# Justifying adaptions



## Thadlerian (Nov 21, 2005)

I believe myself to be in a relatively unique position when I think that the movie adaptions of both the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter were unsuccessful and uncalled for. This isn't a thread about those specific movies, but about adapting novels in general for the silver screen.

The big question here is, see: _Why would someone film a novel?_
I'm looking for an answer in the most fundamental meaning of the question. Simply _why_.
Ignore my introduction. This is not a critical question. It's a curious question. An I-would-like-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-this question.

What reasons do people have for making movies out of books? Of course, there is the commercial reason (box office incomes, action dolls, cutlery, video games, etc.). So to clarify even better:
_What kinds of justifications_ are there to adapt novels? 

As I see it, novels and movies are two completely different species of storytelling. Novels (most of them, at least) tend to tell stories through direct access to the thoughts and feelings of the characters. Movies through their words and actions. Either is capable of using their specific means to tell magnificent stories, but rather unfit for utilizing the means of the other. (Of course, movies may convey the characters' thoughts and emotions, in fact they usually do, but it is always second-hand information; delivered thorugh body language or dialogue.)

When discussing aforementioned movies, I'm often asked: "Then what would you have done to make it better?" I'm always tempted to reply that I would have refrained from making it in the first place. 

But I can't do that. There simply seems to exist some sort of metaphysical principle or universal consensus, a synthesis: Good/popular novels _must_ be made into movies. So my antithesis goes like this: _Why?_

Surely you may go watch this or that movie, and think it's good, and be glad you did. But what about brand new bestseller books, that no-one have been known to grab the rights for yet? Do you think "I hope someone will make a movie out of this."? Do you feel that it would be called for? That telling the story again in another format would improve it (surely you wouldn't want an adaption if you knew it would be inferior to the book)? Do you wish to see the characters interpreted by actors? To recieve an "official" perception of them and the locations?

I would be grateful to have some of your thoughts on this.


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## Shoegaze99 (Nov 22, 2005)

I find this question entirely baffling. The great stories of every age have been told in all the popular art forms of the time, from text to song to painting to stage to sculpture, retold again and again from generation to generation, in wildly varying forms and images. And now the great stories, no matter their place of origin, are retold in film, too. We have seen, and will continue to see, the same stories retold again and again throughout mankind's history, told in varying ways, in varying forms and by varying people. And why not? No two tellings of The Illiad are ever alike, whether through text or in paintings or on film; each has their own joys, aspects that make them unique work of art tied into a tale we all know so well.

This is what we do. As humans. It's what we have _always_ done. Now that film is here, we do it with cinema, too.

Why _not_ reinterpret a great story on film? If a director or screenwriter sees the potential for a great or interesting or entertaining film in a novel, what compelling reason (aside from avoiding the scorn anal retentive and overprotective fans) is there to avoid doing what man has done for as long as man has been telling stories? If there is another great, or even merely “good”, work of art to be mined from a novel, great. This has _always_ happened. Must a novel be some untouchable, unassailable thing not fit to be touched by a lowly filmmaker or some other unwashed person?

Respectfully, the very idea that one would have to “justify” adapting a novel to film beyond the mere purpose of wanting to tell a great story in a different medium simply absurd to me. “I'd like to tell this story on film” is justification enough.

I don't much _hope_ that my favorite books make it to film, nor do I wish against it. If they do, fine. In that case, I simply hope that the final product is worthwhile (whether slavishly in keeping with the original source or not).


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## Thadlerian (Nov 22, 2005)

Shoegaze99 said:
			
		

> I find this question entirely baffling. The great stories of every age have been told in all the popular art forms of the time, from text to song to painting to stage to sculpture, retold again and again from generation to generation, in wildly varying forms and images. And now the great stories, no matter their place of origin, are retold in film, too. We have seen, and will continue to see, the same stories retold again and again throughout mankind's history, told in varying ways, in varying forms and by varying people. And why not? No two tellings of The Illiad are ever alike, whether through text or in paintings or on film; each has their own joys, aspects that make them unique work of art tied into a tale we all know so well.
> 
> This is what we do. As humans. It's what we have _always_ done. Now that film is here, we do it with cinema, too.


You're bringing forth some good points that I have to admit I had not considered. But it is not very helpful as an explanation of the matter in question. It just delays the answer, seeks to immunize the matter from rational analysis by assigning it to some sort of subconscious current. I think this is a matter of cultural activity at too high a level to be explained simply with "It's human nature."

What I mean by that, is that there have always been motivating factors involved in transfering stories between different formats. And that these factors have been specific to time, culture, language, means of communication, etc., and therefore cannot be applied universally.

