Movie adaptations

"Based on the New York Times bestseller..." How many times have you seen this plastered on the front of a movie poster or trailer, trying to sell you on how good the movie is going to be? And that's only a small portion of the number of movies are based on books. In fact, many people don't even realize some of the most popular movies are based on books. Some of the most fantastic cinematic experiences were text long before the hit the big screen, and those versions are frequently forgotten.

But there are also a great number of book to movie adaptations that are straight up terrible. There is one I can think of in particular, which I will refrain from naming so as to save you from some torture. But the movie changed nearly every plot point to the entire book, making an already cliche book into an even more cliche movie, with a much poorer plot and less interesting characters.

Now, I can understand that as far as telling a story goes, a movie will never be able to compare with a book. You are much more pressed for time, you can't get the same kind of inner thoughts in in a movie that you can in a book, and you just generally can't get the same kinds of build up and character understanding in a movie that you can in a book. Movies are much more about the visual for obvious reasons, but this also means that much of the story is told through that visuality rather than through dialogue or a character's thoughts.

Now, obviously there is place for preference, and there are some people who are all about that visuality that can only come from movies. But if that's what you're looking for, you're probably not looking for a story. You're looking for something that you can look deeper into, that you can get a meaning out of that may not have even been the creator's intent. Again, if that's what you're into, all the power to you, but that's not story telling. That's just shadowing.

With that being said, I have to wonder what goes through an author's mind when he is approached about the story he has written being made into a movie. Surely he has seen all of the books that have been ruined by terrible movies. He has loved his story like a child, raised it from the ground up. To let it into another's hands, to see it be taken and twisted and turned into being something that is both what he made and not... I can only imagine the pain he would feel because of that process.

So what makes that author choose to let the movie be made? Is it money? Is it fame? Is it a desire to see his story be brought to life in a way that he knows he can never achieve alone? Is it all of those things?

It's hard to say, and it varies from person to person. I've often thought about what might happen if I were to write a book that might be made into film. How I would want to see it accomplished, but how I would be afraid to see the failure. The thought that someone might be introduce to my work by a film that may not be representative of the way my stories truly are. It's a scary premise.

I don't know what I would say in that situation. Perhaps it would depend on who it was that was approaching me. Perhaps it would depend on how heavy a hand I was permitted to have in the filming process. But who knows. It would be difficult to say until the time comes.

But it's fun to dream that you might create something that others would want to act upon.