Important Elements for a Film Adaptation
For my mom’s birthday last week, she wanted to rewatch the first Twilight movie. It was a fun watch as always, and it made me want to reread the books, as always. However, it did make me question why I feel this adaptation is a good one versus others that I think are horrible. In fact, a lot of movies and television shows are adaptations of books. So, it made me ask what are the important elements for an adaptation to be good?
Personally, I feel that I have evolved in my adaptation expectations over the years. I no longer expect or necessarily want a complete line by line transference of the book into a film form. Of course, that doesn’t mean I am never disappointed when certain scenes that I love are changed or left out. It merely means that I understand that film is a different medium and cannot provide the same level of detail as a book or spend the same amount of time on details that are not necessary for the telling of the story. The only way it would be possible to have the time to fit in every detail would be with a very long movie like the Lord of the Rings movies or to have it segmented out into a TV show. In fact, many books are now being adapted into TV shows instead of movies since books are much more equivalent to a show than to a movie. However, even with the added timing, film is not the same medium as a book and certain details do not always translate well in a visual entertainment, so the hope of it being exact is never going to make the viewer happy.
Instead, I have come to judge film adaptations much more on three main elements, capturing the main storyline (if it is trying to adapt the events of the book), the story being retold well, and how well it captures the feel of the book and characters,
Now, most adaptations are going for a direct storyline translation from the book to the screen. There are a limited number of films or television series that base their adaption on a character or a concept of a book, so if the goal of the film or series is to make a replica of the book’s story, I will be judging the adaptation on covering the overall storyline. I understand if some differences need to be made in order to fit the new medium; however, major deviations (especially towards the end of the story) is often detrimental to my enjoyment. There are two main examples that come to mind where the ending completely ruined the movie for me. Both of these movies, from my understanding, changed the ending because they did not want to adapt all of the books, so they made up a strange new ending that closed the story after the first film. The movies I am referring to are Inkheart (2008) and Beautiful Creatures (2013). Both of these movies took a very unfortunate off base ending that they hoped would wrap-up the story instead of keeping it open for adapting the other books.
Doing this, will generally ruin the movie for me. I haven’t found any movies or series that I like that start as a direct copy of the original story and then go on a crazy major change at the end. I would much rather have the movie end with an open ending, than deviate at the last minute to close it all up. There is a reason the author wrote multiple books. It takes a lot more than twenty minutes to wrap up all the events that were laid out throughout the first hour and a half especially when you see the author wrote two or more books following the first one in order to finish the story.
Along with this, the second item that is important for me in an adaptation is for the story to be retold well. Just because the movie copies the events of a book, that doesn’t mean it does it well for the medium it is being retold in. This can be a mixture of a lot of things. Acting, script writing, and directing can all effect how well the scenes go and how natural or sophisticated it is on screen. For example, Vampire Academy (2014) follows the novel’s events very closely, but the way they put it together didn’t turn out as a good movie. Even if the movie was not an adaptation of a book series that I highly enjoy, I don’t think I would have liked it much better. The acting wasn’t the highest quality and the way they wrote the main character, Rose’s, snarky personality. It came off more as trying to be humorous which didn’t work.
Even though a film or TV series has a baseline to work with, production quality and the rewriting still needs to be at a high standard. This is true of any movie, adaptation or not. Having a prior fan base will not save a title that is of poor quality and will likely disappoint the fans it was originally marketed to attract.
And finally, it is important for the adaptation to carry the same overall feeling of the story and characters. This is very important for me if the movie is recreating the original story. In the rare case that the adaptation is more based on an idea or a character from the book, this might not always be as important to me. Now, if the book that is being adapted is light and fun, I am going to want and expect the movie to be light and fun. If the book is a more serious dark story, then I would expect a more serious and darker movie. It would be hard for me to enjoy an overly dark and serious Twilight adaption or a comedic and light Game of Thrones. This also applies to characters. In fact, though I find the Harry Potter movies to be fun as a whole, I have always had a major problem with how they changed Dumbledore’s personality when they had to change actors. For me, it takes some of the enjoyment of them. I understand that they were trying to navigate the change of actors as best they could, but this does not excuse them from making the character into a very different kind of person. For me, even if some of the events are different or they have to adjust things to make it work as a film, I can still highly enjoy it if I feel that the events and characters still fit in with how they were portrayed in the original novels.
Not every movie or TV show adaption captures everything perfectly. Even if there are some of these aspects done more poorly, I can still enjoy it as long as they are at least decent. I do find that, in general, TV series do a better job capturing a novel. They have more time to develop characters and the storyline, and the pacing of a series matches closely to that of a novel.
What are the important aspects of a film adaptation for you? I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings of what I have mentioned and to hear your thoughts on what you feel is necessary when a book is brought to the screen. Please make sure to comment below! If you want to see my thoughts on ways to help you more enjoy adaptations, click here.
