It’s always fun to watch a movie adaptation of a book you’ve read before and compare it to what you had imagined while originally reading. Sometimes, a movie elevates what I imagined, but not all books need a movie adaptation.
A well-done adaptation can bring your vivid imagination to life. Seeing the Harry Potter series on screen was even more magical than I had pictured. The adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was also spectacular and made me view that story in a different light.
My frustration is that Hollywood has missed the mark with many adaptations recently. Either they change the source material too much to fit the movie’s length, or the actors don’t do the story justice and strip the film of its nuance.
Take the movie “It Ends With Us,” starring Blake Lively, and what a fiasco it turned into. Now, I didn’t even like that book to begin with, so I didn’t expect the movie to be exceptional either.
Fans of the “Percy Jackson” series can relate to this as multiple attempts to turn the books into films or shows have failed.
Also, let’s just talk about Hollywood’s casting in general. Hollywood has a pattern of picking 30-year-olds to play high schoolers30-year-olds to play high schoolers, whitewashing characters, or making choices that go against the author’s original vision.
There is also a fundamental difference between books and movies. Books allow for introspection, knowing the characters’ thoughts and inner conflicts as they unfold. In movies, however, unless you have a narrator at all times or the actor is really good at portraying the character’s inner thoughts, you’re not going to see any of that in a film. Some things just don’t translate well to the screen.
At the end of the day, some book-to-movie adaptations will be masterpieces, but a lot will fail. As a huge book lover, I will always be skeptical, but I won’t stop watching these types of films. Movies like Dune, Pride and Prejudice, and Harry Potter prove to me that when done with careful consideration, movies can be just as powerful as the literature that inspired them.
