. However, I did not connect to Tolkien’s writing style at all. I have a couple of authors that I have read where I like their stories, but their writing style is just not for me. For Tolkien, I find his trilogy to be long and drawn out and boring with so much time detailing traveling that we take forever to get to any action or meaningful events. It felt like I was having to push my way forward to get anywhere. The movies, on the other hand, cut out all the parts I felt I needed to push through and focuses more on the actual main storyline. The layout of the story, the acting, and the depth are all excellent which is also telling of how great the crew that made the movies was. So, this story being adapted and minorly changed to fit being a film over a book worked well for me because it took out the parts of the book I didn’t like. For me, the medium fit the story better. I’m sure there are other movie adaptations that do this for readers who like the concept of a story, but didn’t like the way the book went about telling it. If you have come across a book like that for you, it’s possible that the movie adaptation will be more enjoyable for you.

And last, but not least, the industry has started moving away from adapting books into film and more towards creating a TV series. Many fantasy novels are being made into a series instead of just one movie. This is an excellent move in my opinion. The series still has to be made with good quality, but books and TV series are much more similar in length than books and movies are. A TV series can spend much more time dedicated to world building, character building, and storyline than a movie can. This allows the adaptation to match the depth and pacing we get from the original medium. One of the biggest hits of a book series that has been made into a TV series is George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones). Though it isn’t perfect, many people who have read the books have also enjoyed the TV series. Some other books that have made it to TV are: Cassandra Claire’s The Mortal Instruments, Terry Brooks’s Sword of Shannara Trilogy, Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth, and Andrezi Sapkowski’s The Withcher. As TV has become more popular than movies with streaming services allowing viewers to ‘binge watch’, more books are being drawn into that visual form over movies. I think this will help us, as readers, to enjoy the adaptations now that there is more dedicated time to develop the story on screen.

Now, of course there are also adaptions that are done poorly and no matter what you do, you will be disappointed. A movie or TV show can never really be the same as the book. As long as you keep that in mind, you can enjoy the adaption for what it is and appreciate it as a way of reexperiencing the story without the same amount of time it takes to read the book.