Monday, August 12, 2013

Turning Books Into Movies

It's Discussion Monday again and today's topic is about books that get turned into movies.

Let me start by saying I am both a book and a movie person. I'm the kind of person who watches the director commentary and all the little bonus stuff that nobody but me cares about. I'm also a person who needs to have a perfectly organized bookshelf. So you see, I care about them both. I think a lot of people don't like it when books get made into movies because they think it ruins them. Well that's not what I see. For example, The Hunger Games, fabulous book, fabulous movie. The Hunger Games is my absolute favorite series ever. So when the movie came out I was nervous because I cared about it. But when they made changes I didn't mind because I knew they had to be made. Things that work in books don't always work in movies. You can have a character with like nine pages of just thought in a book. You cant do that in a movie because movies are visual.

Percy Jackson, great book, terrible movie. Sometimes they don't get it right. Sometimes they butcher everything. This was a movie I came out of upset. I think it was one of the first movies I didn't like. They made a lot of changes. I think when you are making a movie out of a book it's important to only change what you need to change, like in The Hunger Games, but when you change everything that's just a bad idea waiting to happen.

The Great Gatsby, good book, great movie. Sometimes the movies are better than the books (I know most of you wont agree with me on this one but that's fine). Sometimes the changes they make only add more to the original story. The Great Gatsby 2013 movie did that. I know a lot of people were mad when in The Hunger Games movie they killed Seneca Crane by having him eat the berries instead of him getting hanged, but that was a good change. It was more poetic. It made the movie better. Sometimes changes need to happen.

So I don't mind when they make books into movie. I think that as long as the movie somewhat matches the book then all will be well. I think if people started agreeing that sometimes things have to change we would have a lot more happy movie goers.

So what do you think?

1 comment:

  1. When a book gets turned into a movie, I try not to hold too high of expectations for it. In Perks of Being a Wallflower, I fell in love with the book but the movie was too different that I didn't like it. I would have liked it if it was a movie and just no book, but I didn't like it compared to the book. In The Hunger Games, they obviously couldn't have had some of the things in the movie that were in the book, so I couldn't enjoy it as much with picking out every different thing. I loved the second The Great Gatsby movie, but I always think books are better than movies. I never ready the Percy Jackson series, but I did like the movie, so.

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