Wild Wednesday

I am still struggling with what I want to do on this blog on Wednesdays, so I think I have it figured out. I am going to have 5 things for Wednesdays and just scroll through them on a weekly basis.

Week 1: Essay
Week 2: Music video reviews
week 3: movie trailer reviews
Week 4: album reviews
Week 5: DVD reviews

This week I want to talk a little bit adaptations.

I like to think of myself as not being a book snob. I am not one of those people who always says "Well, the book was better" every time a movie is made from a book. I like to believe that each format has great things about them. Yes, movies begin in the hole because nothing can compare your own imagination, in terms of how characters look or how the action unfolds. This is just the nature of a book. That is what makes books so wonderful. However, seeing the things in your mind in some way on the big screen can be a wonderful experience as well.

I have been thinking about this a lot the last few days because of My Sister's Keeper. Now, I have not read the book, and I have not yet seen the movie, but the adaptation has really struck a chord all over the Internet with fans because the movie has changed the ending of the book. I cannot say how the book ends or how the movie ends, although I have a pretty good idea at how both end from reading about the controversy. In adapting a book into a movie things have to be changed or cut or moved in order to take the length of the novel and turn it into a 2hr or so movie. However, most adaptations keep the original idea, or moral of the story. It does not seem like this one has done that. In Watchmen, events of the ending changed but the end message stayed the same. I know fanboys were up in arms over the changing of the major event in Watchmen, but they were missing that while the event changed, the intention stayed the same. That is a successful adaptation, in my opinion. Watchmen turned a huge Graphic Novel into a less than 3hr movie, but got the basic intention of the Graphic Novel just fine. My Sister's Keeper did not do that. Whereas the abrupt ending of the book (again I am sort of guessing) was meant to show that you cannot always fix things and that fate will have its way, was changed for a more Hollywood appropriate ending.

I also want to draw attention to some movies that are, in my opinion, better than the books that came before them. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is always the first one I go to because while the books are amazing, the movies keep all of the amazing elements and lose a lot of the more Tolkienian aspects that have been a hindrance on so many people who try to read them. The Hobbit songs are gone, first and foremost and the story moves a lot more quickly in the films. Because the visuals in the movie are so striking and strong, they make up for losing the ability to create something in your imagination, besides, Gollum looks nearly identical to how I always envisioned him looking. John Grisham's A Time to Kill is another movie that does the book better, but for a totally different reason. The acting in A Time to Kill really help put faces to the ideas and morals to be found within that movie. I did not really get into the book hardcore until I had Sam Jackson's face to place on the jailed man.

Then there are those movies that are adaptations that I did not know were adaptations and if the movies do their jobs, I will pick up the book. This happened just as recently as yesterday, when I finally read The Soloist. Until the movie, I had no idea the story existed. The movie, while good, left me wondering about a few things and the book answered those questions for me. I know people are always strongly adverse to their favorite books being turned into movies, but I have read more than a few books because I saw the movie first and only knew it was a book after the fact.

The snobbery or the elitist joy one gets from saying "The book was better" is nothing more than that person's attempt to show that they can read and since for whatever reason people think that reading equals intelligence, they are trying to prove they are smarter than someone who has not read the book, or who does not care one way or the other. Yes, most often, the book is always better, but if you know that before seeing the movie, why go see it? If your mind is made up that the movie will always be inferior, just stay away. People want to stop Hollywood from turning books into movies, but without them we would not have the movies Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Godfather, Silence of the Lambs, The Lord of the Rings, No Country for Old Men, Forrest Gump and countless other Oscar winning and much beloved movies.