Is there any point in . . . .

[j_mercuryuk]

My question:
Is there any point in making a film of a book, if it's exactly the same as the book? Do you want little extra bits added in?
Just one of my many random thoughts.
I'm not talking about if it's possile to make a film exactl the same, just what would YOU like.

By the by, if you get confused, by keeping to the plot i mean that they can make as many changes as they like as long as the basic plotline is still there.
And by idea, i mean they make whatever changes (including to the plotline) as long as they follow the meaning and the orginal idea behind the book.

[granath]

I'm wavering between idea and plot.

[Mausey]

It depends on how badly the book is mutilated. For example the movie Starship Troopers isn't even close to the book. The only thing they kept the same was the bugs. They could have stayed a lot closer to the idea and they didn't, possibly because it's an older book and they didn't think some of the ideas would come across or be accepted today. It's still a good movie if you like action, lots of explosions and a bit of romance, it just doesn't stay true to the book.

The Lord of the Rings had to be severely pruned and rearranged a bit so it would work as a movie due to sheer length. I love the movies, but admit I haven't read the books in ages so I don't remember how badly they were changed. For me the movies are wonderful to some people they're horrid and they won't even look at them.

All a matter of opinion.

[AnnMarie]

I think if they are going to make a book into a movie, they need to stick close to the book.... no adding heeros that aren't in the book, changing settings, turning a male character into a female and adding romance....

Maybe that's why I prefer mini-series based on books, to movies based on books. Movies from short stories work better than movies from full length novels, IMO.... YMMV

[C_ris]

I think that they should keep both the plot and the idea. It shouldn't, and couldn't, be exactly the same as the book. Some bits have to go or be moved, but it must be easily recognisable. If its too far from the book, why make it on the book???

[Lara]

I didn't vote because, for me, it must be faithful to the idea and the plot. I can't be doing with box-office embellishments or directors who are more interested in putting their own stamp on a work than in being a mouthpiece for the author. In fact, I'd rather not see any book I enjoy and appreciate made into a film. I like the cinema, but would rather see original screenplays than butchered versions of my favourite books. Please don't mention "The Lord of the Rings" in my hearing, unless you want to discuss only the book!

Afterthought: one notable exception to my dislike of "the film of", was Peter Brook's B/W version of "The Lord of the Flies" (1963). No filmed version is ever going to be entirely true to the original, but this one came closer, IMO, than any other I've seen.

[Kater]

I agree with c_ris for the most part. Sometimes sticking to the book exactly can be hard. But I also agree with AnnMarie that no major new characters should be added and no switching of gender.

[jjmouse]

If you are going to do a movie based on a book, you need to follow both idea and plot.

You also need to remember SOME details.

One of my favorite books was turned into a movie. Included a leading man that I thought would not be half bad in the title role. They changed a major detail of the book. The boat went from being a "barge type houseboat" to some sort of a sail boat. Stupid. They made the lead smary too. Blech. Not the White Knight I was expecting. Ruined the whole movie for me.

If you read the books, you want a movie to follow the book.

Gone With the Wind movie followed the book pretty good. Yes, it left out Scarlet's many children. But really, who missed them?

John Grisham sells a lot of books. I don't see why. Save your money, wait a year, there will be a movie that follows the book almost word for word.

So there is an arguement for and against following the books.

However, a movie on Pern would have to follow the books closely. To many fans would know the difference, or know the part left out. There would be parts that could be left out just as there are some memorable scenes that would need to be included.

Nit pickers would still nit pick.

[granath]

I love LotR, both the book (yes, it's one book in three parts and not a trilogy, it was only published in three parts because paper was still scarce in the mid-50s and the publisher didn't want to take a huge risk on a 1000+ page book that might flop) and the movies, both on their own terms.

The changes that were made for plot reasons I'm not too bothered about, because the movies still take me to Middle-Earth whenever I watch them. That's the whole idea, isn't it? Although to be fair, I'm not surprised it took almost 50 years for that book to be made into movies. One thing I particularly like is the way lines by left-out characters shows up, said by someone else (Treebeard getting some of Tom Bombadil's lines in the TTT EE, there are others).

I haven't seen I, Robot yet, but I'm prepared to enjoy it on its own terms, even though the only things it has in common with Asimov's book are the Three Laws.

