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Six out of seven people whom I know read novels and watch the adaptation movies say that the movies aren’t as good as the novels. I always thought that notion is irrelevant. You cannot compare two completely different things to say that one is better than the other. The only similarity between books and movies is, in my opinion, that it is a way of telling stories. Come to think of it, everything from newspaper and internet content is a way of telling stories, but we don’t compare them arbitrarily.
I don’t know why people adapt books to movies, but I have some ideas (without any guarantee that even one being correct). One, if I were a moviemaker I would say, hey that’s one Oscar book. Two, if I were a movie producer I would say, hey that’s another book of US$ 500 millions blockbuster potential (1 billion if I were Jerry Bruckheimer). As a reader, I always think: I wonder in what and how many ways my interpretation and theirs are different.
And that is what I think of adapting books to movies: interpretation. We have not reached the civilization where a machine to change a novel into a screenplay is available. A screenplay writer has the burden to transform the story from a linguistic one to a pictorial one. As any product that is hand-crafted before they are one-button-pushed, interpretation takes time and costs them patience. It cost Peter Jackson and his team four years alone to rewrite Tolkien’s infamous Lord Of The Ring. Jackson allowed his teams to subjectively interpret the story, and have them discussed. The trilogy we saw was the objective version resulted from their months of grueling discussions. The rewriting process cost Jackson a lot of money (he has to pay every single team members), which probably explains why Jackson only wears weary t-shirts and a short during the filmmaking.
As these media speaks in different language (pictures vs. words), it is only appropriate to also compare them language wise. And since any language comprised of particular components, it is only fair to compare them accordingly. While an adaptation may strengthen the story’s picture, it may consequently lose its rich words. They say picture speaks a thousand words, but nobody says those are the same thousand the original photographer uses—or writer, in this case.
However, it is always interesting to comment any adaptation movies. In 1999 alone, my private list —a list I made specifically for this article— showed that at least 24 movies are originated from novels. From 1991 to 1996, I think Stephen King had at least one of his books adapted to movies to movies every other year, which unofficially makes him the Adopted King. Starting the same year, Michael Chrichton took over the title.
It is always understandable why people said these movies are disappointments. I don’t know how any special FX-men could manage to make King’s wild and scary imaginary demons haunted equally horrific onscreen. Even Industrial Light and Magic’s technology can only make break-dancing animatronics out of Chrichton’s dinosaurs, and that was what at the time we dubbed as ‘technologically advance.’ Some people complained that Spielberg failed to fully tell the story because he omitted 8 of 15 dinosaurs in the novel. I think these people should learn to see the difference between a failure and budgetary limitation (plus technological limitation). It took these movie magic companies only four years to be able not only to put writers’ imagination into frames, but also make them much more believable. One of the result was Chricton’s Sphere, but still people call it computer-party instead of a good story.
Drama movies, of which pure scientific contents are relatively absent, suffered the least adaptation critics (that means they still suffered to some extent). For the past seven years, my favorite novelist has been Nick Hornby. Hornby always manages to make comics out of painful and stupid life experiences without leaving the drama. And even in drama stories such as Hornby’s, movies interpretations may vary and dispersed from the original story, hence, moviegoers harsh critics. I experienced the same linguistic personality reading High Fidelity and About a Boy, but didn’t happened analogously with the movie versions. These are two good quality movies, but still people complained about them being wrongfully interpreted. I myself found it very funny how two stories from the same genre and written by the same person could end up differently: one as an indie movie, the other as a blockbuster. It took me five months after the release of About a Boy that the same personality wasn’t in the pictures, but in the music instead. I can almost picture Hornby personality as calm but lightly sarcastic from both music. A description later I found true reading 31 Songs (Hornby’s latest book) and his interviews in numerous websites). The rest of the differences are everyone’s personal saying on Hornby’s words (everyone from screenplay writer, director of photography, director, etc).
