Books to Movies

If I am anything in this world, I am a diehard bookworm. And as a proud bearer of this title, I also hold the immense responsibility of verbally pillaging any person who has the audacity to utter that a movie adaptation of a book is better than the novel itself. Even on the very isolated occasion where I might kind-of sort-of agree (please don’t revoke my bibliophile status but I am looking at you “The Godfather” and “All the President’s Men”), I still must whole-heartedly defend a book’s superiority with every ounce of crazed passion in me.

In the past few decades, book-to-movie adaptations have been churned out like hotcakes, whether due to Hollywood’s lack of original thought or their relatively dependable box-office success. However, adaptations walk a minuscule line between a lovely homage to a work of fiction and something that ravages the very essence of the original piece.

There are a few categories that I think most adaptations fall into.

First is the category in which I think they work best: ones that may not copy a book word for word or stay strictly true to the storyline, but encapsulate the spirit found in between the margins of a beloved text anyway. Take for instance the “Harry Potter” franchise — movies that make one’s heart pulse with nostalgia. The movies themselves are by no means a perfect replica — let us not forget the infamous scene in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” where Dumbledore “calmly” questions Harry, but in the movie he instead shakes him aggressively: “HARRY, DID YAH PUT YAH NAME IN DA GOBLET OF FIYA?!” And yet, every viewer ignores these inconsistencies because of the warmth and familiarity that exudes from each film, wonderfully reminiscent of the novels.

This technique is also flawlessly exemplified in none other than my most dearly beloved film “Pride & Prejudice” (2005). Mind you, long before I watched the movie, I was deeply devoted to the novel. I was convinced that I could never love any movie adaptation that strayed even a hair from the book, but I was sorely wrong. From the first note of the score, I knew that the director, Joe Wright, truly understood the magic of Darcy and Lizzy’s love, and all of my previous trepidations over potential missteps quickly faded away. Wright masterfully captures Austen’s witty dialogue and tender storylines, highlighting a greater dimension in the distinct qualities of her characters like Lizzy’s quick tongue and Mr. Collins’s excruciating banality (“What excellent boiled potatoes’’ is a prime example of the fresh one-liners which make the film such a success). Others that have perfected this blend of honoring the old within the new include the 1962 motion picture “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Oscar-winning “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the 2020 feature “Emma,” Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women’’ and the 2021 film “Dune.” All these movies combine reiteration with variation, the comfort of old with a piquancy of surprise.

Many adaptations, however, miss this mark completely by either straying too far from the book that they lose the story’s integrity or by following it too closely in a way that feels wholly derivative. One can look no further than the two “Percy Jackson & the Olympians” movies, which beyond- belief butchered the best-selling series by Rick Riordan. The movies had such potential for success, but, as if the producers had never even opened the covers of Riordan’s creation, they wasted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not only did the movies make the characters four years older than they were in the books, but they completely altered the plotlines until they were unrecognizable for any fan, creating a thick aura of disconnection. Similarly, as much as the “Lord of the Rings” movies make me want to shed tears of happiness, their “The Hobbit” counterparts are completely lackluster. Instead of one movie for the one novel, director Peter Jackson instead chose to stretch the plot over three, creating a need for filler side-plots and lots of fluff to stuff into the original storyline. His amplification of side characters was executed poorly and left all genuine enjoyers of the book in a state of confusion. Another failed adaptation was Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 take on “The Great Gatsby,” reminiscent of the limpness of reheated takeout, and whose $105 million budget provided only gaudy flashiness and none of the fervor of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose. Many more have fallen flat in kindred manners: the horribly cringey new “Persuasion” (2022), the terrifying “Cat in the Hat” (2003) and “The Giver” (2014).

Finally, there is a style of adaptations I think are criminally underrated — modern-day classics. These movies do an absolutely brilliant job of taking timeless pieces of literature and enhancing them with novelty. From “10 Things I Hate About You” based on Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” to “Clueless” based on Austen’s “Emma” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” on “Pride & Prejudice,” these modern retellings open the classical genre to a whole new audience of young people.

The bottom line is: if executed well, book- to movie-adaptations can act as a twin pillar to cherished tales. Done poorly, though, and the movies have the power to ruin an esteemed work of fiction, even turning some away from it completely.