Should movie makers 'stick to the book'? (Maybe a debate)

[RickJay]

@Sgt Schwartz

Ok, I got the director wrong. There was a novel written by Morrell which was a predecesor to the movie.

Nope; the movie preceded the book. The novel “Rambo” was actually based on the movie; it’s a “novelization” of the film. While Morrell wrote “First Blood,” the story for “Rambo: First Blood Part II” was originally written by Cameron and Stallone as a screenplay for the movie; then it was made a novel (like a lot of popular films.)

Morrell, ironically, was/is a pacifist and wrote the first novel as an anti-war novel; in it, the character of John Rambo was a bad guy. Now he’s rolling in money from some rather sadistic and fascist movies. I’m sure he doesn’t mind.

[Zebra]

When a film maker pays for the right to tell the story on film. Then the choices are theirs to make.

[Polycarp]

@Zebra

When a film maker pays for the right to tell the story on film. Then the choices are theirs to make.

Give me a break. “…to tell the story on film,” yes. Adaptations to meet the needs of the different medium are essential. I’ll read two pages of interior monologue going on in the mind of a fascinating protagonist and as told by an author I love. I won’t accept movie footage of an unmoving person sitting still in a chair while a voiceover gives that selfsame internal monologue – find a different way to make that point. Likewise telescoping book characters into one to make a sane and suitable role (hereafter the “Glorfindel Effect” ;)).

But when the movie departs in significant ways – plot, characterization and above all basic thesis – from the book it’s allegedly based on, that is not an attempt “…to tell the story on film.” It’s “bait and switch.”

It’s worth noting that the films named above which are considered classics are ones that did non-slavish but reasonably faithful adaptations of the book they were adapting. Psycho being AFAIK the one exception. And that that designation does not extend to the “bad examples.”

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

I’m teaching a course (two classes) this term on adapting non-fiction works to film, and some principles and results, so I’m interested in this thread big-time.

My position is that, given the gross number of characters and facts in almost any non-fiction account, the adaptor must select carefully which characters and facts go into the film, and ignore (or even distort) the others. In Nora Ephron’s phrase, the adaptor’s job is to “impose a narrative” onto the film–often, the film narrative is the same as the book narrative, but just on smaller scale (with several characters telescoped into one, for example) or with the narrative beginning much later or ending much earlier or both. Sometimes, however, the film narrative differs, sometime radically, from that of the book narrative, as when a filmmaker likes something about the book but has a vastly different interpretation of what those events mean, or what the audience will tolerate.

I’m using ADAPTATION (The Orchid Thief), A BEAUTIFUL MIND (Nasar’s book of that title), HURRICANE (Carter’s THE SIXTEENTH ROUND) in the course for sure, and possibly JFK, ERIN BROCKOVICH, SILKWOOD, OUT OF AFRICA, QUIZ SHOW or other films as time and interest permit. It should be interesting, I think, and I expect to learn much as I get into it.

I think it’s impossible for a film to be true to the book, most of the time, if by ‘true’ we mean a literal rendition. It’s possible that some of these works would make some of the same points as the book (or newspaper accounts, as in the case of JFK and some of the others) but not necessarily. Radical divergences, such as in my first two films, try to tell a higher truth by distorting the unwieldy story-line of the original, though I’m not sure that by changing certain central facts they’re distorting the intent and the meaning of the book. Rather, I think they’re making the themes of the book come through more strongly by avoiding getting bogged down in details that are acceptable in a non-visual medium that can be enjoyed in interrupted segments.

[lissener]

To the extent that a movie sticks blind-faithfully to the book, to that extent I don’t much care to see it. Usually; unless it’s not a very good book. Books that can be made into decent movies without any changes aren’t typically very good books. (Cf. Rosemary’s Baby, as mentioned above, which works way better as a movie than as a book.)

They’re two phenomenally different ways of telling a story.

It’s my theory that this whole question is uniquely a product of the modern age, like plagiarism. Before reproducible media—from books all the way up the media-evolutionary ladder to movies—stories were stories; no one “owned” them. Plagiarism was an absurd concept: people shared and adapted and improved upon the stories they picked up here and there, and passed them on to other storytellers who did the same. (Did Shakespeare ever write an original plot?) I understand why that is; that artists now must control their art in order to make a living. But of course it’s resulted in a huge paradigm shift.

