Movie adaptations: faith to source material
Discussion
Apologies: I'm sure this has been covered from various angles before.
I've just sat through a Japanese animated film called 'Tales From Earthsea', based on the superb 'Earthsea' series of fantasy novels.
Not only was the film rubbish, but it bore virtually no resemblance to the original novels, save the basis of some of the characters, and a few events, out of context and order.
Now, I'm not going to get all fanboy about this, however:
I was sat there afterwards trying to think of a single film of a successful book/TV series/comic that had taken huge liberties with the source material, and had been either creatively or commercially successful, and I couldn't think of one.
Examples:
- The Earthsea thing I just watched.
- Judge Dredd. Great comic series, lame film.
Equally, movie remakes with hugely reimagined plots often fail:
Example:
- The Italian Job
On the other hand, I can think of a number of adaptations where the film is relatively faithful to its source that have been very successful.
Example:
- Lord of the Rings
So my point is, if you were a scriptwriter sitting down to write a movie adaptation of something, historical precedent would suggest it would be wise to follow the source material faithfully, and yet this rarely happens.
Discuss please, with examples.
I've just sat through a Japanese animated film called 'Tales From Earthsea', based on the superb 'Earthsea' series of fantasy novels.
Not only was the film rubbish, but it bore virtually no resemblance to the original novels, save the basis of some of the characters, and a few events, out of context and order.
Now, I'm not going to get all fanboy about this, however:
I was sat there afterwards trying to think of a single film of a successful book/TV series/comic that had taken huge liberties with the source material, and had been either creatively or commercially successful, and I couldn't think of one.
Examples:
- The Earthsea thing I just watched.
- Judge Dredd. Great comic series, lame film.
Equally, movie remakes with hugely reimagined plots often fail:
Example:
- The Italian Job
On the other hand, I can think of a number of adaptations where the film is relatively faithful to its source that have been very successful.
Example:
- Lord of the Rings
So my point is, if you were a scriptwriter sitting down to write a movie adaptation of something, historical precedent would suggest it would be wise to follow the source material faithfully, and yet this rarely happens.
Discuss please, with examples.
Here's one: Yes Man.
The film is wildly different from the book, it's just based on the same premise, however I think it's better for it, because this way it's a first-rate version of the film, rather than a second-rate version of the book.
I also think it matters what way you encounter the story. A book will have a lot of extra detail because it doesn't have to be compressed into 2 hours storytelling. If you see the film first, you get the book and think "oh, here's the story I like, and look, there's a load of extra detail to expand my enjoyment of it!" Rather than reading the book first, watching the film and thinking something's missing.
The film is wildly different from the book, it's just based on the same premise, however I think it's better for it, because this way it's a first-rate version of the film, rather than a second-rate version of the book.
I also think it matters what way you encounter the story. A book will have a lot of extra detail because it doesn't have to be compressed into 2 hours storytelling. If you see the film first, you get the book and think "oh, here's the story I like, and look, there's a load of extra detail to expand my enjoyment of it!" Rather than reading the book first, watching the film and thinking something's missing.
Johnnytheboy said:
My GF suggested stephen King adaptations: as a general rule they have been fairly faithful to the books and so have been relatively successful.
Any comments on this example?
Christine, IT (even with the daft turtle thing at the end), Carrie, Firestarter, The Stand...enjoyed all of them but I wouldn't say they were hugely successful (apart from Carrie, maybe).Any comments on this example?
Shawshank and Stand By Me were adaptations of short stories rather than film versions of the books and did much, much better.
I suspect it might be because he's not very dialog heavy as a writer, so it's quite tricky to write a screenplay.
Edited by Famous Graham on Saturday 18th April 00:46
Johnnytheboy said:
My GF suggested stephen King adaptations: as a general rule they have been fairly faithful to the books and so have been relatively successful.
Any comments on this example?
I'd go against that, actually. The adaptions I have seen have not really been faithful to the book at all, save for the basic events and characters. The endings are often changed too, such as in The Shining, Dreamcatcher and Christine. Any comments on this example?
Johnnytheboy said:
I was sat there afterwards trying to think of a single film of a successful book/TV series/comic that had taken huge liberties with the source material, and had been either creatively or commercially successful, and I couldn't think of one.
Blade Runner. Matches both "taken huge liberties with the source material" and "creatively or commercially successful." It's an excellent film but large parts of the original story are completely absent.Hairspray said:
Johnnytheboy said:
My GF suggested stephen King adaptations: as a general rule they have been fairly faithful to the books and so have been relatively successful.
Any comments on this example?
I'd go against that, actually. The adaptions I have seen have not really been faithful to the book at all, save for the basic events and characters. The endings are often changed too, such as in The Shining, Dreamcatcher and Christine. Any comments on this example?
The Shining is a brilliant film mostly because of the changes made to the book.
Johnnytheboy said:
So my point is, if you were a scriptwriter sitting down to write a movie adaptation of something, historical precedent would suggest it would be wise to follow the source material faithfully, and yet this rarely happens.