Example: A tale with a moral statement being translated into a song. This doesn't happen because some bard decides "I wonder what this story would be like with music", but rather because with rythm and tune the story, and thus the message, is easier memorized. Thus the song is remembered when the original story is long forgotten.

Or painting or sculpting various scenes from a legend. There might have been numerous rational motivations behind that. In a temple, for instance, a row of statues or fresces would communicate the main events and statements in key mythological legends to a large body of people moving past.

Could such motivations be applied to the modern adaptions of novels into movies? Some, perhaps, others not. But I think that, on a whole, you cannot unconditionally compare book->movie transitions of today with other formats from the past. But that is not my point in this thread.  I'm just seeking out the motivations people may have for doing it, whether there are practical goals behind or not.

I don't believe in explanations that boil their respective matters down to "human nature" and various sorts of cultural "instinct". I'm not in denial of unexplainable elements in the individual and collective minds, but I dislike them being used to block further analysis of a matter.



> Why _not_ reinterpret a great story on film? If a director or screenwriter sees the potential for a great or interesting or entertaining film in a novel, what compelling reason is there to avoid doing what man has done for as long as man has been telling stories?


My aforementioned point that novels and films often work on completely different levels, for instance. The result of trying to adapt a story that works inside an individual, might be a completely different story than the original. An example of this is Blade Runner. This film was originally based upon Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but Ridley Scott chose to alter the title to make clear that the story told in his film was, despite of a rather similar basis, in the end fundamentally different from Dick's original story. Other writers haven't been that lucky, for example Ursula Le Guin with the Earthsea miniseries. The result is that people watching the miniseries without having read any of her books, thinking "so this is what those "Earthsea" books are about", may be discouraged from reading them by the ridiculously simplistic level of the adaption.



> If there is another great, or even merely “good”, work of art to be mined from a novel, great.


Your use of the word "mined" is interesting here, as it emphasises my other reason for not adapting a book: The moral issue of commercialization. You wrote "mined", a term that relates thematically to "extracted", "manufactured" or "collected", which could each have been used as metaphors with the same results. Following the adaption of blockbuster books nowadays, come waves of marketing and merchandise. These in themselves open for a lot of issues (advertisment pressure upon children, etc.) (which will from now on, positively or negatively, be inevitably connected to the original story), but how much do they do for the retelling of the story? To put my point straightforward: When Warner are allowed to cash in on selling Harry Potter licences to toy corporations like LEGO, they better have an excuse that's good enough to weight out the negative issues they are causing.

But again; this is not a thread about me telling you why novels should _not_ be adapted. Those last paragraphs were just an answer to those questions. What _I'm_ asking is for other posters to share their opinions on whether adaptions may enhance the story of a novel, and whether they anticipate movie adaptions of books that they like.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Nov 22, 2005)

I often wish I could see a beloved book "brought to life" in the slightly more concrete sense of a movie.  Usually when it happens I'm disappointed, but that's another story.  If it's a "good" adaptation, it gives me a greater appreciation for certain aspects of the story that I hadn't thought about before (much like reading literary criticism).  Also, since I have a weakness for period pieces, seeing something made into a movie gives me a chance to look at beautiful costumes and sets and landscapes.

That, of course, comes from the perspective of the person viewing the result, not creating it.  For those involved in making the movie or the painting or the statue, I'm afraid that I have to fall back on what Shoegaze said:  Sometimes it isn't about making a story easier to memorize or decorating a temple (these are more likely to be the motives of the people commissioning the work), sometimes it's just an artistic impulse that is part of human nature, and just as difficult to explain as it is to rationalize.

However, returning to my prospective viewers perspective (try saying that nine times fast): sometimes I have to see a movie adaptation twice in order to appreciate the new interpretation.  The first time is to come to terms with the changes and absorb the shock of them, and the second to simply enjoy the movie on its own terms.

I just saw the new "Pride and Prejudice" last week, so this is actually a topic much on my mind.  I was disappointed in that one, but except for two scenes that I felt were grossly misinterpreted, it wasn't at all a case of the movie being bad as it was of not being as good as I hoped.  The costumes and the scenery were lovely, though, and worth the price of admission so far as I was concerned, if not worthy of all my anticipation before the fact.

I find that I'm willing to be more forgiving when a story has never been successfully adapted before, being willing to consider that the changes might indeed be necessary for dramatic purposes.  But when a faithful adaptation already exists (or the story has been faithfully adapted many times over the years) and a new one comes along that is less faithful, then I become very annoyed, because the "for dramatic purposes" excuse no longer exists.  A TV adaptation of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" a few years ago is a good (or perhaps I should say bad) example of this.  The changes were as unnecessary as they were distracting.

