Nitpicking Film Adaptations

Last night, I saw The Golden Compass. Proving to be way more entertaining than the actual film itself was the reaction of the person sitting next to me who would keep yelling out "NO! NO! NO! THEY'RE SCREWING IT UP!" to himself when he disapproved of something or "YES! THEY DID THAT RIGHT!" when he approved of something.

This got me thinking: When you're watching a film adaptation of something you really enjoy, be it a book, play, or TV show, do you mind extreme changes that are done?

I think the only time I REALLY remember nitpicking something was with THE SIMPSONS MOVIE because that represents something that I grew up with.

Or, recently, the NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN movie proved to be an almost line-by-line adaptation of the book. Possibly because the book itself is already so cinematic.

It depends on the nature of the changes. For The Golden Compass, I didn't mind some of the plot changes, as so much happens in the book that it would be impossible to show it all in a movie. I did, however, dislike the way the ideology was so twisted to be as inoffensive as possible.

Movies that inspire less of a direct adaptation, like Brokeback Mountain, I tend to give a little more leeway in their vision. The short story the movie was based on is an incredibly sparsely-worded triumph of minimalism, but in making it a full-length movie, giving it a cinematic sweep and a grander scope was necessary and in my opinion worked very well.

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I thought BROKEBACK was one of the best adaptations I have ever seen--even the descriptive passages in the short story were captured on film almost exactly as I pictured them, which almost never happens.

I don't have a problem with movies being overly faithful to the stories/novels/plays they're adapted from. It isn't a problem that comes up often. The first two HARRY POTTER installments might qualify, though.

Sometimes adaptations go wrong in very small but telling ways. The 1941 film version of THE MALTESE FALCON is an almost line-by-line transcription of the book (which is written in a spare, tough-guy style that reads like a screenplay anyway.) Yet the movie leaves off the final coda (a discussion between Sam Spade and his secretary) which tells us unattractive things about the central character. This is Hollywood meddling, to keep the hero sympathetic.

MYSTIC RIVER is a mediocre book made into a horrific movie. The director, Clint Eastwood, kept the thin, contrived murder-mystery plot but filmed it in a slow, ponderous Important Movie style. At the same time, Eastwood did things like taking out the subtext of Marcia Gay Harden's character--the suggestion that she WANTED her husband found guilty of murder because she was attracted to Sean Penn's character--which gave Harden nothing to play but scaredy-cat. In Eastwood's movies, everyone is two-dimensionnal at most. To be fair, the Lady Macbeth speech by Laura Linney's character is just as stupid and unmotivated in the book.

The worst adaptation I ever saw was the movie version of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. That book is a child's nightmare come to life, full of wild swings between exhilaration and sheer terror. Steven Spielberg was supposed to film it, which would have been perfect--a movie that might have matched the movie that played in my head when I read the book. Instead, it was filmed (by Jack Clayton) in a flat, weak, TV-movie style that made no impression at all.

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the sex in the book is beyond hardcore its extremely graphic and disturbing in some instances.