Art & Life

The great debate of book to movie adaptations

Movie graphic
GRAPHIC BY NADINE LENEHAN

Is a movie adaptation ever as good as the book? That is a debate I hear often and it a polarizing topic.

It’s hard to condense an 800 page book to a two-hour movie characters and side plots get cut. In general, the longer the movie the better the adaptations will be, “Gone with the Wind” is a 1,000 page book and the movie is four hours longs and it is one of the closet movie to books adaptations I have ever seen.

“The Hunger Games” books were okay. Since the books were shorter and the movies were broken down in to four installments so fewer plots and characters were cut out even if major details were changed.

“The Divergent,” “50 Shades” and “Twilight” movie series, spoiler alert, were awful and hardly worth mentioning.  Movies like “My Sisters Keeper” completely changed the ending from the book.  I think that if directors can’t even follow the basic plot of a book they shouldn’t even bother adapting a book in to a movie.

“My Sisters Keeper” flipped who died at the ended of the book which completely altered the premise of the movie.

However it can still be fun to see your favorite books come to life on the big screen as long as you are willing to not be to disappointed in how they don’t turn out because they will never be as good as you hope. Let’s face it most production companies don’t have Marvels budget so don’t get your hopes up. Just go to the movie eat some stale popcorn, drink an overpriced slushie forget about your homework and just relax.

Image courtesy of Nadine Lenehan

Categories: Art & Life, Editorials, Opinion