Anyway, my point is, I think that the feeling that a movie “should” stick close to its source material is only some cultural tradition, and a recent one at that; as an artistic concept it has no inherent value. It’s manufactured loyalty. Which ultimately makes no sense, because adapting a book in no way affects the book. If you want to experience the book again, reread it. Kills me, when people say, “The director ruined the book!” and I’m like, “Uh, no he di’n’t. It’s still there on my bookshelf, completely unruined.” What he *did *do was to create a whole new piece of art that’s worth seeing in its own right. How is it remotely relevant where he sourced his story from, if he produced something good with it?

[silenus]

I’m with you right up until the title and marketing. If a film [del]raper[/del] maker wants to foist of a pile of dreck like I Robot, that is their business. But to title it that, and heavily imply that it is Asimov’s stories that are being told, is a rip-off. What did Poly call it? “Bait and switch?” Exactly. There should be a requirement in all advertising that says “We just used the title and some names, and made up the rest.”

A certain director will have my eternal hatred for what he did with a certain SF property, not so much for what he did to it, which was wholesale rape, but that he tried to sell it to the fans as something loyal to the book. I was at World-Con when they showed the preliminary Bug footage. I heard what they told the audience about the story and that they were going to be faithful to the book. Then they dropped that turd on the world, and turned off how many people who might have read the book, if it weren’t for the bad taste in their mouths from the movie.

The question comes down to “Where does it shift from adaptation into something else completely?”

[nashiitashii]

There are some movie adaptations out there that take away from the overall enjoyment for me because of the changes that are made when adapting the book to fit the restrictions of the screen. Two recent ones I can think of off the top of my head are Eragon and The Devil Wears Prada. Both of them changed elements in the book that had an effect on character development.
Eragon-

The plot of the story was cut down to as little as could be used. I don’t have a problem with that, but they could have added one or two more “locations” and still had the runtime they needed. (It was a bit short for me.) The thing, however, that I had the biggest problem with was changing the actions in one particular scene. Eragon is trying to escape from the prison, and Brom is not supposed to be in the scene, but he is. Murtagh is supposed to be the one saving him with his archery work, but he’s not the one who does it. Brom is. Why does this detract from the plot for me? It messes with the intentions of the characters involved and takes away from who we understand Murtagh to be. By saving Eragon before Eragon finds out that he’s the son of Brom’s fomer arch enemy, it adds to the idea that he’s willing to be morally neutral when it comes to alliances, but will do the “right” thing in the end when he feels injustice is involved.

Devil Wears Prada-

The protagonist’s best friend is completely changed as a character. In the novel, she’s a graduate student, while in the movie, she’s an employee at an art gallery. There’s also a lot going on in the novel that the movie doesn’t touch with a 20 foot pole because the screenwriter seems to want to avoid the idea of anyone but the protagonist having any sort of interesting or stressful life. That, for me, messes with my enjoyment of the movie, now that I’ve read the novel. It wasn’t that great, but there was more even character development within the novel to balance out the roles of the characters. I just, well, there are two or three people in the movie whose characters are developed, and everyone else’s personality is pretty damned flat. What was the point of that?

Personally, neither of these were great books, but they were good enough for me to finish them. However, I’d say the screen adaptations did not redeem the weak points in either of the works to really make them shine. I understand, though, that the people making these films were not exactly expecting them to be favorites of the most “culturally discerning” (okay, elitist) audiences; they were made to be digestible to the average person who enjoys movies that don’t require much mental processing of the movies themselves.

[Raguleader]

@silenus

I’m with you right up until the title and marketing. If a film [del]raper[/del] maker wants to foist of a pile of dreck like I Robot, that is their business. But to title it that, and heavily imply that it is Asimov’s stories that are being told, is a rip-off. What did Poly call it? “Bait and switch?” Exactly. There should be a requirement in all advertising that says “We just used the title and some names, and made up the rest.”

Slight hijack, it always puzzles me why I, Robot seems to be so vehemently hated by some. Granted, I haven’t read the book, so maybe that makes all the difference, but I thought it was an excellent movie in it’s own right.

It even had a bad guy who looked like SHODAN! Hm… maybe they should have bought the movie rights to System Shock instead of I, Robot?

