When a movie is based on book, including comic books, one of the most common complaints that I read is that the movie either followed its source material too closely, and as a result, didn't really allow the movie to form its own identity, or that the movie didn't follow the source material closely enough and the movie basically botched the story that it was based on. So when a director is making a movie how closely should he or she adhere to the source material?

The one thing people seem to forget when comparing movies to the books they are based on, is that movies are designed to be experienced in one sitting, while most books are read at your own pace. It may be a month or a few weeks or a few days. Experiencing the story over a prolonged period of time allows the story to have a more meandering pace and digressions (like there might be a long section about a minor character or a ton of backstory) while movies tend to need a tighter, cleaner narrative.

The answer, obviously, is to adhere to the source material as much as needed to make the best movie. Maybe all you are trying to do is capture the spirit of the source material.

First off I'd say it's what the screenwriter adheres to, not the director (necessarily). Second I would say deviate or stay to whatever extent makes for the best movie. William Goldman has some great insight into the process in his book Which Lie Did I Tell?, as he has adapted fiction and non-fiction (Misery, All the President's Men), as well as his own book (The Princess Bride).

I think it depends on the material, and what approach is being used. The most popular comic characters have been around for 50 years or more, so adapting any one story would be a convoluted mess. Many seem to feel that the best films are those which respect "the spirit" of the source, while at the same time exploring new territory. Its a dangerous balance though, and you can't please everyone.

A prime example of this is "The Lord of the Rings", which Peter Jackson described as "completely unfilmable" in a literal sense. So, he and his teams took what they all loved about the books, listened to some of the fans, and crafted a story from both.

Obviously whoever makes the movie can do whatever they want with it, but if I were doing it, I would make everything as close as possible to the book as I could. One reason is that I absolutely HATED how many of my teachers in high school would have us read a book, then show us the movie as absolute proof that books were ALWAYS better than movies, case closed. I always argued when the movie didn't get as in-depth as the book did, it was because some idiot behind the movie did it that way, not because of any limitation of the medium itself. I'd have no problem making a 5-hour movie either- but maybe that's why I don't make movies.

Maybe you should do a mini-series.

It doesn't have to adhere that closely at all. I expect a different interpretation from a film, to be honest. Or least having some creative variances.

And in Harry Potter nerds as well.

Surprisingly I don't remember it being too bad with LOTR people. Maybe because I wasn't that active in the forums then, or maybe because the movies were really good adaptations.

It's really bizarre how the comic people come out in full force, though. The Mandarin thing in Iron Man 3 seemingly ruined the lives of a number of posters here, whereas most of the general public doesn't know or care who that character was in the comics.

Take something like No Country for Old Men, though, where the book was already perfectly fit for a screen adaptation, and all the Coens really did was transfer the text to a screenplay. Cormac McCarthy + Coen Bros. = perfection.

http://jimdempsey.wordpress.com/2008...-a-screenplay/

The differences between a novel and a screenplay

I read recently (but forget where) that when John Huston was late with his screen adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, he got his secretary to type out the text of the novel in screenplay format while he went on holiday. Jack Warner, one of the Warner brothers, showed up at Huston’s office, found the transcript and assumed it to be the draft screenplay. When Huston returned from holiday Warner told him he loved the script and that he needn’t change a thing.

A great story, and just out of interest I took a look at both. Below is the opening paragraph of Dashiell Hammett’s novel:

‘Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by the thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down – from high flat temples – in a point upon his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.’

This is from the first page of Huston’s screenplay:

INT. OFFICE – CLOSE SHOT – SAM SPADE

behind his cheap office desk, back to the window. His jaw is long and bony, his chin a jutting V under the more flexible V of his mouth. The V motif is picked up again by thickish brows rising upward from twin creases above a hooked nose. His dark hair grows down to a point on his forehead. He looks rather pleasantly like Satan.

The similarities go right through Huston’s screenplay but that short bit on its own really shows some of the main differences in how screenplays and novels are written.

Format is the first very obvious difference. The layout of a screenplay is just way more complicated and pretty much impossible or, at the very least, very time consuming without software like Final Draft, etc.

