The Adaptation Dilemma

[The Mad Plumber]

I recently rented and watched The Watchmen in spite of my hesitancy to expose myself to another comic geek fan job ... and I probably was also thinking that the source material was Frank Miller for some reason and was thinking it would end up being like 300, The Spirit, or RoboCop 3. Hey, I'm not a comic buff and I don't know who Alan Moore is, okay? Surprisingly, though, I thought the movie was actually pretty good and certainly one of the better comic book movies I've seen in a while. I thought the story all came together nicely and it made a worthwhile experience.

Here's why I'm writing this thread, though. What I was remembering was somebody's video review where he was going on some angry diatribe about how he didn't like the movie and constantly saying, "This didn't happen in the comic book! That didn't happen in the comic book!" Or he'd bring up things like, "There's no squid!" What the hell is a squid? I thought it was a good movie. What bug crawled up his ass? Yeah, I've never read The Watchmen. I'm judging this movie on its own merits and, on its own merits, it's a good movie. Excuse me for not having read the comic book to understand, but I would venture a guess that putting in a squid (whatever the hell that is) might have actually spoiled the movie.

So, I thought I would start up this thread to get user insights on the dilemma of adapting other mediums to film.

Let me throw out a hypothetical scenario:

Let's assume, for this scenario, that I've never played any Metroid game before in my life and that I have next to no knowledge about anything in the Metroid franchise.

I go out to watch a Hollywood motion picture called Metroid, which is obviously based on this game franchise I know nothing about. The film Metroid is about a gruff, cigar-smoking man named Samus Aran played by Kurt Russell who battles monsters and aliens on the planet Zebes for money and glory. Now, for whatever reason, I find that I like this film a lot and I feel that my money was well spent. I consider it to be an enjoyable movie that I can watch again and again.

The next day, a friend asks me, "Did you see that Metroid movie?"

"Yeah, I loved it."

"You loved it!? Don't you know they totally screwed it up!? Samus Aran is supposed to be a woman!"

So, what is my reaction supposed to be? By the conditions of this scenario, I know nothing and don't give a damn about anything within the Metroid video games. Judging the film on its own merits, I like the film to a great degree. But now that I'm presented data about the original video game that I supposedly didn't care about in the first place, am I supposed to change my mind completely about the movie and start hating it?

Dubbing anime also seems to serve as a source of contention for people who like to comment on the internet (or in my unfortunate case, a cousin who's an otaku). "In Kiki's Delivery Service, they added things to Jiji's character that wasn't in the original Japanese version." I don't care. I happen to like the movie how they packaged it and I could care less if they added things to Jiji's character or changed dialogue in places; maybe the movie needed it. "In Princess Mononoke, they dumb down certain things or don't explain certain culture aspects." I'm not Japanese!! Miramax is try to package something for general audiences in the region that they are trying to sell the movie in. I don't know anything about Japanese religion or Japanese symbolism, and if I'm to be taught these elements, I need to take them in small doses.

I like when I read about anger over changes DiC Entertainment made to Sailor Moon, since I've got a sister who was a Sailor Moon junkie. "They changed Sailor Moon's real name! They turned one of the male villains into a girl! They changed this! They changed that!" Here's what I love about this: the only reason these people know about Sailor Moon in the first place is because DiC packaged it for them (and they need to admit that they fell in love with what DiC packaged), and they're only getting mad because some snobbish mudslinger told them to get mad.

My sister's also a Harry Potter junkie and she insists I go out to watch the films with her. Now, I don't much care for the first two films, but the films after that had been consistently decent. However, afterward, I have to hear about all the things in the book that got cut out of the movies, which seem to average around two-and-a-half to three hours each. I keep wanting to say, "Well, maybe those elements don't make for good cinema or would have resulted in a poorly knit together film." When she comments that something happens like it didn't happen in the book, then maybe she should just read her book.

A final brief thing to note is a film I watched recently called The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking. It's something of a nostalgic movie for me, but I didn't really like it when I was a kid and I still don't like it now. I think I glanced upon reviews where critics praised the film's adaptation of the source material. Well, even if the film did a magnificent job adapting the source material, the film still sucks. Not everything can make a good movie.

So, I'd like to hear other users' insights on the dilemma of adapting other mediums to film.

