By Isabella Diaz
Our favorite stories, most of the time, exist in two realms: as books and as movies. Books and movies both tell stories but go about it in very different ways. While one uses scripts and direction, the other uses paper and ink. Thinking about books and movies together shows that scripts and directing can be just as meaningful and personal as words on a page. Yet, if push came to shove, many of us would probably say that particular stories exist differently in both forms. We likely would say that one version is more “us” than the other; one is more “our story” than the other.
Books possess unique magic. They allow us to “see” a world where we can take ourselves from our ordinary lives into a different reality. It is called “living in the imagination.” The neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) noted that “for a neurologist…to speak of the imagination process is to speak of qualitatively different forms of consciousness.”
Films, by contrast, present their stories to us in a visual form. We see the characters, hear their voices, and above all, we watch the drama play itself out right in front of us. Take the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for example. To capture the visual magic of the fictional world, it uses, well, visual magic: a lot of special effects. To make sure these special effects work, the movie relies on a very talented cast.
A well known adaptation of a book into a movie is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel has a lot of words that paint an image of what the 1920s looked like. This is an important factor in the story, but it’s not the only one. The book is filled with elaborate character development that makes the reader understand not only how much money is a part of Gatsby’s existence and his refusal to look at wealth as anything but a tool, but also at human cost.
Take The Hunger Games as another example. Suzanne Collins’s novel is fastened with suspense and intimacy. It brings us close to Katniss Everdeen, her life, her family’s lives, the desperate times, and the love they have. The film that came after captured almost all the internal action and intensity of the novel, the secrets, all the stuff that happens inside our heads. Fans of the book seemed very satisfied. Why? Because the filmmakers did basically what Collins did: they told the story.
Adapting a story for the screen involves taking the essence of the original work and turning it into something worthwhile to watch. There is a huge list of functions that must be performed to hit that milestone. An adaptation should include the original main story and characters. Additionally, taking a book to film should involve an intelligent use of the visual—a vital part of film not present in books—to its advantage. The book offers the starting point and the necessary story. The film takes that and runs toward the creation of something new, yet still true to the source.
Some adaptations fall short, and that happens when they either alter the original story too much, or don’t hit the right notes with the audience. Eragon, the film based on Christopher Paolini’s book, is an example of both. It was criticized by fans and critics alike for not doing much of anything except existing, and that was because its screenwriters Roy Lee and Hal Swanton didn’t just depart from the story, but also didn’t develop the characters in a way that made us care about them.
In conclusion, telling a story seems like an exercise in the art of choosing the right medium, and why not choose the medium where the characters’ psychological and emotional lives are given room to breathe? This makes books and films feel absolutely opposed. Books allow for deep investigation into not only a character’s most basic instincts, but also their moment of self analyzing revelations. In this way, film can sometimes feel like only a drawing of the unfathomable riches of human life. Nonetheless, it is a great deal more magical than it gets credit for, and adaptations have just as much of a place in making unforgettable stories and characters.
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