But there is one thing about movie adaptations that I find particularly frustrating, and that is that the very longest books are the ones most likely to be dramatized, when in fact they are the ones most likely to suffer in the process (because of all that has to be cut out).  Clearly short novels work much better as movies, but they are largely ignored.


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## Thadlerian (Nov 22, 2005)

Kelpie said:
			
		

> I often wish I could see a beloved book "brought to life" in the slightly more concrete sense of a movie.  Usually when it happens I'm disappointed, but that's another story.  If it's a "good" adaptation, it gives me a greater appreciation for certain aspects of the story that I hadn't thought about before (much like reading literary criticism).  Also, since I have a weakness for period pieces, seeing something made into a movie gives me a chance to look at beautiful costumes and sets and landscapes.


Sounds like valid reasons (and, as usual, ones I hadn't imagined beforehand).



> That, of course, comes from the perspective of the person viewing the result, not creating it.  For those involved in making the movie or the painting or the statue, I'm afraid that I have to fall back on what Shoegaze said:  Sometimes it isn't about making a story easier to memorize or decorating a temple (these are more likely to be the motives of the people commissioning the work), sometimes it's just an artistic impulse that is part of human nature, and just as difficult to explain as it is to rationalize.


I think that "sometimes" part is important to emphasize. Although the artist would mostly do what they were paid to do, there is a certain validity to your point (especially as I can recall feeling such urges myself). What I forgot to point out in my previous post was that this artistic impulse can't be seen as the sole (or perhaps even main) motivating factor behind format transitions.

As for movies, I think the artistic reason can't stand alone as the only factor. A movie is simply too great a project; there is funding, actor recruitment, set building and all sorts of challenges to be overcome. A director would need more than artistic whim unless they were very rich (and enthusiastic), or crafty, inventive and influential enough to do it.

But then again, I've been exam-reading scientific history for two whole days and counting, so it may be that my current obsession with reason, rationality and predictability is only a temporary affliction.


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## Culhwch (Nov 23, 2005)

Thadlerian said:
			
		

> My aforementioned point that novels and films often work on completely different levels, for instance.


 
Taken alone and without having read your previous posts, I could have mistaken this as an argument _for_ filming adaptations. It's almost exactly how I would justify making a film from a novel. I'm pretty much in total agreement with Shoegaze, I must say. And also with Kelpie.

I like to watch an adaptation because I can _see_ it. I'm a visual person. I love reading, and I love novels, and given the choice of films or books I'll take books every day of the week. But I do love films, and I love having the opportunity to see the worlds that previously only existed in my mind brought to life by a (hopefully) like-minded individual. Often I'm dissappointed. Comes with the territory. Every now and then I'm amazed. LotR did it for me. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mystic River. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head...

I will read a novel and think, 'Wow, this would make such a great film.' Quickly followed by, 'If it had the right people behind it.' I don't see that a film version can detract from a novel. I treat it as a seperate entity entirely. If it sucks, well, the novel will always be great.

I feel that you are looking at this argument from the perspective of someone who reads a lot of novels, and thus will likely have read a book that a film is based upon. You have to remember that not everyone reads, and making a film adaptation is a way of bringing a great story to a new audience - an audience who may have missed out otherwise. So many people I know have never read LotR, and yet fell in love with the story and the characters through the films (I assume here you'll argue that they're not really the same, but I don't really care). They also inspire people to go out and try something that might not otherwise have known about.

I don't know. My thoughts are a bit of a jumble at the moment. Hope at least some of that was coherent. In any case, I don't think book-to-film adaptations are the worrying thing, it's those dreadful film 'novel'isations that are really scary...


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Nov 23, 2005)

While Shoegaze raises good points, the sad fact is that most movie adaptations are usually conceived something like this: 'Hmmm...this book sold well/this legend is still being told 1,000s of years later/this comic still has large number of fans, it's a *PROVEN COMMODITY *let's jump onto it and make assured moolah!'

Not that the profit motive isn't an important part of the entertainment business, but cinematic adaptations are too often an attempt to cash in on an established commodity without any real feeling for the source material. I guess we should just be glad when the occasional adaptation, like the Contact movie or the Christopher Reeves Superman movies (the first 2, anyway) fails to egest all over the original, and even adds something to it in some ways.


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## ravenus (Nov 23, 2005)

knivesout said:
			
		

> the occasional adaptation, like the Contact movie or the Christopher Reeves Superman movies (the first 2, anyway) fails to egest all over the original, and even adds something to it in some ways.


