Why adaptations are made and what purpose they serve
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Course
English Literature, Acts of Writing
Institution
University Of Sussex (UoS)
A 2,000 word compilation of readings about book to film adaptations, covering:
- why adaptations are made
- what purpose they serve
- what makes a good adaptation
Why adaptations are made and what purpose they srve
As many (many) hot takes in various media outlets have proclaimed: adaptations are all
the rage. Of course, adaptations have been around since the earliest days of moving
pictures—and have always varied wildly in quality and success. For every Lord of the
Rings and Game of Thrones, there’s a Legend of Earthsea or a Queen of the Damned
What is it about transforming a written work into a film (or miniseries, television show,
etc.) that gets us so excited (or so worried)?
What even is a “good” adaptation? Is it a faithful reproduction of the source? Does it use
the material as a springboard to create something different? Is it a blueprint, or is it an
outline? When is a novel/story/comic the complete basis of a film or TV adaptation, and
when is it just inspiration? Does it matter when you experience the original vs. the
adapted version?
Perhaps we tend to imprint on our first experience of a story and that may be what
determines the nature of our comparisons.
Like Practical Magic, the show borrows elements of the source material and uses them
to very different ends, though I would argue that, in this case, it adds interesting material
and fleshes out the characters we meet in the comics (rather than cutting and
simplifying, as the movie did).
The other major difference, obviously, is grounded in the distinct mediums involved.
Cutting a novel down to a movie that clocks in under two hours is very different
undertaking than spreading an already-thin comics story across ten episodes of
television.
The shining- Kubrick borrows only the barest elements from the novel, alters all the
characters to suit his vision, and completely trashes the theme of addiction and recovery
that runs so strongly throughout the book.
I don’t think it’s very fair to consider films like The Shining to even be an adaptation—its
inspired by an idea, perhaps, but it is its own beast.
But if I remove the experience of the book—just mentally set it aside while considering
this—does the movie stand on its own just fine? Honestly, yes. It’s a product of its time in
a lot of ways, and yet ahead of its time in its focus on the relationships between women,
family, and community. One of the major changes from the book to the film was the
fleshing out of the aunt characters
The film has different goals than the book—and that might actually be okay.
Some of the most faithful adaptations are often failures, mostly because of the
soullessness that can occur when creators are unable to bring their own vision to the
material; attempting to reproduce someone else’s work has got to drain some of the
magic out of the whole process, leaving a vacuum. Meanwhile, others make additions,
edits, and eliminations that certain hardcore fans hate but that most people accept as
necessary
And what does it mean when we say that an adaptation is “better” than the original? Is it
still an adaptation, or is it something separate and new?
, there are cases of notoriously “bad” adaptations like Mary Poppins: Disney gutted P.L.
Travers’ original work to create something entirely different, enraging and deeply
wounding the author. Yet the film is beloved as a classic, and many fans have forgotten
(or never knew) it was an adaptation at all. as a viewer, does it matter?
What adaptations have you struggled to accept—or simply refuse to? Which ones do you
love?
“A book is a book and a movie is a movie, and whenever the latter merely
sets about illustrating the former, it’s a failure of adaptation, to say nothing
of imagination.” (Hunger Games as too faithful)
the adaptation being so close to the source material that fans “might, for all
their constant desire to see a faithful adaptation, leave the film feeling like
they’ve seen the book almost exactly, as if they didn’t need to see it at all”
HG
All too often, it seems like even the biggest bestsellers are deemed not
commercial enough in content, and the process of bringing them to the
screen is a process of forcing them into familiar pigeonholes in hopes of
reaching a broader and less discerning audience.
But if book-to-film adaptations can fail by being too faithful or by being not
faithful enough, what’s left? And is it fair for people who have read the book
to complain about it not giving them something new, when it’s still serving
a purpose by accurately bringing the story to people who haven’t read the
book? Is it possible to please or even serve both audiences? What makes a
good book adaptation, anyway?
The degree of faithfulness—or the impetus to be faithful—should not be
part of the equation at all.
It hits all the expected plot points from a novel that offers a straightforward
cinematic blueprint, but it feels thinned-out as a result, because it can only
deal glancingly with key relationships from the book, like Katniss’
relationship with Rue. n order to stay faithful, Ross just ticks off the boxes.
As I said, “stenography in light.”
What I want is not faithfulness, but an active engagement with the material,
which doesn’t have to preclude faithfulness. The question filmmakers
should ask is not, “How can I bring this story to the screen without losing
anything?,” but “What in this book do I want to emphasize?” a good
adaptation has to make choices about what’s truly important. And it also
has to exist independently from the novel: Films content with merely
illustrating books are more concerned with problem-solving and translation
than artistic expression.
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