[GProopdog]

Going by your Metroid example, think about it this way...

suppose a person who was a *huge* Metroid fan went to see the movie.....and they saw Samus was played by Kurt Russell...When it's supposed to be a woman. This was a big plot point of the whole series, so to just blatantly change this would probably annoy people who are big fans of said series.

[BJ]

One phrase I find myself repeating when this subject comes up is "Books are books; movies are movies," although I can understand why people get upset when things aren't the way they expected. Hell, the Simpsons did an entire episode on this when Principal Skinner was exposed as a fraud named Armin Tamzarian. It was a well written, funny episode with a legendary guest star. And you know what, people hated it. I loved it.

I guess I just have a different mentality. One of my favorite novels is American Psycho. I love the movie, yet the endings are significantly different. I feel the same way about the Good German, where major plot points are switched around or combined in the film. However, in both these examples, the spirit and themes of the stories are the same in film and novel. That's what really matters.

So, I guess what I'm saying, is that if they made a Metroid movie with Kurt Russell, I'd think "what the hell?" at first, but then try my best to judge it on its own. Although, that doesn't mean much coming from me. OK, if they made an Escape From blank movie with Jessica Biel playing Snake Plissken, I'd be willing to give it a chance. In fact, I'd much rather see that than a remake of ESNY.


*a note of hypocrisy.

I hate the new Dodge Chargers, not because I think it's a bad design, but because I want it to look like the early 70's Charger. I guess we're all prone to illogical, emotional judgments sometimes, unless you're Spock.

[Torgo]

A movie needs to stand on its own two feet and not have to rely on adapting every goddamn detail of its source material.

My girlfriend and I constantly have a rather fiery debate over whether Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was a worthwhile film. She insists it was appalling that they cut out certain scenes and added extra ones. However, I believe the book itself wasn't easy to adapt, it being overly long on exposition and short on cinematic quality. What was cut out needed to be cut out, because sitting through constant dialogue and discussions over who has the hots for who and why Voldermort chose to be a bad, noseless, bald man are not worth the price of admission. And adding the battle scene at the Burrow was a grounding reminder of just how serious the situation was. Who cares that it wasn't in the book?

All I care about is that the product is good. It's possible to be faithful, but if it sucks then what is the point?

As for Watchmen, the squid sucked major ass. I, for one, was glad it was dropped from the movie.

[angilasman]

I had a different reaction to Watchmen: I thought they stuck too closely to the story (which is a high-wire act as it is) and it ended up detracting from the character drama (think the long, tortuous realization of Laurie on Mars which is the best part of the book and ended up an afterthought in the film). In short, it was too busy trying to cram all the story in then to contain the philosophical and emotional digressions that made the book so good. I would have rather an adaptation that changed the story more as long as it was true to what the book is about and not just what happened in it.

[GProopdog]

Yikes, I seem to be alone in my opinion here. I dunno, I think depending upon the movie, sometimes deviating from the book isn't the best of ideas IMO...

[Remy]

I'm with Torgo; a movie needs to stand on its own two feet. The fact of the matter is that books and movies are two very different mediums that have their own strengths and weaknesses in storytelling. Books can go on long diatribes, but movies (or scripts) have to hurry up and get to the point. As long as a movie's theme and general tone is consistent with the book, I'm fine with that. Take "Scott Pilgrim vs The World." That's a movie that was able to capture the spirit of the books and still cut out A LOT from them, and I'm fine with that; I don't need to see Scott Pilgrim get a job or see Knives Chau's dad. It's a movie! Besides, having a movie doesn't mean the books are wiped out from existence.

As for the Sailor Moon and Simpsons examples given earlier, I think those are more justified reasons to be angry...still silly, but more justified. In those cases, you have characters that you have already fallen in love with, and then one day you suddenly here that they aren't the people you've known all along; it's almost as if you've been lied to all these years. I know we're just talking about fictional characters here (and that's why the anger over it is so silly), but we have grown an emotional attachment to them.

And yes, plissken, I am one of the people that hates that episode.

[Satchmo]

I agree that, as long as a movie retains a book's context and subtext, the changes don't matter nearly as much. Still, when a movie changes a lot, it really hurts it in the long run. On its own, the film version of Thank You for Smoking is a biting, exemplary satire. But when compared to the book, it's missing something. When watching the movie, I was dissapointed to see that they cut out the entire last half of the novel, including my favorite scene. That doesn't mean that it wasn't effective or enjoyable, it certainly was, just that it didn't live up to my personal expectations.

