Why Some Books Fail When They’re Adapted For Film

Insurgent
Source: Gawker Media

I know I’m stating the obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: this is a very controversial issue. It’s probably the most widespread debate in the book world. From the point of view of a fan of a book, some screenwriter’s just gone out and slaughtered our favourite story. And then people who have never even read the book, have gone to the cinema, watched the film and found it amazing.

Yet, the screenwriter has cut out all the bits that we, as book readers, thought made that book amazing. Not to mention the fact that these film watchers who are totally new to the book, haven’t received the knowledge from the book to base their judgments on. Generally, most people who like a lot of books enjoy a particular book or series, or a few books and series, that they are particularly annoyed about being adapted.

From a filmmaker’s point of view, of course, this is all a good thing. If they adapt a book, then they’re not only guaranteed movie fans turning up to watch it, but fans of that particular book. And there is a lot of truth in that. Personally, I only tend to watch a film if it’s based on a book I’ve read. That has a lot to do with the fact that I’d rather read a book than watch a film, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way. We’ve all got our tastes. And of course, when the book world gets mad, well, a lot of us are writers, so we go write about it online, which draws attention to the film. Yes okay, so it receives bad press, but there will always be the people who will go out and watch the bad films, just to see what the fuss is about. Well, it makes them money, doesn’t it?

To be fair, is that a book writer and a scriptwriter have different tools at their disposal as well as different aims. You can’t write fiction where you know what multiple characters are doing simultaneously, yet you can show that on screen. On the other hand, you can’t really get inside a character’s head in a film, unless you have an overriding narrator speaking throughout the film. A good example of this being done well, is in the film of Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden.

There is an narration of Carrie when she is older, telling of her experiences from when she was younger. This is the way it runs in the book, so in that sense, that particular film is very true to the book. I do think this should be done more often, because I think there is a great deal of benefit to being inside a character’s head. On the whole, it makes you care about them more. It makes you identify with them. You are not merely a spectator but a part of their life. But the way of film for the most part, is such that they want to show multiple points of view without really fixating on one character. To a certain extent, it’s understandable that you can’t have all the reflection and contemplation a character might do in a novel in a film. Who wants to sit looking at a character on screen doing very little, just chatting about what they think?

Insurgent screencaps
Source: Divergent Wikia

Even so, it still annoys me when people take a good book and turn it into something it’s not. I don’t want it to be word for word like the book, and I know it can’t be. If you think about it, when you go to see a film, it will last, say, two hours. If you listen to that on audio book, that’s going to be around 10 hours, possibly more. So it obviously has to be condensed, but that shouldn’t change the story that it is trying to tell in a fundamental way. An example of this, and the example that irritates me most, is the film adaptation of Insurgent by Veronica Roth, the second in the Divergent Trilogy.

For those who don’t know, it is a story set in a dystopian Chicago, about a girl called Tris Prior, who finds out she’s Divergent. Fundamentally, the whole story of the trilogy, is about how she deals with that, how she deals with who she is as a person, how she deals with those she loves, how she deals with what is going on in the world around her and how she fights the evils she finds in society. Basically, they took Insurgent and turned it into an action movie. They cut out a lot of fundamental storylines, in fact, they cut out one of the the main conflicts between the two main characters. In addition, they took all the emotion out of it. One of the things that characterises Veronica Roth’s writing is that it is a stream of Tris’s consciousness, to the extent that it is not always grammatically accurate. I know you cannot do that in a film, but that still doesn’t mean that it’s okay to cut out most of the personal conflict and struggle for identity.

There are only two storylines that do this out of the plentiful supply in the book that are left in. I won’t give any specifics, in case anyone’s reading this who hasn’t read the books or watched the films, but the film opens with the emotional storyline at the start of Insurgent which I found was acted out really well. I genuinely think Shailene Woodley makes a very good Tris. She comes across totally distraught about her situation, as Tris is in the book. I know she’s not an old, experienced actress, but if she’s going to get to play key female protagonists like Tris Prior from Divergent and Hazel Grace from The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, then she should be showing off her ability to be emotional. She’s young, she’s fresh, she most likely has ton of energy that can go into these characters, so we should have seen more emotional scenes.

Dystopia is a genre where it’s okay to approach controversial issues and concepts, because, well, it’s dystopia, isn’t it, therefore we are imagining a messed up future! In many ways, there is a limit to how many people want to contemplate these issues. It’s mainly young people, because young people are just breaking the surface of the world and saying, okay so why the hell is this place so messed up, whereas most adults are sort of okay with the world, they may not like it, but they don’t want to go out on a quest to heal the world. But I still think, if you’re going to make a dystopia in to a film, then you should go out and make a dystopia, not turn it into something it’s not.

The wider audience might not want to hear the messages dystopia has to portray, but I actually think it would do them good if they did. Most dystopia already does its job of making itself palatable well enough, it doesn’t need a filmmaker to make it into something it’s not. It’s not like I’m saying make George Orwell into a film, because that’s so preaching, cynical and judgmental, that I almost feel it’s an insult to the genre, but most dystopian authors these days do a good job of making it palatable.

Another book that I think was totally wrecked when it was made into a film, which thankfully, the majority of people agree on, to the extent that it’s almost controversial to like the film, is City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I mean, it was a total disaster. One of the key character traits of Jace, is that he’s hilarious. But they just took out all the jokes and the ones they did leave in weren’t funny. As always, they took out most of the emotional bits. They really rushed the end, which I’m not going to talk about too openly in case anyone hasn’t read the book. For Mortal Instruments readers, they basically don’t do the plot twist at the end of City of Bones very dramatically. They also make a comment, which shouldn’t be in there, because if you listen very carefully, you’ve just had the biggest City of Glass plot twist wrecked for you. Oh and they cut short the falcon story, which as most fans of the series should know adds a lot of emotional depth to the series, particularly later on. So, to say I was pretty annoyed, doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Shadowhunters

Despite the film disaster, they’ve adapted The Mortal Instruments into a TV series called Shadowhunters. I’ve only seen the first episode, which I have to say was definitely a major improvement on the film. I might get round to watching the rest when I’ve the time. I did have high hopes for it, until I started to hear some bad stuff about it, so I’m a bit apprehensive. Guess we will have to see.

I think TV could work very well for the book industry if done in the right way, but most books are made into films. I guess there’s a difference between the book and the TV audiences, because a lot of the people who spend most of their time reading books don’t really watch TV, which is precisely why I haven’t got round to Shadowhunters yet. So maybe it wouldn’t work. Who knows. Either way, I feel like they need to get their act together as far as book adaptations are going.

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