Adapting a book into a movie or TV series can be a long and quite complicated process. The author of the book has to agree to an adaptation to happen, and many authors find themselves uncertain of how their story will look on screen. An example is Stephen King’s novel “The Shining”. Once it was adapted into a movie by Stanley Kubrick, King publicly admitted to not liking the movie.
Many movies that originated as books have gotten positive reviews over the years. Books like “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, “The Hunger Games”, and “To Kill a Mockingbird” have gotten praise for their well-made adaptations that accurately represented the books that they were based on. Movie versions of books help readers visualize the story and make it easier to understand the plot and aesthetic of the book.
Senior James Drexler said, “My favorite adaptation is the new ‘Percy Jackson TV series,’ which was directed by James Bobin.
Junior Josiah Collman said, “One of the best adaptations was ‘Good Omen’”, which was originally written by Terry Pratchett and later adapted into a TV show by Rachel Talalay.
What happens when a movie inaccurately represents its original book?
“My least favorite adaptation was the non-extended edition of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’”, said junior Becca Johnson. “The Characters Mary and Pippin [main protagonists] lost a lot of their maturity, which I didn’t like.”
People get disappointed when characters turn out differently from how they appeared in the book. For example, in the article ‘The Outsiders’: Book vs. Movie’, Kali Tuttle (movie critic) wrote, “The novel was much better at portraying the relationship between the Curtis brothers. We got more of a sense of who they are and how much they cared about each other”. Luckily, in most cases, movie directors consider the original books when producing a film, which makes waiting for them even more exciting to many book lovers.
When reading a good book, students usually go on to watch the movie that goes with it, or wait for an adaptation to happen. “I’d like to see ‘Small Gods’ by Terry Pratchett. He’s a very cinematic writer, so it would be difficult, but I would like to see it,” said Collman. Students also tend to have a different view of books versus the movies.
“There are a lot of movies that could be [an adaptation], but [I] wouldn’t trust [producers] to make a movie because books have different strengths than movies,” said Johnson, talking about how books are seen differently than movies.
Similar to this, many books didn’t need to be turned into books or were simply unnecessary and poorly written. Senior Javier Soto said, ‘October Sky’ by Homer Hickam should have stayed a book.”
With the colder seasons coming up, reading is a great way to spend some time inside and relax. Overall, most students enjoy reading all different kinds of books and watching the movie or TV show that goes along with it that fulfill the expectations that they had in their minds.