Another example is the Swedish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As a standalone piece, it's a slick, brutal crime thriller that retains much of the gripping, no-punches-pulled atmosphere of Stieg Larsson's novel, and had a pitch-perfect performance of Lisbeth Salander by Noomi Rapace. However, in order to get that slick, streamlined feel, it cut out a lot of the book's character development. For someone who's read the book it's not that big of a deal, but I kind of felt sorry for anyone watching who hadn't read the novel, as none of the events would have the same impact. The reason the story is so gripping is because of how Larsson made sure that you knew Salander and Mikael Blomkvist inside and out, while still retaining a sense of enigma. It's a tough thing to pull off, but Larsson did it brilliantly. That was why the book worked. The plot's not much by itself; the characters were what made it a great read.

Maybe I'm just rambling, but I guess the point I'm making is that If you really get into a book, you're gonna be at least a little disappointed by the film. You form your own ideas of what w character looks like, how they sound, every little quirk they have, and those ideas are probably going to be different from what the filmmakers think. Avid readers can't really help but be disappointed by the deviations a film takes from it's source material.

Oh, and I'm also glad to hear that they got rid of the squid in the Watchmen movie. I'm still afraid to watch it though, because a lot of people say that it hollows out the deep psychological subtext of the graphic novel.

[crowschmo]

If you've read the book, if a movie follows it too closely, what's the point in seeing the movie? You already know the ending. If they change a few things here and there to keep some action going and keep you guessing a little, like, "ooh, is it going to end a different way, too?" it may keep it more interesting.

I guess it all depends on how well it's executed. If a movie followed a book too closely (unless it was a short story) it would be like 8 hours long. Or longer. It might need to be a series. There's lots of stuff crammed into books that just don't translate well into live action. Like, if someone's having a lot of internal dialogue or something, what are they going to do? Have that character SAY everything he or she is thinking? And they have to cut a lot of action down for time, too. Or add some action that was lacking in the book. Or have everything be like "My Dinner with Andre". I've never seen that. But I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of action going on.

As for the Potter books: I was always wondering how the hell screenwriter (I think his name is Steve Kloves?) was going to translate all that extra stuffing into the films. I think they did a good job with the series for the most part, but, there's some stuff they could have put in that wouldn't have taken too much longer that might have cleared a few things up. Like: Why the Half-Blood Prince called himself that. Hermione figures it out in the book, but, there's no explanation in the movie, he just announces that he's it. It's not even thrown in how he knows that Harry knows about that name. In the book, Harry says something about having the textbook with that name written in it. There's even a few cut scenes in some of the extras on some of the DVD's in the series that wouldn't have added much to the length of the movie, but added some explanations that might be needed later on.

I've often wondered if people who DIDN'T read those books even knew what the hell was going on in some instances. In the book, Tonks becomes involved with Remus, for instance, and in one film there's no hint of that, then in the next one, all of a sudden they're together, no explanation. Huh? Even some of the characters - I was wondering if anyone who didn't read the books even knew who's who. I DID read them, and even I was confused at times. I haven't read them fifty times, so I was trying to remember who they were - oh, yeah, that guy. Forgot about him/her. So, some things were done well, other things they could have improved upon.

It depends on whether or not you read a book, you will take different things away from seeing the movie based on it. If you like the book, you might resent changes, or you might think it makes it more interesting - a different take on it. I always think of the Potter books, for instance, as kind of parallel universes where the characters and the action are a little different. (I had a completely different image of Snape in my head for the book, as an example, yet I like Alan Rickman's version - but I just like him in stuff anyway).

Another example: Some movies based on Stephen King's books, I think, are even BETTER than the books, because they are trimmed down a bit - King definitely has a tendency to ramble, yet in other instances, the books are better, because there are more nuances and details.

So, after this long-winded (long-fingered? what's the typed version of that?) blather, I guess, the short version is, it just matters if the movie is good enough to stand on it's own, as was said.

[mylungswereaching]

I expect changes because you can't include anything because the movie would be 12 hours long on just a normal length book. I can't stand when they change basic plot lines or endings to force a happy ending. I get the feeling that if a major studio made a movie about the life of Jesus, they'd change the ending because you can't have the hero executed as a criminal.

