Changes to books made by movie producers - WHY?

[NHHEMI]

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. IMO if a book is good enough to be turned into a movie why must those who do so always feel the need to change things? And by change I mean add things not in the book or change things so that different people do them, the timeline is different, etc...? I understand small changes for impossible things, or needing to explain things left vague in the book, but so many make major changes to the story line that they jump out at you and can ruin any chance of enjoying the movie.

There was some of that for me in the Lord Of The Rings and the Hobbit movies. More in the Hobbit movies. I liked the LOR movies better because they were closer to the books than the Hobbit. In both, while I still enjoyed them, I was always finding myself saying that isn't right.

With that said, fast forward to the present and we have the made for TV series called the Shannara Chronicles. It is supposed to be a multi part series/movie about The Elf Stones of Shannara, one of many Shannara series books written by Terry Brooks. If you like fantasy stuff like the Lord Of The Rings or the Hobbit you would like the Shannara books. They are one of my favorite series of books. I have read all of them.

When I saw the ads for the new series I was jacked and I immediately set my DVR to record the 1st episode. I had always wondered why no one had ever done it before. I was skeptical though about how true the story line would be? Turns out my skepticism was well placed. I only made it about half way through episode 1 before I was so disgusted that I turned it off. Not because of the movie quality, although it wasn't great, but because of the massive changes and not true to the book additions made that I couldn't stand it.

I think the thing that saddens me the most is that the author apparently agreed to the changes( some say for the pay day which to be honest is the only thing I can think of too ). Why would you let someone butcher your work like that? The guy is a very successful author so it can't be out of need for money you would think.

Anyway...

Does it bother anyone else when movies are so vastly different from the books?

 

[spackard]

Well, no one has made a successful translation to a movie out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As in, the book is an exhaustive philosophical challenge to a socialist-style government of society, and the movies don't really scratch the surface.


The people who read books are a different audience from those who watch movies, in general. To be financially successful you have to craft your work to the audience. For an extreme example, look at GHT, whose only world is video.

 

[supton]

Mostly I don't get worked up over entertainment.

I was peeved when Tom Clancy's movies were butchered, but eh, the books were just as good as always. Actually, now reading them got better: for whatever butchering may have occurred, when I read, new visions "dance" in my head (for a lack of a better term); the movie added a different aspect which I didn't have before, bits I couldn't envision.

*

I was recently in a Scrooge play, which kept mostly to the story but then had some things added in, being an adaptation and all. I have to wonder if Dickens would mostly be happy that people thought him relevant & entertaining over a century later.

It also can be interesting to compare different takes and remakes to see what elements are in the story--like comparing the play I was in against the Muppet's version against Bill Murray's version.

 

[gman2304]

Poetic license ?

 

[Leo99]

Ever see the 1931 version of Frankenstein? I was shocked when I read the book as the focus and meaning was so much different.

Atlas Shrugged was a tough read. The movies are even worse.

 

[KrisZ]

You can always read the new breed of books, written in a very simple language so that the audience feels smart reading them and that are written in such a way that can be easily transferred to a movie.
Hunger Games comes to mind. I read those before the movies came out because my wife got all excited about them. Reading them I could not help but feel that it was written with a movie in mind. Extremely easy read, relatively simple plot, written only from protagonist's perspective with occasional flashbacks as fillers to the plot. I was not surprised when the movies were announced. And they don't stray away from the books too much.

IMO, from my experience, movies based on excellent books most of the time don't do them justice. And movies based on poor books can be excellent or just as poor as the book.
But whether the book is excellent or bad, in my experience the book is always the better one when compared to the movie.

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: spackard
Well, no one has made a successful translation to a movie out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As in, the book is an exhaustive philosophical challenge to a socialist-style government of society, and the movies don't really scratch the surface.


The people who read books are a different audience from those who watch movies, in general. To be financially successful you have to craft your work to the audience. For an extreme example, look at GHT, whose only world is video.


IMO you really nailed it.