Introducing characters. Hammett introduces the reader to Sam Spade in the first sentence of the novel. Although the screenplay reader gets his name on the first page, when you watch the movie you don’t find out Spade’s name until nearly five minutes in, and then only by a process of elimination when Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, enters the office (the names ‘Spade and Archer’ are written on the window behind Sam).

Past tense. You just can’t write a screenplay in the past tense. Can you?

Physical appearance. Hammet’s Spade is blonde but Huston’s has dark hair. Maybe that was just because no blondes wanted the part. George Raft famously turned down the role (was he blonde? I’ve only ever seen him in black and white) so maybe they had to ‘settle’ for the dark-haired Bogart.

And this little excerpt above shows just how important the actor is. The Satan reference in Hammett’s novel instantly gives the reader and good idea the type of man Sam Spade is. But in the movie, the actor has to try and put those aspects of his character over to the audience. Or not. I have to say, I never really thought of Sam Spade as very devilish any time I watched the film. Maybe Bogart decided he wasn’t.

Speech. Novelists often struggle to find the right word to convey the exact emotion carried in the voice of a character. They use phrases like: she said tearfully, he shouted angrily, he replied mechanically. The first words Miss Wonderly says in The Maltese Falcon, for example, are ‘Thank you’ as she is lead into Spade’s office by his secretary. In the novel, she says these words ‘so softly that only the purist articulation made the words intelligible’. John Huston writes this as:

MISS WONDERLY
(softly)
Thank you.

This probably points to the most important difference between novels and screenplays. While editors, agents, publishers and even marketing people can all have a say in how it looks, a novel is generally considered to be the work of one person – the novelist. But a screenplay isn’t the end product. The movie is. And look at the list of people involved there. Making movies is a much more collaborative process than producing a novel. There, the screenplay is only the beginning.

There are lots more differences in structure and the like; the story climax can come much earlier in novels, you don’t have to come with 3 distinct acts and you can ramble a bit more in books.

Dashiell Hammett is considered by many to be the greatest thriller writer of all time, if not for his novel writing then certainly for his influence on cinema. And probably the only reason his work is so easily adapted to the screen is that he writes in ‘pictures’ – and that’s probably the most important similarity between the two. Any others?

I think the first job of the adaptation is to honor the source material.

Cutting out Caspar Gutman's drugged daughter or Hooper's affair with Chief Brody's wife worked well because the final movies treated the original works with respect. The changes tightened the plot, reduced the number of characters, and made the story better suited as a movie. But they didn't change what first attracted audiences to the book.

But if the adaptation is going to convert a Hells Angel outlaw biker into an Air Force major, add a girl, and have everybody fight giant bugs, then the name of the movie should be changed and the source title should be left in the credits.

Two of the best exampkles of a movie being truly faithful to the book are:

1 - the best example I know of in the history of film: Gary Sinise's 'Of Mice and Men'. I am not aware of more faithful adaptation, and it's one of the best films America has ever produced.

2 - 'Ironweed' - this, because, the author of the book(that won him the Pulitzer) wrote the screenplay. Don't think it's possible to get a better adaptation than that.

As to how strict it needs to be? It doesn't need to be strict, and several good points have already been made on that topic. The first concern of a director should be to make a good film that tells a story on its own terms.

Baby Geniuses 2 definitely suffered from changes made from the novel.

As someone that didn't like the Mandarin change, I think you're exaggerating the complaints about it as a lot of people were bothered, but it wasn't like everyone was treating it in the "raped my childhood" sense. And in that particular example, I also wouldn't consider that a minor change either. Complaining about Superman's trunks seems far more insignificant to me.

That said, I do agree comic book fans take things a bit more seriously, probably because there's just a lot more history with them. Adaptations aren't just account for a few novels, but often decades worth of stories.

For the most part, follow the book. I realize books need to be condensed or altered for budget reasons.
I'm curious, I read that World War Z had the last third of the film redone. Did they originally follow the ending in the book and it didn't work or did they never really follow the book?

The Mandarin change was significant for people familiar with the comics, but for non-comic fans it was kind of like "who?" The trunks thing is just wow. I don't even know what to say.