[silenus]

If they’d have made the movie, called it something else and marketed it as something else, I’d agree with you. Cool movie. But that wasn’t what it was being sold as. To those of us who grew up on those stories, it was a travesty.

But we live in an imperfect world, and I supposed I’m just going to have to get used to shit like this. It’s only been happening for decades…

[mhendo]

@Raguleader

Slight hijack, it always puzzles me why I, Robot seems to be so vehemently hated by some. Granted, I haven’t read the book, so maybe that makes all the difference, but I thought it was an excellent movie in it’s own right.

Personally, i love Maddox’s review of I, Robot:

I saw the movie “I, Robot” recently, a film based loosely on a book written by science fiction author Isaac Asimov. In case you’re not familiar with Asimov’s writing, here’s a list of things the movie had in common with the book:

[ul]
[li]The title[/li][/ul]
I don’t know why, but after the movie I came out of the theater wanting to buy a pair of Converse shoes (vintage 2004), have them delivered to my local FedEx station, drive my MV Augusta SPR motorcycle to pick them up, stop by the shop to have my new JVC CD player installed in my Audi, pick up a couple of Dos Equis on my way home, wash it down with an Ovaltine and then invest what money I have left into a mutual fund with Prudential Life Insurance.

One that i never got was The Bourne Supremacy.

The story literally had nothing to do with the book at all, except for the character of Bourne himself.

The plot was different, the locations were different, the bad guys were different, etc., etc. The title and the character’s name were basically the only things taken from the book.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@XaMcQ

I think it’s fine for filmmakers to change the story to suit the film, but if they make a lot of deviations, I think they should change the name of their movie so that it is different from the title of the book, and in the credits they can put 'inspired by" instead of ‘based on’. And it really ticks me off when they use the author’s name in the title of the movie and then make wild changes from the novel.

Hoo boy, you just reminded me of the worst book-to-movie evisceration I ever saw: The Beastmaster, whose title was taken from Andre Norton’s 1959 sci-fi novel. Also taken was the hero’s ability to communicate with his animal companions: an eagle, a large cat (book, sand cat; movie, black panther) and two meerkats (movie, ferrets). Other than that, the movie was just a stupid Conan the Barbarian ripoff. The book, in the words of one Amazon.com reviewer, offers this:

Hosteen Storm is the Beast Master, a mustered out soldier after the end of Xik war, who has managed to keep his military team of animals together - two meercats, Hing and Ho, an eagle, Baku, and a sand cat, Surra, genetically enhanced animals that Storm has a strong empathic and near telepathic bond with. Arriving on the planet Arzor that he chose as probably best for a man who prefers outdoor living, that will provide him employment opportunities for himself and his team, he quickly adds one more member to his team, a rugged, quick footed horse he names Rain-on-Dust. Hired on to help herd the native equivalent of cattle, he makes friends with the local native intelligent race, the Norbies, a people whose anatomy precludes their being able to talk and have therefore developed sign language to an art, whose culture in many ways mimics that of Storm’s early life. Storm’s heritage is that of the Dineh (Navajo), a name which simply means `The People’ in their own language, and he was partially raised by his medicine-man grandfather, a heritage he clings to, as Earth has been destroyed by the Xiks in one of the last acts of the war.

This is the background beginning to Storm’s search for new home, one that respects his heritage and can use his talents, with a buried unsatisfied anger at the Xiks, a festering grudge against a man named Quade, and a conflicted self image. As he travels through this new planet, events lead to his discovery of a buried city of the Old Ones, a race that traveled the star-lanes long before man (note that this long vanished race appears in many of Norton’s books of this period), and to discoveries and actions that will eventually help heal his hurts and provide him with a more complete, mature image of himself and the world around him.

As the above indicates, character development is quite strong in this book, applying not just to Storm but also to his animals and his Norbie friends. Also strongly in evidence is Norton’s excellent look at the Native American culture, something she developed in several books and obviously cared deeply about. The story line itself is fast paced, with plenty of action, and will make you greedily keep turning pages, till you unhappily turn the last one, and realize there is no more to enjoy. Though much of Norton’s prose is fairly prosaic, there is sheer magic in her bits-and-pieces revelations about the Old Ones, a magic that will fire your imagination and enter your dreams.