I cannot recall any movie that measured up to the original book. Reading is quickly being forgotten...

 

[Andrew1972]

They are two different experiences. Books are not consumed in 1.5 to two hours typically. Movies and plays are.

 

[gman2304]

If you've read the book, the movie is almost always disappointing.

 

[UNC017]

I was pretty disappointed in the recent miniseries made from 'Childhood's End' for different reasons. Plot-wise it actually stayed very close to the book (the beauty of having 6-ish hours of film time), but somehow there was a change in the whole tone and feel of the final act of the story.





Rather than coming off as a bittersweet yet amazing transition that happened to the human race and allowed the 'children' to head out to explore the universe, like it was in the book, it was just sorta unpleasant and the sadness of the 'normals' time coming to an end dominated completely. And the sadness of the fact that the Overlords were a species somehow incapable of making the transition that the humans made, and instead were tasked with repeatedly helping other species make the transition that they knew they never could make was completely brushed over in about 2 sentences.

So far, NOBODY has really translated an Arthur C. Clarke book very well. '2001' was a visually beautiful but exposition-free mess that only worked if you'd read the book. Or were high, I suppose... '2010' was probably the best and Clarke himself was involved, but it was still weak sauce compared to the book and one entire sub-plot had to be abandoned to save time.

 

[raytseng]

The biggest factor is thst the end of the day a tv or movie is money. The show or movue needs to be able to be sold otherwise it does not get made at all.

There are examples of high concept tv shows where they had grand plans of multi season arcs only to get canceled in season 1.

If you have a particular vision and you pony up the couple hundred million dollars to make it with no expectations of return, then you get to make it however you want.

In general the executives have some say in what they think is going to sell or not. They are ponying up the money so they fet to make some of the decisions.

As far as authors go, some are more world makers who would love their stories to be shown to a wider aueience even if it means compromising or interpretting it differently. If you are getting disturbed by this even though the creator is OK with it, perhaps this says more about you and your inflexibility.

Shannara has often been criticed as just being derivative anyway.

Others may hold a particular story close to their heart and not let it go for money until they find the right director. See shawshank redemption where Stephen king famously gave it to darabont for the token sum of $5000 or so

 

[raytseng]

Originally Posted By: KrisZ
You can always read the new breed of books, written in a very simple language so that the audience feels smart reading them and that are written in such a way that can be easily transferred to a movie.
Hunger Games comes to mind. I read those before the movies came out because my wife got all excited about them. Reading them I could not help but feel that it was written with a movie in mind. Extremely easy read, relatively simple plot, written only from protagonist's perspective with occasional flashbacks as fillers to the plot. I was not surprised when the movies were announced. And they don't stray away from the books too much.

IMO, from my experience, movies based on excellent books most of the time don't do them justice. And movies based on poor books can be excellent or just as poor as the book.
But whether the book is excellent or bad, in my experience the book is always the better one when compared to the movie.


I think youre a bit off target here. I dont think the books are intended to be movies, but what you've hit upon is many movie studios are drawing from young adult genre books (as well as superheros) to be as their tentpole movies. Which has the straightforward writing and tendencies that you noticed. Young adult genre doesn't mean only YA enjoy them, but it has specific plots and characteristics.
Its a result that those movies since harry potter haven been proven to be financially nobrainer, not that the books have beeen specifically written that way. YA books have been written that way for a long time.

 

[HerrStig]

John Mortimer's Rumpole series transitioned to television perfectly.

 

[KGMtech]

Two pages of text describing a scene or a feeling cost the author his or her time only. Not so easy for the movie director to have the same economy.

 

[raytseng]

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Originally Posted By: spackard
Well, no one has made a successful translation to a movie out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As in, the book is an exhaustive philosophical challenge to a socialist-style government of society, and the movies don't really scratch the surface.


The people who read books are a different audience from those who watch movies, in general. To be financially successful you have to craft your work to the audience. For an extreme example, look at GHT, whose only world is video.


