Is the book always better?
Can you ever adapt something fully?
Why are people so obsessed with adaptations?
Why are video game movies always so bad?
All these questions and more will be answered in this post on adaptations where I will be laying out how to do it well, and how to do it not so well.
I will primarily talk about the book-to-movie adaptations since those are the most common and also the ones I have the most experience with.
Cinema and literature are very different from each other, while they both seek to tell stories and both go about it in different ways. It should be mentioned that when I say reading I don’t mean audiobooks, not that there’s anything wrong with them, but for the sake of keeping it as simple as possible, I will not be referring to them, since I feel they make for a slightly different experience than traditional reading.
What movies do better
Movies can convey a lot and they can do it a lot more effectively. If you imagen a book describing the environment like the interior of a room or a luscious landscape, a movie can convey this by simply showing it taking seconds to show what in a book would be paragraphs of texts.
A skilled actor can in the same way convey a lot of different emotions with a simple facial expression. In a book, it would take time to write out how all the people look at any given time and situation. This also works the other way around, a terrible performance can take you right out of the film.
If a film is good it can use clever scene transitions and good cinematography to enhance the experience. You can also play around more with a frame, moving actors in the background and creating movement and excitement.
Movies can also use color in different ways. Personally, I really like when movies use colors in different and smart ways. I even did a breakdown on the movie Tau where I looked at how that particular movie used colors to great effect.
By far the biggest advantage films have over books is the music. Music can enhance a scene or film. You probably have your favorite movie scores or soundtracks in the back of your head. My personal favorite is Howard Shore’s “The Lord of the Rings” where the music makes the world come alive in a whole different way.
What books do better
Books are more of an active activity where you have to engage with the text. You can easily look at your phone for a minute or two while watching a film without missing much, but when you read the experience is such that if you stop the reading stops as well, making for more of a commitment since you have to focus on what is in front of you. This can be a good or bad thing depending on who you are.
Books also have a good way of stimulating your imagination, you have to imagen what the characters look like, and what the setting looks like. You have to imagen pretty much everything about the story. There might be descriptions, but those are simply components that you have to put together and visualize for yourself.
A book is not restricted by things like budget or special effects. If you want a dragon in your book, fine, not a problem
A movie with bad effects can easily pull you out of the experience. Special effects are one of the reasons movies look old, whereas books are the same, they might read differently compared to contemporary literature. We still read the works of Shakespear today, will future generations watch the movies of this era? probably not.
It is worth mentioning that cinema is a relatively new form of art, at least compared to books. So making statements on the future of films is not possible.
Is the book always better?
The answer is of course no. Sometimes the movie is better than the book, I would say the book is better 80-90% of the time, with very few exceptions.
I will say, if I have seen the movie first I will be more forgiving than the other way around. Most of the time the movie feels like a watered-down version of the book trying desperately to cash in on an already established franchise.
It is important to know what to adapt and what NOT to adapt. An example could be the big monsters/squid things at the end of watchmen. It was definitely a good idea not to include them.
Adaptations I like
To be a good adaptation you have to take liberties and do something different than the book. I like it when they use the story of the book as more of a blueprint instead of a one-to-one adaptation.
Here is a comprehensible list of movies I feel are better than the book for whatever reason.
List:
Blade Runner
Very different from the original book. Both are what I consider Cyberpunk classics, it all comes down to personal preference since both are so different. Cyberpunk is a very visual subgenre and thus it lends itself great to cinema.
Jaws
The movie is a classic creating the blockbuster we know today. Having the shark be unseen throughout the film only enhances the suspense since you never know when the shark will attack. The book is horrible and full of unlikeable characters not hard to top at all.
Psycho
The film is just better, perfectly directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with suspenseful music and S-tier performances, especially from Anthony Perkins. The book is forgettable and not nearly as good.
Stand by me
Stephen King wrote a good short story here. However, it all comes together better in this Rob Reiner classic where the relationships between the boys carry this film as it does in the book. I still find myself thinking of the ending scene, in the book that scene doesn’t hit as hard. A fine book, but a great film.
2001 a space odyssey
Arthur C Clark is a LEGEND within sci-fi. Like Stand by me, the book is okay at best, but the film is one of the most iconic films of all time! Period. Directed masterfully by the GOAT Stanley Kubrick and the film is definitely better than the book.
Apocalypse now
Just like Blade Runner, the two titles in question here are both very different from each other. I personally love the descent into madness Apocalypse now presents. The book was a little underwhelming for me.
