Dec 24 2008
Books made into movies
Hello my lovelies! This is just a ramble today (more on the reason why, in the next couple of days).
I hope everyone is having a good Christmas Eve, managing to drive safely, and not being too rushed with last minute preparations for The Big Day tomorrow. I myself, having all my family about 1500 miles away, am not doing anything particular. The cats and I will have our turkey dinner together, I’ll listen to Handel’s Messiah on CBC Radio as I always do, I’ll do some writing, and I’ll be watching The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. Then maybe Prince Caspian.
Aha! There’s a theme I can adopt for this post. Movies made from books. Because my other holiday fare may involve watching the three Lord of the Rings movies. Ever since the third movie came out - remember? when they released it as the end of the all-day marathon of the movies? - that set of films has been my Christmas viewing tradition.
But what about movies made from books, in general? I remember a few experiences when I was quite young, that made me decide I hated them. I had read and enjoyed Dune, by Frank Herbert, but even though the movie represented some parts of the book fairly well, it just couldn’t capture the real essence of it. And I had seen some sort of cartoon thing of Lord of the Rings that just made me shudder with its awfulness.
In more recent times, I think of The Bourne Identity, which resembles the book when it comes to the title, and a couple of other details, and not much more than that. I liked the mini-series with Richard Chamberlain way, way, way better, because it told the actual story and didn’t veer off in any large way.
Years ago I finally concluded that a movie that was only two or three hours long simply wasn’t adequate to convey the real story in a book. (I still feel that way, for the most part.) And yet there was Masterpiece Theatre, which did quite a good job of bringing books to life. So thinking of something like that, and the Bourne series with Chamberlain, I decided that the only way a book should ever be made into film was in a mini-series. Unless the book was very short.
So over the subsequent years, the very thought of anyone making Lord of the Ringsinto a movie gave me the screaming heebee-jeebees. When I heard that some guy named Jackson was planning to do it, I was filled with horror. I didn’t even think three movies would be enough for that one.
Of course I was wrong. 
And I’ve been wrong in other cases too, recently. I think the Narnia films are turning out rather nicely (the first was perhaps a little bland, but I think they did better in the second). And I’m enjoying the Harry Potter movies fairly well.
And I do think Gone With the Wind, while it had to shave huge chunks of detail, also did pretty darn well in capturing the book.
But apart from all of those examples that seem to contradict me, I am still very uneasy when I hear about some book being made into a movie. If the book has a lot of inner dialogue or psychological developments, I don’t think it would work well as a film. (I think that was one of the big things wrong with Dune.) Or if the plot is really complex, it’s likely not to work then either. (I’m probably lucky that I’ve never read Doctor Zhivago, the book, or I’d probably loathe the movie.)
If you get a script writer and director who really, really is capable of capturing the essence of a complex book (see: Lord of the Rings and Gone With the Wind), then fine. But those people, in my opinion, are very rare.
So on the whole, I don’t want books made into movies. I still hold to my preference for a mini-series.
She says, as she goes offline to watch movies-made-from-books for two solid days…