[j_mercuryuk]

if i think of the flm as a film, not as a film of the book, i'll enjoy it. exact when they really mess it up or take out some of my favourite bits. i like some of the changes made in films, it gives you a differnt view/ something to make alitle interesting.

but i've seen ones where they completely ****** it up. i'm thinking of the t.v series of redwall. they almost changed everything about the plot. it was horrible (almost as bad as the art). didn't klike the animation art either.

[Faren]

I think it should stay as close to the plot and idea of the book as possible. I want to at least be able to recognize the book in the movie.

[Anareth]

Okay, hard question to answer. (I will not use LOTR as an example because I consider the books textual Valium and as such am the wrong person to say whether they were "good" adaptations--as far as I am concerned anything that made them shorter was good.)

I don't get hairy over details. To examine jjmouse's example--unless there were some absolutely critical reason for the plot (a plot device that doesn't work otherwise), my reaction would be, sailboat, houseboat, they're boats, they float. People's hair and eye color, not a big issue, second-tier character gender-benders can sometimes work, and adding romance only bugs me if it's an absurd place to have romance (like if they remade "Sink the Bismark" and threw in a love story. For that someone would have to be beaten.) But the plot skeleton needs to be the same, or why not just write your own movie and don't worry about the book? And the ideas need to be basically the same, or at the most minorly tweaked for a visual medium--you shouldn't take a book whose message is that collectivism inevitably leads to dictatorship and turn it into a filmed version of the Communist Manifesto. That's unfair to the author and false advertising to the viewers. You CAN fiddle a little, but it's a fine line.

It's important to remember--film is a visual medium. There are very few of us who write from a visual perspective (I do and it makes it hard for me to write because I think in pictures AND words, more like a movie in my head) and so it can be difficult to impossible to translate books EXACTLY to the screen. Even to adapt them. I'll use two examples here, one where the idea would need to be tweaked for TV, one where the plot would.

Those who read the "Forever Knight" thread at the OKT saw my screed about the Spelling-produced TV show "Kindred: The Embraced", based loosely on the White Wolf game Vampire: The Masquerade. There was a case where the plot skeleton was intact, but the idea was slaughtered. It was as if they were afraid of the source material. Now, I play this game, and as such I recognize that as-is it's not suitable for prime time. In fact if you adapted it directly it would only be on at 1am on cable pay channels. So, fan screaming or not, cuts would have to be made--the violent elements would have to be toned down, some of the wackier religious elements would probably need to go. The producers of K:TE were right in principle, and only ran into problems because they overreacted and completely bowdlerized it--everything that could be considered dark or offensive or even frightening was removed and we were left with a schizoid show that was half police drama, half gangland with some vaguely vampiric overtones and completley insipid. They had the right idea but went too far.

Now, my other example is the one that'll get me beaten up here, but it's Dragonriders. There are basically three books that could work as a TV series pilot or first film of a series: Dragonflight, Dragonsong/singer, and Dragonsdawn. Not one of them could be translated to the screen basically intact. DS would be the easiest, because it's a simplistic plot, but that is also an argument against it as a launching point: the 'hook' of the series (telepathic dragons fighting an evil menace) is secondary, and the main plot is a straightforward teenage coming-of-age/wish fulfilment thing, centered around the old chestnut of the genre, music. Firelizards aside, there's nothing to make it jump out. DS could only survive as a film with other films coming before it, to give the plot an original context.

That leaves DF and Ddawn. Ddawn is simply too meandering and lacks a clear protagonist to be a feature film. Sometimes it's Sallah, sometimes we're focused on Paul, Emily, and the scientists, sometimes on Sean and Sorka (where another problem arises--too much time with them as kids.) There are in fact really two plots, the colony-threat from within-Sallah-Avril plot, which starts when they arrive in orbit and ends when Sallah and Avril die, and the Sean-Sorka-dragon plot which really begins with the discovery of the firelizards, jumpstarts with the First Fall, and ends at the end of the book with the dragonriders triumphant. The two plots function almost exclusively to each other, and of the two the one more useful for a film is the latter, which has the fun of the dragons and the long-term villain. The problem with that plot is it leaves big leaps of years from childhood to adulthood, and the scientific tinkering with dragonets is a little nonvisual. It's still, however, a better plot than the Sallah et al story, which boiled down is just a standard SF colonial story--just putting it on Pern doesn't make it interesting because it's really just backstory, significant only in its relationship to the Thread-dragons plot. If I were the director, that would be the one that got sliced out for time--the only way I'd do both would be if I had a four-hour miniseries to work with, in which case the Sallah plot would be at the start--but I'd either pump up Sean and Sorka and the firelizard/dragon's level of activity or push everything that happens in it much closer to their arrival on Pern, including the Fall. That would cut to the chase more, get rid of gaps requiring expository fill, but it would also mean fiddling with character ages. It would make a better, tighter, film, but it wouldn't be true to the book.