It is entirely irrelevant. Being "based on the bestselling novel" is a marketing device akin to "From the directors of" IMO.

Literature and cinema are two wholly distinct artistic mediums. A great novel can easily become a horrible film (faithfully adapted or not) and vice versa. With franchise films like comic book movies or Harry Potter tripe, this issue is bound to come up because so much of the popularity of the films themselves are derived from the pre-existing fan bases for the comic books or novels, which have a generally far more rabid fanbase than readers of Life of Pi.

But ultimately, it is a no-win situation for all involved that insist on making the mental comparison of film to book. When one reads a novel the film adaptation is all done in your mind. We visualize what we read in our own ways. It is inherently personal and unique, so it is impossible for any other person to direct what we visualize and invariably the book is always better. Not only for that, but because most stories are better the first time around. So, if you read the novel, you've already been exposed to the narrative of the film, even if some of it has changed.

As soon as people view film and literature as one or the other and not as some sort of symbiotic "adaptation" relationship, the better discussions about film will become as the merits of the film as a film will be discussed and the more enjoyment people will get out of adaptations of popular literature.

Right, but if the argument is that the movie should keep in "spirit" with the book, changing a significant character like that goes against it. Otherwise the generalization is that it's ok to change up any character in any book, since it won't matter to those who are unfamiliar with it.

If LOTR introduced Will Smith as Sauron and he ran around rapping orders to Orcs, would it be ok just because millions of people never read the book? Just a wild stupid example, but it shouldn't be hard to see why those things bother people.

I don't know if what they did changed the "spirit" of Iron Man. I don't think the change was even as dramatic as Ra's al Ghul in Nolan's Batman. Actually, they were similar in that misdirection was used, except Iron Man 3 used humor and I think that's what pissed people off.

It all depends on the creative team to be honest. Even if you adhere to the source material, it may still make a shit film.

For example:

Frank Darabont's adaptations of King's stories were not only faithful to their source material, but they made for great films. Any changes that Darabont made were for the better (i.e. the ending to The Mist).

I really liked Baz Luhrmann's interpretation of Romeo and Juliet and The Great Gatsby. However, I disagree with some of Luhrmann's changes to the story as it makes Fitzgerald's overall theme of the demise of the American dream pretty much disappear.

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings was faithful to the source material and it made for a great trilogy. The Hobbit, on the other hand, was too faithful to the source material and it made for an overlong and boring film.

I love Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and think its one of the best novels from the '90s. However, Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner's adaptation of it is absolute shit. In fact, with the exception of The Rules of Attraction, all of Ellis' film adaptations have been absolute shit. The Informers was one of the worst films I saw in 2009 (and that was co-written by the guy).

Wolfgang Petersen's The NeverEnding Story doesn't follow the book, and when it does, it only covers material from the first half. You know what? I love it. Another? Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Sure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is way more faithful, but it sucks in comparison to the '70s adaptation.

Bad adaptations can also make good movies, like The Shining.

It's really a case-by-case basis. There can be no hard-and-fast rules about something like this. Creativity can never be an exact science, nor should it be.

I understand the "why," but don't agree with it. Fans do not "own" the things they like. This is an odd phenomenon that seems to have become more widespread with the advent of the internet, but certainly pre-dated it.

It's the whole "raped my childhood" thing. Being an Iron Man or LOTR fan does not entitle people to anything. If they made LOTR with Will Smith rapping in it, yeah, that would probably suck, but because it would be bad acting, directing, etc. Not b/c it isn't "true to the novel."

When did not liking a movie morph into being insulted because whatever it is you are a fan of was not "respected?"

The "you"s above are all in general. This is just one of the things that bugs me in a lot of film "criticism" now. People basically moved away from discussing film as film and frame their opinions in terms of how well a film performed fanboy servicing.

Filmmakers have one, and only one, responsibility when it comes to adapting a book: make the best film they can. Anything else is window-dressing. Making that good movie can have very little, if anything, to do with adhering closely to the source material. What works in a book won't always work in a film.

You can make Jesus a brazilian kidney thief if it makes for a better film. If anyone whines about how the book wasn't like that, they can shut up and go read the book.