IMO you really nailed it.

I cannot recall any movie that measured up to the original book. Reading is quickly being forgotten...

Minority report was better than the short story it was based on. As was total recall.

Schlindlers list the book was also much better as a movie.

Game of Thrones the TV series is arguable more palatable than the books, especially the later ones where GRRM becomes just caught up in endless descriptions of banquets and troop movements and so on and tangents that go nowhere.
There are many who just plain skip or skim-read over chapters for characters /plot linesthey don't care for, and it ends up making no difference anyway.

 

[Virtus_Probi]

I saw "No Country For Old Men" long before reading the book...absolutely loved the movie and had high hopes for the book after reading a glowing essay about Cormac McCarthy. Found that the Coen bros had generally been faithful to the text, but there were some significant differences.

The initial confrontation of Anton Chigurh and Llewelyn Moss is quite different...in the book, Moss has the hitman dead to rights and passes on the chance to kill him. The remainder of the shootout basically only involves those two in the movie, but a number of others get involved in the book. I would imagine that the Coens wanted to keep things simple and may have also imagined that Moss choosing not to kill Chigurh was not very believable (much like the agua decision earlier in the story).
When Carla Jean Moss is killed in the book, Chigurh offers her the coin flip and she makes a choice, but loses...in the movie, she is defiant and refuses the flip and tells Chigurh the coin has nothing to do with it, "It's just you." Anton replies, "I got here the same way the coin did", and then shoots her (as is made clear by him checking his boot bottoms for blood).
My guess is that the Coens wanted to make Carla Jean a stronger, more appealing character by standing up to Chigurh even though she has no way to fight back. My own feeling is that Chigurh violated his own "rules" by offering the coin flip to a person he had promised to kill, leading to his grevous injuries in his subsequent car accident.

 

[gman2304]

In the movie, didn't he offer the same coin flip to an old man who was a clerk in a store? But decided not to kill him. My memory isn't what it used to be. Great movie by the way.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Sometimes things in a novel, no matter how affecting for us, the readers, don't translate well to the visual world of the movie. For example, mystery movies began to get around this during the "explanation" scenes in the '70s by cutting in visual flashbacks to whatever the detective was explaining. See Murder on the Orient Express, The Last of Sheila, etc. Sometimes a subplot is loads of fun for the author and the reader, but the director thinks it would distract from the overall effect of the film.

There have been only about 3 films I've seen which were better overall than the novels they were based on: Wolfen by Whitley Strieber, Die Hard (the novel is Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp), and The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. The films either "opened up" the story in a significant way -- for example, Die Hard gave us the memorable character of Hans the villain, who is only sketched in the novel -- or cut out a lot of explanation or discussion, as in Red October. True Grit and Rosemary's Baby both transcribed their respective novels to the screen with remarkable faithfulness. And sometimes the movie provides a better ending to, or a better explanation for something in, the novel: see Cape Fear (the original with Mitchum and Peck) or Goldfinger.

Personally I'd be thrilled if one of my stories should be translated to the screen with even moderate attention to the original. To see one's characters come to life on a screen must be one heck of a charge.

 

[HerrStig]

As I mentioned recently, "Piece of Cake" by Derek Robinson was written about a Hurricane unit in WWII, but BBC"adaption" used Spitfires. There were no flying Hurricanes at at the time. One of the important threads running through the book was "The Spit pilots get the glory while WE do the work". The figures from the Battle of Britain bear that out. In the book "Jaws" by Benchley, the oceanographer is a punk who tries to do the police chief's wife, in the movie he's a hero.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Originally Posted By: HerrStig
. . . In the book "Jaws" by Benchley, the oceanographer is a punk who tries to do the police chief's wife, in the movie he's a hero.

That's a good one -- in fact I thought Jaws the film was more entertaining and exciting than the soap opera goings-on in the novel. Benchley himself collaborated on the screenplay, so perhaps he took the opportunity to cut out some stuff he no longer liked.