Gotta say, the design of this shirt on Woot matches my experience. There are very few movie adaptations of books that I have found to be very good. Largely, I think that is because the mediums are so different. Things that work on the written page won't work on the big screen (or little, if you prefer, as I generally do.) For instance, the very common third person limited viewpoint from much of fantasy or sci-fi literature, or especially first person viewpoint used heavily in YA fiction don't translate well to movies. On the other hand, there are things that you can show with a facial expression (by a good actor) that would take too much page real estate to be worth putting in a book.
Then there's the fact that books are a collaboration between the author and the reader. So much of what goes on in the reader's head is left to the imagination of the reader rather than being strictly textual and deliberate by the author. Therefore, any fans of a book seeing a movie made of it will have so many of his expectations challenged that it will be very difficult for the movie to live up to the book for that reader. People experiencing the movie first don't have that problem though.
There are a few exceptions. The Princess Bride is one, and, for me, How to Train Your Dragon is another.
My preferred option would be for the movie studios to license the world the book creates, and tell original stories within that world. The stories would better fit the medium (visual versus textual) and the length would be more conducive to a movie's running time.
No comments:
Post a Comment