Oh ya, Contact the movie >>> Contact the book, since the script doesn't ascribe to Sagan's "scientists are the most uber-cool people in this world" ideology and the paring down of the expedition to a one-person mission with Ellie much better brought out the central idea of faith and rationality.

Chris Reeve Superman r0xx0rz...although they should be referred to as the Richard Donner films because Donner and his old pal Tom Mankewicz were responsible for ripping through the original Puzo script and throwing out all the campy baggage that it carried.

Check out Richard Scheib's review for some of the specifics on this here...or see the making of features on my Superman DVD when we meet  

They came up with the entire quasi-biblical legend of young Clark going on a journey to the North Pole and spending years there in the Fortress of Solitude and finally emerging as Superman, savior of the world...well, the American end of the world.


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## Shoegaze99 (Nov 23, 2005)

Thadlerian said:
			
		

> But again; this is not a thread about me telling you why novels should _not_ be adapted.


Come now, let’s be honest here: Of course it is. Oh, you dress it up in the guise of seeking to examine why novels are made into film, what drives people to do such a thing, but your very wording – “justifying”, as if such a thing needs to be justified – speaks volumes about the perspective from which you’re speaking. Heck, you spell it out in your very first sentence when you don’t simply say two adaptations didn’t work for you, but that they were “uncalled for.” Uncalled for? Oh my … It’s very clear, not just from that comment but from others in this thread, where you’re coming from. And where you’re coming from is, “X is wrong; justify X to me.” Let’s at least be honest about that.

So with that out of the way, I’ll delve into your response in a little more detail.


> I think that, on a whole, you cannot unconditionally compare book->movie transitions of today with other formats from the past. But that is not my point in this thread.  I'm just seeking out the motivations people may have for doing it, whether there are practical goals behind or not.
> 
> I don't believe in explanations that boil their respective matters down to "human nature" and various sorts of cultural "instinct". I'm not in denial of unexplainable elements in the individual and collective minds, but I dislike them being used to block further analysis of a matter.


Okay.

Have a nice day.


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## Alysheba (Nov 23, 2005)

Why? Bottom line money. However, we have seen a big trend in Hollywood lately and those are biographies of people who are not dead yet and novels remade into film. The main reason though is that it gets the "story" to a broader audience than leaving it in paper form. Welcome to the instant world we live in. Who wants to read these days? Reading is work. It makes you think. As for a film, you can sit and gorge yourself on popcorn and stare in a coma like state at a big screen while your brain sucks in the information. Then tada! Your pretty much on your way. Okay, the story may not be as accurate as it should be but hey, at least you got the short interpretation of it. Right? 

I do like adaptations, but I like to try and read the story first. However, with LOTR I did not read it before hand. However like a lot of people it made me want to read the novels Tolkien wrote and so I did before the first one hit video. Now, when I know a movie was once a novel I will try and read it before the theatrical version. Mostly because I like to get the whole story. Sometimes the adaptations do justice, other times they really go awry.


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## Thadlerian (Nov 23, 2005)

Shoegaze99 said:
			
		

> It’s very clear, not just from that comment but from others in this thread, where you’re coming from. And where you’re coming from is, “X is wrong; justify X to me.” Let’s at least be honest about that.


No. That would be implying that I am hostile to the very concept of adaptions, which I am not. I am pleased with numerous adaptions of books that I had read beforehand, like Watership Down, Animal Farm, Bakshi's LOTR and the first part of Jackson's trilogy (but not the others, and thus not the trilogy as a whole). And if you look in the Ursula Le Guin forum, you can see me expressing explicit anticipation that Hayao Miyazaki will adapt one of her books.

However, I am disgruntled with what seems to be the general tendencies of recent adaptions; dumbing down intelligent parts of a story, and the inconsistent, whimsical (random?) procedure for dropping/retaining original content.

And when Harry Potter was adapted, it seemed to be happening on automatic, inevitably, as if the very idea of doing otherwise (or even putting it off for a few years, thinking it over) was inconceivable. Like some sort of natural law had come into play. That is part of the reason I'm looking for motivations other than the obvious commercial one.


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## ravenus (Nov 24, 2005)

> And when Harry Potter was adapted, it seemed to be happening on automatic, inevitably, as if the very idea of doing otherwise (or even putting it off for a few years, thinking it over) was inconceivable. Like some sort of natural law had come into play. That is part of the reason I'm looking for motivations other than the obvious commercial one.


What are you saying? AFAIK the Potter book-movie relationship is one of the most obvious examples of commercial gain being the driving factor.