The most difficult interpretations are plays to movies. And Stephen King’s version of plays is Shakespeare. In seven years, I have seen three versions of Hamlet, three versions of Othello, two Romeo and Juliet, and one version of Great Expectation. I always thought interpreting Shakespeare into movies is a moviemaking career suicide of which only a few survived. I never have the guts to say whether they are good or bad since I have no qualification in understanding Shakespeare’s works. But I usually take the pleasure comparing their styles and efforts in interpreting his masterpieces. Among the above, I would say Great Expectation scored max. I have no idea that the same dialogues work with today’s setting. Kenneth Branaugh’s Hamlet is more consistent than Mel Gibson’s in all aspects. It isn’t fair to compare the two Romeo and Juliet because the first version was made sometime around 1970s, and the latter was 1990s. The 90s version is even more difficult to compare due to its Andy Warholic style and the marriage of Brooklyn-poetry. As a story the 70s version is good because it was loyal to the story, the 90s version did better because the pictures (angles, colors, etc) are as poetic as the dialogues themselves. It is possible that such poetic loyalty can only be established by a gay director (read: Baz Luhrman).
The most money making interpretations throughout the 2000s are comic adaptations. Throughout early 1980s to mid 1995 comic fans suffered severe trauma seeing their comic heroes turned into silverscreen jokes (such as Spiderman, Batman, Punisher, not to mention the worst of all, Master of the Universe). Even Superman survived the 1990s due to the hypnotic personality of Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman (Luthor) ,and —fans will agree with me— no thanks the director, Richard Donner (though later famous with Lethal Weapons series). But in 1995, comic adaptation started its revolution when Tim Burton wrote and directed Batman (and continued with Batman Returns). Burton, a true fans of comic and comic illustrator himself, speaks the language of comics and movies equally. Batman is black, that’s his message (plus the fact of his personal love to the color black itself). This is the start of the successful comic adaptation: consistency between strips and frames.
I don’t know why people adapt books to movies, but I have some ideas (without any guarantee that even one being correct). One, if I were a moviemaker I would say, hey that’s one Oscar book. Two, if I were a movie producer I would say, hey that’s another book of US$ 500 millions blockbuster potential (1 billion if I were Jerry Bruckheimer). As a reader, I always think: I wonder in what and how many ways my interpretation and theirs are different.
And that is what I think of adapting books to movies: interpretation. We have not reached the civilization where a machine to change a novel into a screenplay is available. A screenplay writer has the burden to transform the story from a linguistic one to a pictorial one. As any product that is hand-crafted before they are one-button-pushed, interpretation takes time and costs them patience. It cost Peter Jackson and his team four years alone to rewrite Tolkien’s infamous Lord Of The Ring. Jackson allowed his teams to subjectively interpret the story, and have them discussed. The trilogy we saw was the objective version resulted from their months of grueling discussions. The rewriting process cost Jackson a lot of money (he has to pay every single team members), which probably explains why Jackson only wears weary t-shirts and a short during the filmmaking.
As these media speaks in different language (pictures vs. words), it is only appropriate to also compare them language wise. And since any language comprised of particular components, it is only fair to compare them accordingly. While an adaptation may strengthen the story’s picture, it may consequently lose its rich words. They say picture speaks a thousand words, but nobody says those are the same thousand the original photographer uses—or writer, in this case.
However, it is always interesting to comment any adaptation movies. In 1999 alone, my private list —a list I made specifically for this article— showed that at least 24 movies are originated from novels. From 1991 to 1996, I think Stephen King had at least one of his books adapted to movies to movies every other year, which unofficially makes him the Adopted King. Starting the same year, Michael Chrichton took over the title.
It is always understandable why people said these movies are disappointments. I don’t know how any special FX-men could manage to make King’s wild and scary imaginary demons haunted equally horrific onscreen. Even Industrial Light and Magic’s technology can only make break-dancing animatronics out of Chrichton’s dinosaurs, and that was what at the time we dubbed as ‘technologically advance.’ Some people complained that Spielberg failed to fully tell the story because he omitted 8 of 15 dinosaurs in the novel. I think these people should learn to see the difference between a failure and budgetary limitation (plus technological limitation). It took these movie magic companies only four years to be able not only to put writers’ imagination into frames, but also make them much more believable. One of the result was Chricton’s Sphere, but still people call it computer-party instead of a good story.