Thematically this book has much to say about prejudice, honor and friendship, the importance of roots, courage and self-image, and the validity of alternate cultures, all quietly slipped in amongst all the action.

Having experienced both, I would recommend reading the book and burning all copies of the movie.

Then there’s Memoirs of a Geisha. As it happens, I saw the movie on DVD first and enjoyed it a lot. Seeing it spurred me to buy the book, as well as Liz Dalby’s book Geisha, which I read before Golden’s novel. Reading the novel was weird, as I was wholly absorbed in the wonderful story, yet at the same time thinking, “But the movie did that instead!” The overall theme and the main elements of the plot, the movie did well. But a great deal of the book’s character development and subtleties were lost. What bothered me the most was how Nobu’s role in Sayuri’s life was reduced to almost a cameo in the movie, when in the book he’s an important character. It will be a while before I’ll be able to watch the movie again, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to enjoy it as much, now that I know how much was lost in translation.

The Right Stuff was a helluva good movie. Then I read the book, and again was struck by how much more that had to offer.

[Red_Barchetta]

@Raguleader

Slight hijack, it always puzzles me why I, Robot seems to be so vehemently hated by some. Granted, I haven’t read the book, so maybe that makes all the difference, but I thought it was an excellent movie in it’s own right.

It even had a bad guy who looked like SHODAN! Hm… maybe they should have bought the movie rights to System Shock instead of I, Robot?

I’m with ya, I had a great time watching that movie.

[Evil_Captor]

@Chronos

There are a few cases to consider. If the book was any good, then it was good for some reason, and you really ought to figure out what that reason was. If the book had great characterizations, then you really ought to make sure that those characterizations make it onto the screen. If the plot is terrific, then you’d be well-advised to stick to it. If you don’t want to keep the best parts of a book, then why are you using the book to begin with? There will, of course, be changes, but if the changes are in the areas where the book already did such a good job, then you have to ask if you picked the right book to base off of.

Exactly. If the filmmakers are buying the rights to a popular and successful book, it’s rational to look at what made the book popular and successful in the first place, in hopes of translating that popularity and success to the screen. Instead you see occurrence after occurrence after occurrence where the filmmakers clearly just bought the name recognition that comes with the title and author, and tossed the book itself aside.

And I’m sorry, there’s no excuse for this. Yes, it’s true that there are a lot of good reasons why movies can’t be direct translations of books, but there’s no reason in the world why you can’t include whatever themes or characterizations made the book successful in the movie. Not doing so is just stupid.

[Raguleader]

@mhendo

Personally, i love Maddox’s review of I, Robot

Yeah, see, whenever someone references Maddox, I stop paying attention. I never held a terribly high opinion of most of his scribblings, and I knew a guy who would never, ever, EVER, shut up about what a genius Maddox was, so I got pretty well burned out on him.

In any case, it didn’t really bother me that a sci-fi movie taking place in the near-ish future would still have such companies as US Robotics and FedEx, I mean, comon, this isn’t Star Trek.

And I maintain the theory that the FedEx bot was carrying a video tape or whatever that was “OK, pretty much here’s what’s going on, now go fix it!”, but because the guy was in such a hurry, he missed that part.

[dropzone]

I don’t invest much of myself in what I’m reading so I don’t care much if things get changed, film being a different artform, and all. “Starship Troopers?” Captured the fascist undertones of the book nicely and was a good space shoot 'em up. Loved it, partly because the book left the same bad taste in Verhoeven’s mouth as it did in mine.

A writer who had less problem with movies ignoring his books was Dashiell Hammett, whose writing is sufficiently filmic that “The Thin Man” and, especially, “The Maltese Falcon” follow his books closely, in the latter to the point of sharing most of the dialog. Like novelizations except the books came first.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

If I hear about a movie based on a book I like, I expect it to have major similarities to that book. I expect the basic flavor of the movie to be the same, at least. I was almost physically ill when I tried to watch the SciFi (and that name is very telling) channel’s version of Earthsea. The Earthsea trilogy has been an old friend of mine since either grade school or middle school. SciFi’s version felt like a betrayal.