Discuss please, with examples.
The answer is I suppose it depends.Discuss please, with examples.
To render a completly faithful movie version of a book might result in a 6 hour film. A good scripwriter will need to know what to leave out, what to shorten, and, given the visual nature of the medium, what to add.
The best book to film conversion i've seen is the Fellowship of the Ring. The changes made in my opinion made the weakest book, the strongest of the film trilogy.
However the same screenwriters made some very bad mistakes with ROTK, which diminish greatly the strongest book.
Except in the case of the Shining, it reduces the role of the caretaker guy to a level where he treks all the way up there and immediately gets killed (even the Simpsons satirised this): my GF assures me his role is much more crucial in the book. It's too long since I read it to be more certain.
My original thought was that if you do a reasonably faithful adaptation of a book/comic/whatever, you guarantee yourself a certain market of fans, who are also likely to act as free marketing for you, whereas if you alienate them, you have the opposite effect.
Obviously in the interests of marketing, you may decide it's worth the sacrifice. I guess what I wanted to discuss was whether empirically this has paid dividends for the makers of such film adaptations. My feeling is that statistically it hasn't.
As for needing to make adjustments to bring something to the screen, I fully understand that, but there's a difference between compression/abridgement and completely rewriting fundamental concepts of the story/character.
Fellowship of the Ring is an example of doing it right. There are changes (having just re-read the book I realised how many): e.g. Arwen's role is greatly enhanced, the whole Tom Bombadil episode is omitted, but the story is basically adhered to. As a result the LOTR fanbase was broadly welcoming to the (very successful) film.
Judge Dredd is a an example of doing it wrong. Huge changes are made to the back-story, Dredd gets an annoying new catchphrase he says about ten times and behaves in ways that 'comic Dredd' never would, seemingly for no purpose. As a result the Dredd fanbase was largely hostile to the (rather unsuccessful) film.
But was this success related to the "source faith"?
I just fail to see why you would want to choose a successful source material then mess with the proven formula. Why not just come up with your own story from scratch? I suspect there's a strong element of creative ego involved.
My original thought was that if you do a reasonably faithful adaptation of a book/comic/whatever, you guarantee yourself a certain market of fans, who are also likely to act as free marketing for you, whereas if you alienate them, you have the opposite effect.
Obviously in the interests of marketing, you may decide it's worth the sacrifice. I guess what I wanted to discuss was whether empirically this has paid dividends for the makers of such film adaptations. My feeling is that statistically it hasn't.
As for needing to make adjustments to bring something to the screen, I fully understand that, but there's a difference between compression/abridgement and completely rewriting fundamental concepts of the story/character.
Fellowship of the Ring is an example of doing it right. There are changes (having just re-read the book I realised how many): e.g. Arwen's role is greatly enhanced, the whole Tom Bombadil episode is omitted, but the story is basically adhered to. As a result the LOTR fanbase was broadly welcoming to the (very successful) film.
Judge Dredd is a an example of doing it wrong. Huge changes are made to the back-story, Dredd gets an annoying new catchphrase he says about ten times and behaves in ways that 'comic Dredd' never would, seemingly for no purpose. As a result the Dredd fanbase was largely hostile to the (rather unsuccessful) film.
But was this success related to the "source faith"?
I just fail to see why you would want to choose a successful source material then mess with the proven formula. Why not just come up with your own story from scratch? I suspect there's a strong element of creative ego involved.
Johnnytheboy said:
But was this success related to the "source faith"?
I'm not sure Dredd is a particularly good example as, not only did it mess with an established character/formula/whatever, it was ALSO a s
t film. It wasn't crap just because they "adjusted" a key character. Miscast, tried to cram too many "fan favourites" in (Hershey, Fargo, ABC Warrior, Rico, Angel Gang yada yada yada...), poor plot (although granted that was enhanced given how ridiculous the scenario was when applied to Dredd), etc etc.The AvPs are an example of cocking up a franchise whilst remaining pretty faithful to the original (comics in this case as well).
Although...in terms of box office success, then yes, it probably will have an effect. Franchise fans are notoriously vocal when it comes to their "baby". So they'll slag anything off that isn't faithful and that'll influence general sales, I suspect.
Edited by Famous Graham on Tuesday 21st April 15:04
Johnnytheboy said:
Except in the case of the Shining, it reduces the role of the caretaker guy to a level where he treks all the way up there and immediately gets killed (even the Simpsons satirised this): my GF assures me his role is much more crucial in the book. It's too long since I read it to be more certain.
Caretaker guy...You mean the Chef surely?
Bond Movies especially with Moore are poor representations of the books - recommend reading them; still it gives Craig a chance to remake them properly as Casino Royale was closer to the book than any of the others, except the torture scene was too short in the film and the baccarat game in the book is more tense than the poker game in the film etc etc.
Read Moonraker for a real period bit of 50's British futurism...
Read Moonraker for a real period bit of 50's British futurism...
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