[Torgo]

Jan 17, 2011 20:02:24 GMT -5 crowschmo said:

Why the Half-Blood Prince called himself that. Hermione figures it out in the book, but, there's no explanation in the movie, he just announces that he's it. It's not even thrown in how he knows that Harry knows about that name. In the book, Harry says something about having the textbook with that name written in it.

In a tiny bit of defense of the reveal of the Prince, my reaction in the film was the same as my reaction in the book. "Good for you. Now why should I care?"

The identity of the Half-Blood prince wasn't really that important in the long run. If it weren't the title of the book, I would have expected it to be cut out of the movie entirely, because it really didn't matter. It has no bearing on Harry's story whatsoever. Rowling has a tendency for over-detail, which I admit is probably why so many admire her, myself included. It's amazing that she's put so much thought into it, but when she digresses into plots and ideas that don't really matter, then I feel like skipping ahead.

The entire story of the Half-Blood Prince was an example of this. I was hoping that it might have been proven to be setup for Deathly Hallows, but it was never followed up. All this storyline did was confirm something we've known since book 1: Snape is good with potions and dark magic.

The only instances I felt the movies have kicked themselves in the ass so far have been the authors of the Marauder's Map and the shard of mirror Harry had in Deathly Hallows. Neither of which were established earlier in the film series, but act as if they're well known in later entries. But then again I always hated how Pettigrew started going by "Wormtail" from Goblet of Fire-on in the books as well. Was that really necessary? I was hoping they'd just call him by his real name in the movies after they cut out the the Marauder's story. But meh.

[Mighty Jack]

Books are books, movies are movies. I don't get too beat up over changes as long as the film is good. They are different mediums, each with strengths and weaknesses. Each have to exploit those strengths to the best of their ability. A few thoughts.

* I actually prefer the movie of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to the book. The book was too detailed, too exhaustive. I was happy they sliced out the fat and got to the point. The movie does require a lot of attention to make it all make sense. But I was able to figure it out.

* I like what Millar said when asked about changes made to Kick-Ass. He told a story about (I believe) Raymond Chandler, or someone like that. Who was asked about how he felt about the movies destroying his novels. The author pointed to his bookshelf where his work was kept and made a comment about how his books were still there, nothing was destroyed or ruined. You want that story, you can have that story. The movie is simply another take.

* Michael Connelly had the same attitude when asked about changes made to "Blood Work" - "I took their money," he said, "So it was their turn to tell the story". It's not like his story up and disappeared.

* As for Alan Moore. Well that guy bitches and moans about every stinking little detail. When doesn't he complain... about everything. So I just enjoy his work, while ignoring the grumpy old man screaming at me to get off his damn lawn!

[Mighty Jack]

Re-reading the original post – the part about Kiki’s Delivery Service? That’s actually a separate issue to my mind. That's more about translation and alteration on an original piece.

What I mean is, if I record a cover of the Beatles “A Day In The Life”, I can pretty much do whatever I want. Sing it, arrange it, play it anyway I want. The song becomes a new version, a separate entity. But if I take the Beatles original recording and replace the orchestral climax with kazoos, because I think that’s what American audiences want, now I’ve messed with someone’s personal artistic vision.

Translation has its own difficulties – with Dante’s Divine Comedy for example, it’s not enough to translate the story, you also have to maintain the integrity of the poetry - The rhyme scheme and tempo of the piece.

So I understand the need to make changes; some words don’t translate directly for example. Buuut.

While you might not be Japanese, you are watching a Japanese film. I’m not Russian, but when I read my beloved Russian lit, I want to be immersed in that culture, in the customs, and the social/political norms. I don’t want to be the ugly American and be pandered too, I don’t want to open the Brothers Karamazov and read that Ivan works as a fry cook at McDonalds. By the very nature of language the book will be altered enough as it is. Besides, it’s good for the soul to do a little digging, it broadens ones horizons and makes life a lot richer not having everything form fitted to a limited worldview.

A few minor changes in translation are okay and to be expected. And subtitles can have their own alterations and mistakes. I’ve watched several different subs for the Seven Samurai, and each give their own flavor, but still manage to keep it within Kurosawa’s vision. (And in the few incidences where they don’t, it’s fun to listen to the audio commentary where I can discover the actual subtext or whatnot)

To close: The worse damage Miramax has done was with Johnny To's "Heroic Trio". They restored it alright, made it real purty... but they cut out scenes and changed dialog to such a degree that the movie makes no sense anymore. To me, that's not adaptation, that's painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.