Book successful among kids = kids draw whole families into cinema halls + ensure DVD sales and merchandising = ergo! Call that Rowling ASAP and buy up her stuff!


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## Foxbat (Nov 26, 2005)

> The big question here is, see: _Why would someone film a novel?_


 
If Lord Of The Rings had only sold something like 100 copies, would anybody want to make it into a movie? I don't think so. It's all about money. The only justification a studio needs is a good profit projection.


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## Pyan (Nov 29, 2005)

Foxbat said:
			
		

> If Lord Of The Rings had only sold something like 100 copies, would anybody want to make it into a movie? I don't think so. It's all about money. The only justification a studio needs is a good profit projection.


 
But an original film script must have been read by less than 100 people, but original films still get made. If strong book sales had been the only reason for making a movie, we would never had had many movies, including "Star Wars" (IV)


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## Teresa Edgerton (Nov 29, 2005)

The motive of the producer/director who first gets the idea to do a film, pursues the rights, and finally gets a studio to back it may be wildly different from that of the studio itself -- and different for that same person at the end than it was at the beginning.

Which is to say, that there are surely other factors at work in addition to mere greed, although the closer a movie gets to actually being made the more mercenary motives come into play.


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## Foxbat (Nov 30, 2005)

> But an original film script must have been read by less than 100 people, but original films still get made. If strong book sales had been the only reason for making a movie, we would never had had many movies, including "Star Wars" (IV)


 
Yes, but in today's world an original script is very often passed between scriptwriters and constantly rehashed until the people in control are happy with it (not necessarily for artistic reasons as the folk in control are usually the folk with the money - you only have to look at some of the big budget trash that has hit our screens in recent years to see the effect it has). As for Star Wars IV, there are always exceptions to the rules.

Of course, there are more factors than greed involved but it has become much more significant in recent years. Let's face it, who would make a movie based on Doom? And yet it is happening (what's the script to that??? kill, turn, pick up big gun, kill again!!) It wouldn't be the case unless it was hoped that it would make big bucks.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 30, 2005)

Making a film, any film, costs real money. To persuade backers to give you this money, you have to convince them that either the film is of such great moral or artistic value that their name on the credits will be advertising worth the cash they put in (which holds for government subventions, by the way) or that they are going to get more money back than they put in. Television rights, gaming and cuddly toys help, but the important is bums on seats in cinemas- and all the rest follows from that, anyway. Which is why such a large percentage of the budget is in advertising. It's also why stars can get such ridiculous, over the top payments- and why recognition factors at all levels are so critical.

Associating the film with an author everyone has heard of, a book the critics tell you you're supposed to have read triggers these recognition factors- and if the film shows some resemblence to the original book, so much the better. What is more, it might even give you some ideas of what to make a film about, if you're one of the producers desperate to make a film, rather than one desperate to film something. (more true of television than cinema, but going for years without producing anything is not often a good career move) 
But it's not cinema that works within these limitations- the music industry and even book publishing suffer the same pressures- but you can publish, print and distribute a book for the price of five minutes of film (yes, false comparison- the book equivalent of a Hollywood film gets a big advertising budget) I'ts possible to produce your own CD, sell it and finish in the black- totally unthinkable in large screen cinema.
So. criticise cinema for its concentration on money- if you like cinema, then that money has to come from somewhere (and if a tiny little bit of it comes to me, it's not that that launched this tirade) And, if a film can't squeeze the entirety of a novel into two hours or so (not even I can read a novel in two hours- why should I be able to absorb all the information through another medium) a movie can be a great experience in itself.
Or not.


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## Foxbat (Nov 30, 2005)

I don't see  the aspect of money so much as a criticism - and if that's how my point has come across then I need to tidy up my ideas.  I see the money aspect more of a nod at reality. I agree that adaptations of novels (or whatever) are good ways of finding a market but the fact is that bums on seats is not nowadays the be all and end all. 

Let me give an example: the first Batman movie sold more in merchandising than on tickets. There are many others like this. A film can be a way to dip into other forms of revenue - and that's why I think money has become more of a factor in choosing which film to make. 

The movie adaptation  with the biggest merchandising potential is (in my opinion) most likely to get made. As long as it's a good movie, I don't particularly mind that that is the case, but we shouldn't close our eyes to the fact  that money is ultimately behind it all.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Nov 30, 2005)

Movies (mostly sequels to animated blockbusters, I believe) are also being made for the straight-to-video market these days.


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## Alysheba (Nov 30, 2005)

Kelpie said:
			
		

> Movies (mostly sequels to animated blockbusters, I believe) are also being made for the straight-to-video market these days.


 
**cough**cough**Disney**cough**cough**


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