Now, DF--DF has another problem. It's got plenty of straightforward plots, it's not overloaded with extraneous characters--but that's the problem. Plots, plural. This isn't a flaw of the book, which is really three or four novellas put together, but it's a problem adapting it into a movie. A miniseries would also be tricky, as some parts are talkier than others. Basically there's rather a lot in the middle where nothing visually interesting happens. (The mating flight, Lessa and F'lar and the bronze riders talking, etc.) There are some points that could be visually stunning, the best of which is when the wings kidnap the Lords' women and appear over the makeshift army with them, and Lessa arrives, too, on Ramoth, but there are others which, while they read well, would be really hard to translate--the mating flight, teaching Lessa to go between, basically anything where there's more going on mentally. Of all the books DF has the least-insurmountable problems here, and matters could be dealt with, but it would have to be streamlined, too--a lot of talky parts would have to be cut. For example Weyr Search would need to be truncated--I'd cut all the visits F'lar and F'nor make with Fax to his other Holds (that would just require either only mentioning Lytol in their dialogue or moving him to Ruatha, neither of which is a major problem), and just pick up with Lessa's morning at Ruatha and the dragonriders arriving the same day. Again, the dragons are the interesting part--get Lessa to the Weyr and Impressed to Ramoth quickly or you will confuse and lose your audience. For the second novella--possibly use a montage to show time passing, as the whole "three years later" title card is a bit hackneyed, gloss over a lot of what happens before Ramoth's flight, and get to F'lar as Weyrleader and the REAL conflict of the book as quickly as possible: Thread is coming, and Pern isn't ready. That's the real problem--that is the major arc plot of the book, and it takes a LONG time to get there. Originally this was not a problem as these were individual novellas, but a movie can't afford to meander. And the first two at least are not visually imposing enough to carry a two-hour movie themselves--there isn't enough BIG conflict. Not to mention having Lessa's revenge and F'lar-wants-to-be-Weyrleader as the main plots is a little disingenuous--the really important matter is Thread, and the sooner you get to that plot, the better.

So with DoP, the important part is idea, and the plot would need help to make it work for a movie. I would hate to be the director and have to deal with fan whinging about it, but I'd still make the cuts.

[prekharper]

I like to see it close, but realize that with two different media, it can't be exactly the same.

As to mini-series adaptations instead of movies, I invariably forget to watch part 2, so they don't suit me at all.

[Kugai]

I Think that as long as the Plot, characters and ideas of the book are properly translated and followed in the film, and not butchered ('Starship Troopers' and the 'Dune' film come to mind) then I think any book is translatable.

There has to be some leeway, some ideas in a book don't translate across, and have to be dropped or altered slightly, but as long as the Producer/Director/Creator of the film holds true to the book, then I have little or no problem with a little 'Ceative Licence' creeping in.

[maiken]

I would like it to stick as much to the series as possible. In the Harry Potter movies they left a lot of important stuff out that was in the book. If they made major changes to the plot or characters or left to much stuff out, it couldn't really be called a DoP movie could it? If you change to much it just becoms a movie that has the same characters and setting as the book... :redfruit: They should stick to it as well as they possibly can!


mai :2cent:

[Shadow*]

For me it pretty much depends on whether I have read the book beforehand.

If I've read the book I then spend the entire film nit-picking the alterations that the film makers have made which detracts from my enjoyment.
If I haven't read the book then it doesn't bother me, although I might be inspired to read the book at a later date just to see how much difference there is.
Films being a short visual experience don't seem as memorable, while reading a book allows a deeper reflection of the characters (feelings and motives) as well as a more complex storyline.

