From Print to the Big Screen

Adapting written works for the big screen is tricky business. Many considerations must be made, many of which will almost certainly be displeasing to those who read the book first. For instance, how does one cast the protagonist without keeping exclusively to the physical description? Regardless of how it is done, viewers will always make comparisons and not all of them will be positive. So then why do producers insist on making movies based on books? Why else, they're relying on a market already created by the authors.

Some of my first memories of films adapted from books were the Michael Crichton movies. Jurassic Park (and its sequels), Congo, and Sphere. While JP actually remained quite faithful to the novel, Congo and Sphere were horrible adaptations. The problem is the complexity of a book is simply too difficult to put onscreen. All thoughts held by characters must be voiced, making everyone sound like they must always be talking to themselves. Conversations generally fall along these lines:

[To him/herself]: "So this must explain why he said/did that...."
Other character: "What was that? Did you say something?"
First character: "Oh, no nothing. I was just thinking..."

Frank Herbert's Dune actually solved this problem by using voice-overs. And though this might sound like a perfect solution, it takes too much time and slows down dialogue. But to remove those thoughts altogether deprives viewers of the character development achieved through internal conversations.

Last night, I got a chance to see The Da Vinci Code. Based on Dan Brown's best-selling novel of the same name, it tells the story of a symbologist and a cryptologist attempting to uncover the truth about Jesus Christ and his bloodline. The book is a fast-paced action suspense thriller which takes readers from the Louvre Museum in Paris to Westminster Abbey in London, and various locales in between. Adaptation to the big screen seems like a fantastic idea, as it would allow readers to actually see all the beautiful locations described in the book. Unfortunately, the Code lost something in translation. Actors were poorly cast in all roles with the exception of Sir Leigh Teabing and Silas the Monk. Dialogue was stilted and jarring, as evidenced by Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon spouting off random symbological history whenever he felt it necessary (which to our disappointment, was often).

All of this might give the impression that I think all movie adaptations of books are bad, but that is far from true. Several films put out in the recent years have shown that literary works can be properly translated to film. Brokeback Mountain, for example, was an exceptional film. Adapted from Annie Proulx's short story, it made the leap with amazing clarity and poise. Granted, Brokeback Mountain was a short story with little dialogue and so would have been very easy to create for the big screen. Another prime example is the Spider-Man series. Thanks in large part to special effects and computer-generated graphics, Sam Raimi was able to put Spider-Man on the silver screen for all to see and enjoy. Comic books, admittedly are easier to do on screen because they are illustrated, but written originally nonetheless.

I guess the basic idea is that making a movie out of a book is hard to do because everyone has their own idea of how that book should look. The characters have their own voices, their own looks, and their own personalities. To put them onscreen is to take that away from viewers and to have them see what the director saw in his/her vision of the book. I think that's what makes people so angry about books which translate poorly to the screen, is that they've been deprived of the characters crafted so carefully, and intimately in their minds. But as we all know, that's not going to stop movie-makers from continuing to take written work and filming it. So read the books first, then see the movie.