Shawshank Redemption
Mr. King is back with Shawshank Redemption! and the short story is not good. I do not like it, I thought it was a pale imitation of the film (I know the book came out first). The film just works on almost every level whereas the novella is just another King story, if it weren’t for the film no one would talk about the book.
Video Game adaptations
The reason Hollywood adapts so many books is that they already have a fanbase. It is therefore not as much of a financial risk since they know that if they play their cards right the hardcore fans will go see it.
This is also the reason why they have come for our precious Video Games. You might have seen an uptick in video game movies, the reason might be because Video games have taken over reading as the most popular pastime.
Video Game adaptations should be an easy sell right? I mean the story is right there, so why is it that so many video game adaptations fail? Well, let’s take a look.
First of all, video games are different from movies (I know, shocking). Games are made in a way where you are in the driver’s seat, you control where the characters go and what they do. Furthermore, many games today have a multi-layered narrative where your actions matter in terms of what happens in the story and in the game. You can go anywhere in a game, but in a movie, you are constrained to what they show you.
Another reason for the lack of success regarding game adaptations comes in the form of a fundamental lack of understanding from the filmmakers.
Take the resident evil movies. The director Paul W.S Anderson researched the franchise a lot, looking at all kinds of different speed runs for the game. The problem is that those who do speedrunners have mastery over the game and that mastery is not representative of the real game. As a result, the resident evil movies become these hyper-action movies, the problem is that Resident Evil is a horror game at its core. All the tension is removed from the movies because the main characters kill all the zombies with ease.
Another case study could be the new uncharted film with Tom Holland in the leading role. First of all the casting makes no sense at all. Tom Holland and Mark Whalberg are both too young to play the characters of Nate and Sully. Tom Holland might have the fun quips, but he lacks the maturity of Nathan Drake.
Uncharted was always a cinematic experience, focusing on big set pieces, fast dialogue, and epic cutscenes. The game feels cinematic by its nature, so adapting it seems pointless to me.
Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, and Warcraft were all forgettable adaptations that didn’t live up to the franchises they came from.
Unlike the movies better than the book list, there are ZERO videogame movies that I think are good. Some might be enjoyably bad like Mortal Kombat, but the vast majority is total crap and forgettable garbage.
The Whicher is an interesting case study. It was adapted from the fantasy series of the same name by City Projekt red back in 2007, getting more and more popular with every subsequent release in the series. The third installment of the game “The wild hunt” was a giant success.
The reason a game adaptation of a book works well is that you can have a lot of time exploring every plot threat. The witcher 3 clocks in at 103 hours if you do the main and side quest and 172 hours if you are a completionist. This is so much better than having a 2-hour movie.
The only way to make a good adaptation for big fantasy series is by taking time. The Peter Jackson movies were good because he took his time and he cut exactly what needed to be cut.
Harry Potter was a film per book and the last one was cut into 2 parts and yet they still cut a lot, and missed a lot of content. To this day I am still mad they did not include my boy Peeves!
Maybe we should not adopt books into movies anymore, but into games instead.
Why are people obsessed with adaptations?
Seriously? Why do people go on and on about the next Game of thrones? People discuss what would make a creative adaptation and what would make a great adaptation. I don’t think the end all be all is to be adapted. I think a bad adaptation can tarnish the original work, at least in the eye of the public.
Mass Effect is always mentioned as “something that would make a good adaptation”, but I have to disagree completely. The appeals of Mass Effect are
- A) Getting to know your crew
- B) Exploring planets and the citadel
- C) The gunfights
- D) have sex with blue aliens
While D sounds like the most important aspect of what makes Mass Effect, however what truly makes the game great is its characters, getting to know them through Dialog and their special Loyalty missions is what the whole franchise is really about. They might make fighting the reapers a CGI spectacle, but I fear they will miss the beating heart of the series.
They also kind of have to cast the original cast. Can you imagen Garrus sounding different from the games? The whole time I would think, that is not Garrus.
Saying that Mass effect is a story-driven game and thus it becomes easier to adapt is missing the point completely.
Conclusion
Movie adaptations are dying, to adapt something you have to do a tv series or a game.
While I might sound negative toward adaptations and in most cases I am. I do believe there are ways to do it right. By taking liberties and using the original story as more of a blueprint, while using the medium to its fullest potential.
I still don’t think being adapted is the end goal, I don’t see why movies or TV shows are inherently better than the book.
Are adaptations always bad?
90% of the time I would say yes.