Almost always it seems.  Part of the problem is that Hollywood destroys book plots when they attempt to transfer them to the silver screen.  I, Robot and the Bourne series of films are examples.  The first turned Asimov’s cerebral study of human-robot relations, carried to its pinnacle in Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, into a futuristic action film and vehicle for Will Smith that had nothing to do with the original stories.  Same for the Bourne trilogy, where all the memory lapses were resolved in the first book, leaving the only thing common between movies 2-3 and books 2-3 the titles.  I could only enjoy the films by trying to dispel all memory of the books.

Want some non-sci-fi examples?  Consider all the Bond films.  The first films tried to follow the Ian Fleming originals; later ones, even in the Sean Connery era, not so much.  One film that seemed to follow the book well (I’d read the book ages ago and didn’t reread it before the film) was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; that was probably what killed it at the box office.  It’s not uncommon for a movie based on a book to do badly.

Reason 1: The visual and psychological.  The first is clear.  Movies are visual media, books are written.  You might finish a book and say, “That would make a good X movie,” where X doesn’t stand for X-rating but sci-fi, thriller, romance, mystery, adventure, etc, but if the book doesn’t translate word experience to visual experience well, it can be disastrous.  The psychological aspect is more subtle.  While a great actor like Patrick Stewart or Jack Nicholson can express thoughts and emotions with tone of voice, facial expressions, and other mannerisms, and a great score can add to that, it’s hard to get into the head of a movie character and easy to do in a book.

Reason 2: Action.  Nowadays this has become something where movies excel and books not so much.  Even if you’re a minimalist author like I am, describing characters and what they do in action scenes just enough so the reader can participate in the creative process by filling in details in his mind (many writers don’t realize how powerful this is—the imaginative power of the human mind is virtually infinite), you won’t grab many people’s attention nowadays because action movies, video games, and TV shows have made many people passive.  Some people only react to the visual.  Some people never learn to read creatively.  But turning that around, the action on the written page, especially for minimalist writing, becomes so distorted and amplified in the movie version that all fidelity to the book is lost.  Ludlum never had a scene with Bourne jumping to cover a gap between two buildings.  In fact, Ludlum’s Bourne was more the cerebral spy than action hero.

Here’s where I’ll give the Harry Potter franchise credit—the movies were as enjoyable as the books.  The visual experience of the movie added a dimension to the books.  There were no missing psychological probes of the characters—Rohling can’t write them, period.  It’s almost as if she’s writing a script, in fact.  Some writers write that way.  Nothing wrong with it—verbosity often replaces the visual of the movie—but I don’t have to like it.  And maybe Rohling wrote that way because she had movie versions in mind from the beginning—I did feel completely passive reading her books.  But Hollywood was very happy—Rohling had ensured that all those millions who read the books would flock to the movies because the visual was the only thing added.

Translating a book to a movie is probably more difficult than translating a book written in English to Spanish, say, or vice versa.  That’s why people can make a nice piece of change doing it (not so much with regular translations).  First, someone has to decide that the book could make a good movie.  Some of mine could, but not all—I’d like to see a movie of Aristocrats and Assassins, for example.  That decision is often based on how popular the book’s been, something that doesn’t have any relation to whether a movie based on the book would be successful—Hollywood’s SOPs are often stupid.

Second, a team of screenwriters (OK, it could be just one) has to perform a minor miracle and turn the book into a screenplay.  The author can be a help and/or hindrance in that case.  For Gone Girl, there was no conflict of interest because the screenwriter and the author were the same, probably ideal in some cases (I wouldn’t want to do it, though), but not in the case of Gone Girl, where the disaster was just doubled (and not helped by Ben Affleck either).  Original screenplays seem to be more common nowadays (for those reasons?), but plots and characterizations can suffer.  The screenwriters can get too cute too, like that team that wrote the Lost episodes.

Third, even with a great screenplay with an author’s input, the editing process can make the whole movie seem like a jigsaw with lots of missing pieces because information the viewer needs is cut.  That can happen in a book too, and if it does, the movie will be even worse for it.  Plots in genre fiction make sense for the first part; in movies, not so much.  And it often seems that neither director nor actors actually read the book.  I find myself saying “Huh?” much more in the movie theater than when I’m reading a book; that’s weird because I read many more books than watch movies.  OK, I’m critical of movies, but I’m also critical of books.  If neither makes sense, what good are they?

My conclusion?  I’d much more read a good book than see a movie based on it.  In fact, I’d prefer reading a book than watching a movie, period.  But, like many Americans, going out for a movie and having dinner afterwards are traditional activities (both cost much more than books now).  We don’t make that a habit, though (we haven’t won the lottery yet), so when we do see a movie, I’d like it to be a good one.  Saying “It’s going to be good because the book was so good” doesn’t cut it anymore.  What’s your take?

In elibris libertas…

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2015 at 4:00 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.