A friend was telling me recently how they hated The Hobbit films because they were nothing like the book on which they were supposedly based. This got me thinking about the idea of adapting novels into films, and why this provokes fans of the novel so much, and I thought I would take this chance to iterate my argument that a film adaptation is still worth seeing, and why I think book fans often dislike the film. It is almost inevitable when a popular novel is adapted that the legions of fans find the film an aberration and utterly abhorrent. Why? It isn’t that the films are unerringly bad, or the novels on which they’re based infallibly good, or even better than the film. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings films are often divisive, with the book purists claiming the films miss the moral point that Tolkien intended. Also consider Blade Runner, which is so far removed from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that it is difficult to put the two together in any way. So why does it matter, and why are films and the literature they were adapted from often so different? And why are fans of the original novels so hard to please?
The main reason why fans of the novel are rarely satisfied with the film is simply that an adaptation is inexorably different from the readers’ interpretations. This is to do with ownership of the novel; once it has been written, the ideas and the interpretation are not the author’s but each reader’s, so there are as many interpretations of the same idea as there are readers. Every reader will produce a different interpretation, and visualise it differently according to such things as the power of their imagination and the events and personal experiences that have shaped their lives. So for instance, a teenage girl may empathise with a teenage girl character more than a forty year old man. This variety in interpretation can fundamentally change how someone views a story, so no two people will view it in exactly the same way. This is the main reason why an adaptation will never live up to expectations; because it is the director’s interpretation, which will never be identical to anyone else’s.
To take this point further, an adaptation will be altered for film because, in a written novel, there is no limit in scope; a huge, alternative reality takes up as much space as the most mundane suburban kitchen, because it is all words on a page. In film, the director must wrestle with such things as budget and the limitations of what can be achieved in reality. A film, therefore, will also fail to meet a reader’s expectations because of the fact the adaptation has to adhere to more than just the imagination. Think about any books you’ve read that are considered unfilmable (Cloud Atlas being an example, though I actually liked the film more). This too is the case with casting (and consider how many comments you have seen about the casting being ‘wrong’) because readers visualise the characters differently, regardless of how well described they are. It may just be me, but I tend to visualise any male protagonist as a version of myself, and all other characters based loosely on people I know or have seen (such as actors). The time limit of films also necessitates the removal of large chunks of many novels, which obviously has the effect of making the film different, and often depriving the film of character development and the depth that makes the novel come alive. This is a common complaint of adaptations but is entirely unavoidable, unless people are prepared to endure ten hour films.
A film also has to approach certain things differently. For example internal monologues and the exploration of emotions are harder in film than a novel. While internal monologue is easy to write, a film, unless it uses an annoying voiceover, cannot explore it in the same way. This often leads to characters being colder and harder to like than in a novel. Films often utilise music to set the tone and represent emotions, which is symbolic of the different priorities a film and a novel have; novels do not need to consider sound or visuals, they at most merely imply it. A film must be different, and it is all subject to the director’s individual interpretation, which of course differs from other readers’ interpretations. It is therefore no surprise that an adaptation is not faithful to readers’ expectations, because they all expect different things and will always be a different experience to reading the original.
One way of avoiding disappointment then would be to ignore the film entirely; it will never be how you want so don’t risk getting annoyed. Except I would argue that it is good to see adaptations of your favourite books, because it gives you the opportunity to explore someone else’s vision of a story you love and to compare how they see it to your own interpretation. Book clubs and discussion groups spend hours arguing over characterisation and the message of stories, and in viewing a film you can see how the same characters and world can take on very different meanings in someone else’s eyes. It can also be fun to see how a director has dealt with particularly complex or visually outlandish scenes. The Lord of the Rings is a great example, because it is an entirely alternative world that has had to be created. I always find it wryly amusing when difficult scenes have been altered or missed completely to make it achievable for the director; it somehow makes me smug, like I’ve caught them out.
It may though be best to simply view a film as completely separate from the novels. I enjoyed Master and Commander, despite being an avid reader of the twenty books. The film had changed a lot, was supposedly based upon the tenth book although had taken part from the first and third, and was so different from the novel in terms of plot I would have not enjoyed it if I was expecting a faithful retelling. However, they managed the core feature of characterisation of the two protagonists well, which I always considered to be the defining part of the books, so could appreciate it as a separate story with the same characters.
To finish then I would say that an adaptation not being close to the original work is not grounds to dislike or dismiss the film. Of course if it is awful and boring or silly you can dislike it, but the opportunity to see a new angle and see how a different world has been created must be worth some appreciation if it is done well. So don’t despair if your childhood favourite is not how you wanted it, it happens to all of us. Just enjoy the film for what it is. You never know, sometimes the film is better than the original on which it is based, like Jaws.
JP
hmm manifesto 