Adaptation

     Many books have turned into major films, this is called and Adaptation and I often hear “OH the book was way better than the movie!” Books are things that take time and imagination, not only to write but to read as well. So of course the book is better because you yourself put your own point of view into the story making it a much engaging piece of work.

     However I have read some amazing books that just do not translate onto the silver screen well at all. A few examples of these books are “The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan and “Carrie” by Stephen King. These reasons are as follows; “The Lightning Thief” is written from the point of view of a 12 year old boy, the boy in the first film is almost seventeen…WOW. They really did an awful job of following the story line to any degree accuracy at all. Annabeth in the books is a blond, in the film she is a brunette, Grover is white in the books and just has a limb and weak legs (no mention of crutches), in the movie he is a black guy with crutches and is a total douche bag “player”. WHAT?!? In the books Grover is so shy and frightened all the time, hes described as having a bad case of acne and the jitters almost all the time. Also they took out several one of the main characters, Dionysus, Clarisse, The Stoll Brothers, The Fates, And Ares (there are even more). Not to mention the thing with the pearls being so wrong. Not only did the screen writers take out a few main characters and events they also completely changed the story line! (I’m not gonna go into even more of a rant here but if you want to see more(not all)of the amazing things that happened in the book that were not included in the movie click here) Honestly though I could not believe how many main characters that are vitally important to the story line were removed for this piece of crap they called a movie.

     Carrie was a good movie and an even better book, the reasons I don’t think it translated very well though to the silver screen are somewhat minor. Considering the time frame in which the movie was produced I understand some of these things not being done, and other things I understand because they just only work for a book. The way “Carrie” is written makes it a challenge to adapt because a lot of the story is exerts from medical books and things like that, things that must be read and not filmed. There are mention of text books and news paper clippings that are thrown into the story every now and then to tell you more about what Carrie might have gone through, things like this are just difficult to explain, let alone turn into a movie. Other things that were different were the ending scene and the description of Carrie’s mother. In the book her mother is fat and in the film she is skinny, it is a small difference but one worth noting. ( BTW I’m talking about the 1976 version of the movie). The ending scene in the book Sue find Carrie and they have a short telepathic link with each other, but in the movie Carrie is stabbed by her mother while the house burns to the ground and she hides in the closet. All of these things were differences that did not have much of an impact on the film, but in general the film was just well done and well directed. At least when they rewrote things they rewrote them well, unlike “The Lightning Thief”. Carrie was a better movie than it was a book, but it was not as bad as “The Lightning Theif”.
   
     I think adaptations can be great if the screen writers follow the story and try not to change the plot too much, and if they do change it, make it small, and make it work well with the rest of the story. For example, “Harry Potter” is excellently adapted for the silver screen. These were just my thought on how adaptions work, but please feel free to comment and let me know what you think, I would love to hear your thoughts.