Drama movies, of which pure scientific contents are relatively absent, suffered the least adaptation critics (that means they still suffered to some extent). For the past seven years, my favorite novelist has been Nick Hornby. Hornby always manages to make comics out of painful and stupid life experiences without leaving the drama. And even in drama stories such as Hornby’s, movies interpretations may vary and dispersed from the original story, hence, moviegoers harsh critics. I experienced the same linguistic personality reading High Fidelity and About a Boy, but didn’t happened analogously with the movie versions. These are two good quality movies, but still people complained about them being wrongfully interpreted. I myself found it very funny how two stories from the same genre and written by the same person could end up differently: one as an indie movie, the other as a blockbuster. It took me five months after the release of About a Boy that the same personality wasn’t in the pictures, but in the music instead. I can almost picture Hornby personality as calm but lightly sarcastic from both music. A description later I found true reading 31 Songs (Hornby’s latest book) and his interviews in numerous websites). The rest of the differences are everyone’s personal saying on Hornby’s words (everyone from screenplay writer, director of photography, director, etc).
The most difficult interpretations are plays to movies. And Stephen King’s version of plays is Shakespeare. In seven years, I have seen three versions of Hamlet, three versions of Othello, two Romeo and Juliet, and one version of Great Expectation. I always thought interpreting Shakespeare into movies is a moviemaking career suicide of which only a few survived. I never have the guts to say whether they are good or bad since I have no qualification in understanding Shakespeare’s works. But I usually take the pleasure comparing their styles and efforts in interpreting his masterpieces. Among the above, I would say Great Expectation scored max. I have no idea that the same dialogues work with today’s setting. Kenneth Branaugh’s Hamlet is more consistent than Mel Gibson’s in all aspects. It isn’t fair to compare the two Romeo and Juliet because the first version was made sometime around 1970s, and the latter was 1990s. The 90s version is even more difficult to compare due to its Andy Warholic style and the marriage of Brooklyn-poetry. As a story the 70s version is good because it was loyal to the story, the 90s version did better because the pictures (angles, colors, etc) are as poetic as the dialogues themselves. It is possible that such poetic loyalty can only be established by a gay director (read: Baz Luhrman).
The most money making interpretations throughout the 2000s are comic adaptations. Throughout early 1980s to mid 1995 comic fans suffered severe trauma seeing their comic heroes turned into silverscreen jokes (such as Spiderman, Batman, Punisher, not to mention the worst of all, Master of the Universe). Even Superman survived the 1990s due to the hypnotic personality of Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman (Luthor) ,and —fans will agree with me— no thanks the director, Richard Donner (though later famous with Lethal Weapons series). But in 1995, comic adaptation started its revolution when Tim Burton wrote and directed Batman (and continued with Batman Returns). Burton, a true fans of comic and comic illustrator himself, speaks the language of comics and movies equally. Batman is black, that’s his message (plus the fact of his personal love to the color black itself). This is the start of the successful comic adaptation: consistency between strips and frames.
Though Batman is pictured well, Bruce and Batman lacked personality. Batman’s personality may later be more deeply investigated in the upcoming Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins (another black color lover). Sam Raimi did well interpreting Spiderman’s and Peter Parker’s personalities, but failed to make a strong story, which was what the next evolution phase is all about. Stan Lee should have trusted other people to write without any possessive interference from him. The most successful interpretation would be X-Men (and X2). Singer aced what others failed: longitudinal character study. He managed to make the hidden obvious: That X-Men is a drama story, not action. A side which Stan Lee fought to make the writers and directors see, but failed. Later on these strategies matured and comic fans watch Hellboy, From Hell and even Constantine with full enjoyment. The magic is, no matter how shameful the movies are they never hit under US$ 200 million dollars of profit.
Whatever the original format was (books, play, comic), there will always be dispersion, but they don’t necessarily ruin the story. I think.
Whatever the original format was (books, play, comic), there will always be dispersion, but they don’t necessarily ruin the story. I think.
1 comment:
Aku nonton High Fidelity duluan, baru baca bukunya. It turned out that bukunya tidak se-menyenangkan film-nya...huh kecewa...
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