[Selene]

I hate it when they change essential elements and put in their own fiction insted as in Return of the King grrr :mad2:

[maiken]

ME TOO! ME TOO!!!!
Sorry...to angry there...

mai :noface:
:applause: :applause: Go Selene!! :applause: :applause:

[granath]

I don't. Even though they changed the story somewhat, it's still closer to Middle-Earth than we'll ever get.

[Sandi]

I hate it when they change essential elements and put in their own fiction insted as in Return of the King grrr :mad2:

Actually, they did that in all three LotR movies :eek: But what really made me :banghead: was the way they changed and often belittled some of the major characters. I think the King of Rohan and the Steward of Gondor would have been better off left out than having their personalities so butchered.

[Earthmother]

The way the author wrote it for me! :devil: :D

[Ravien Coromana]

some movies based on books are good, and i like them with the stuff added in, but i hate it when they take stuff out. like one of my good friends says, "Any book longer than 40 pages gets mutlitated in the theatre"

[JayEgo]

OK, so I haven't read all of your comments above so I don't necessarily expect you all to read mine either but I will just add my own initial thoughts on this...

I personally think that so long as a film is appealing, well constructed and written, acted well and enjoyed, it shouldn't matter how close or far apart from a book it is, unless it is being heavily advertsied as being the film of the book. In the case of the Harry Potter movies, I think they're close enough as to be acceptable translations from book to screen. In the case of I Robot, the film has pretty much nought to do with the book. It's a matter of taste and opinion always but I think it depends on advertising personally.

Ja¥son xx

[Kitsch]

Well I think since film and written literature are two very different genres of entertainment I feel that so long as the basic spirit of the book and as much of the detail as is practicable is kept in I am happy.

I admit to being miffed that they missed the Quidditch winning match out of the last Harry Potter film as I thought it was really important to Harry's character development.

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

As much as I'd love to see a movie exactly the same as the book, most of the time it just is not possible, so I have to be satisfied with that. Although the Princess Bride was extremely close to the book, and the stuff they left out/changed was reasonable for the sake of the movie. Most of the dialogue was near to exactly the same as the book.

As for a DoP movie - I doubt it will ever happen, at least one that will do it justice. There is just too much going on, and too many secondary plots. I adore them as books, but do not see how a traslation to film would be possible. A tv series would be ideal, but then theres the problem of expense. It would only be good if the world of Pern were beleivable, and very good dragons. So far on any tv series I've seen the CGI is not that impressive. So it probably won't be for some time that a satisfactory rendering will be accomplished. But it isn't all about the visuals. A good movie is based on good dialogue and plot and character building, not blow-your-mind special FX, although they do complement a film well. If I had my choice, I'd love to see a trilogy of Pern movies that are 100% CGI. Then it might be easier to pull off a more convincing world of Pern, and still have good acting and character building. But for a lengthy movie that would be extremely expensive.

[Just Bob]

The way I see it, people make films of books so that they can have a visual impression of the events in the book, rather than having to imagine them. If that's not what you get, it could be argued that it's not worth doing. A book is more than just a plot, and anything left out reduces the enjoyment for people who want to watch the film because they want to see those bits.

[McClance]

I chose the first option, but should have gone for the second.

As long as nothing important is cut out, or important scenes are taken out of order, i'm happy. :)

There are times when it would be good to add something for clarification (like in the 1960 release of The Time Machine).

[Just Bob]

The emphasis on the poll is with bits being added in. Sorry sis, but in my experience, the main problem is with bits being removed from a book in order to make it filmable. Added bits seem, if anything, to be benificial to a story, fleshing it out and making it more interesting.

[JayEgo]

Well I think since film and written literature are two very different genres of entertainment I feel that so long as the basic spirit of the book and as much of the detail as is practicable is kept in I am happy.

I admit to being miffed that they missed the Quidditch winning match out of the last Harry Potter film as I thought it was really important to Harry's character development.Face it... You just fancy Oliver Wood don't you? :evil:

I do :noface:

Ja¥son xx

[j_mercuryuk]

The emphasis on the poll is with bits being added in. Sorry sis, but in my experience, the main problem is with bits being removed from a book in order to make it filmable. Added bits seem, if anything, to be benificial to a story, fleshing it out and making it more interesting.

forgot about that. some people though, do complain about added bits.
besides, i think that answers 3 & 4 pretty much cover the cut outs, and if not, thats why other is there.