The Last Unicorn and The Princess Bride movies were both very faithful to their books, and I enjoyed them immensely, with the exception of Mia Farrow being cast as the Unicorn. The characters and scenes were not exactly as I had imagined them when I read the books, but I believe that on the whole, the filmmakers’ versions were better. The script writers kept just about all the best bits from the books, which included most of the dialogue.

If a moviemaker wishes to make a movie that is NOT the same as the book, then s/he should give it a different title and character names. As someone else said, using the same title is basically bait and switch.

[mhendo]

@Raguleader

Yeah, see, whenever someone references Maddox, I stop paying attention. I never held a terribly high opinion of most of his scribblings, and I knew a guy who would never, ever, EVER, shut up about what a genius Maddox was, so I got pretty well burned out on him.

I don’t recall ever calling him a genius. Nor was i offering much of a critique of I Robot. I just thought that was a funny review.

If you want to stop paying attention, fine. But the fact that you responded suggested that you did precisely the opposite.

[Odesio]

@Mangetout

What do you think? Is ‘sticking to the book’ a worthy goal, generally? Is it practically possible in many cases?

A book and a motion picture are very different mediums and I wouldn’t expect an adaptation from either source to remain true. For the most part a movie is limited to something like a two hour time limit and there just isn’t time to include every subplot or character. So you end up combining seperate characters from the book into one from the big screen and you end up removing other characters and subplots altogether.

I don’t like it when they buy the rights to a book only to produce a book that is similar in name only. I’m sure I’m not the first to bring up Starship Troopers. Peter Jackson made some changes for LOTR but you could tell he loved the source material. Paul Verhoeven just crapped all over the source material for Starship Troopers.

Marc

[Revedge]

The perfect length for book to movie is the novella. Check out Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption. It is possible to stay true to the spirit and characterizations in a longer work while still editing out quite a bit. Such as Green Mile , Silence of the Lambs, and Hunt for Red October. (And one of the best, The Godfather.)
Why pay great sums of money for a story and characters that you are not going to use? It just pisses off the patrons that like the source material. And causes much negative publicity. The best example of this is I, Robot. It’s a pretty good movie. But, I refused to go see it because I could tell from the TRAILERS that it had nothing to do with the book. If they had given it a different title and renamed the characters it would have made a ton of money. Hell, I like it. (I saw it on cable) but I refuse to buy the DVD or CD from this movie because it IS bait and switch. I refuse to give my money to someone who lies to me about what I am paying for. And I hope that the Good Doctor’s ghost haunts those that attached his name to this movie.

[Raguleader]

@mhendo

I don’t recall ever calling him a genius. Nor was i offering much of a critique of I Robot. I just thought that was a funny review.

If you want to stop paying attention, fine. But the fact that you responded suggested that you did precisely the opposite.

Never said you called him a genius, just said that I knew a guy who did. All the time. He could have been quoting Jean Luc Picard and it would have still gotten old after a few weeks.

For what it’s worth, I did read the Maddox review in question once apon a time, and it more or less fit in with most of everything else of his that I’ve read, which tended to be frothing-at-the-mouth over the top kinds of stuff about things he tended not to sound like he knew much about. Of course, the whole thing could be satire, I dunno.

As for a movie that I wish could have followed the source material a bit more closely, Wing Commander comes to mind. Though this one was based on a series of computer games, and not on any books. Thing is, the movie didn’t really take anything but the most general premise of the games (The Terran Confederation is locked in a brutal war with the Kilrathi Empire) and the names of the characters and ships, most of whom got changed for the movie.

Biggest problem with Wing Commander was pretty much that the plot they had wasn’t very well developed or executed in the movie, and so lots of stuff that made sense in the book (based on the movie based on the computer games) didn’t make sense in the movie because it was never really fleshed out. Aside from that, the producer of the movie (and of the Wing Commander games except for Prophecy and Secret Ops) was able to get the rights to the names of everything for the movie, but not for the actual ship designs, so we had lots of ships like the TCS Tiger Claw and the Rapier space fighter which didn’t seem to have much of anything in common with their counterparts in the games.

That said, BattleStar Galactica fans might get a kick out of the Dralthi from the WC movie, which did strongly resemble the Cylon Raiders that would show up 5 years later on the Sci-Fi Channel (right down to the wing-mounted machine guns), although they at least had a passing resemblance to their namesakes from the WC games.