by Solomons Song » October 7th, 2007, 11:10 pm
I apologize if my wording in my previous post was a little too heavy. I wasn't deliberately attacking Mr. Adamson. I only meant that when books are made into film, the hardest critics are typically the lovers of the books, and the directors of these movies need to be prepared for this.
There always seem to be some component the readers of the books regard as an essential component, which is drastically changed, or conveniently gets left out of the movie. For the most part, directors seem able to keep the "core" plot intact, but it is always interesting to see what components were sacrificed or altered.
Another thing I personally have with many movie adaptions. When someone is a hog-wild fan of the books, and then the movie comes out, all his friends run to see the movie to see what the big deal is. And when the adaption doesn't adequately seize the true spirit and scope of the story, their friends sort of have a "what's the big deal?" reaction to the movie. Don't misunderstand me, I applaud Walden Media for striving to bring more books to the screen. In fact, I really enjoyed Flaherty's article in about this very thing. But when print to film transitions contain so much dilution, it makes it hard for those of us to state our case that books are eternally a better medium for the transmission of good stories than the screen will ever hope to be.
Take my friend. For years I told him how good LotR was. I told him nearly every facet of narrative art was in the book. Narration, poetry, lyrics, myth... It is all in there. He never read it.
After watching all three movies, his reaction was, "Good story, good special effects, but not really better than any other fantasy movie." When I told him it really cannot be compared to the book, he implored me that there's no way he could read the book now, even if he wanted to. He has walked away, just like 95% of everyone else who's seen the movie, with a profoundly skewed perception of Tolkien's great epic.
At any rate, I will get off my soapbox now. But for my part, I must say all the speculated deviation I am seeing regarding PC is a little disconcerting.
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