Books to movies, are they only trying to make oneshot blockbusters?

[Todgruppe]

Thank goodness George R.R. Martin held onto A Song of Ice and Fire to make into a TV series instead of a big screen abortion.

Glenn Cook's Black Company Chronicles would have been better, or Erikson Malazan Book of the Fallen.


Edit: Granted Erikson's would encompass entirely too many actors; all the main Bridgeburners, Hood, Rake, important Imass/Tiste Andii/Edur/Liosan, etc.

[cynsacat]

It's incredibly difficult to accurately translate stories from one medium to another. This is why the movies are always different and usually worse.

Generally speaking, if you've read a book/played the game, you're not going to like the movie. That's just how it works with film versions. You have to learn to separate the two if you want to be able to enjoy it.

This. So much this.

This is why books to movies (or video games to movies, or the reverse direction, or whatever) are referred to as adaptations, which inherently involve adjustment. Adjustments mean changes. They are not meant to be taken as the exact same thing in another format. They're a translation or a re-imagination, and I don't care how awesome a book is; there are many things that you can get away with doing in literature that you cannot pull off with as much success in a visual format-- And the same is true the other way, too. Furthermore, when you read a book, you concoct your own images; you pick and choose what the most interesting or important parts are to you, whether you do it consciously or subconsciously... And that's just not going to be universal from one person to the next, like, say, from you to the director who landed the opportunity to adapt the book.

So, the idea with adaptations is to perhaps consider them linked... But holding one on a pedestal for comparison of the other is always going to damage your perception. Try to take a step back. Don't worry so much about inaccuracies; look at the bigger picture. Is it still a good story on its own?

[Frah]

The movie industry is only interested in sucking people in with fancy effects rather than quality story more and more as time goes on. Similar to the gaming industry. Long live the indie revolution!

[Punchbag]

This. So much this.

This is why books to movies (or video games to movies, or the reverse direction, or whatever) are referred to as adaptations, which inherently involve adjustment. Adjustments mean changes. They are not meant to be taken as the exact same thing in another format. They're a translation or a re-imagination, and I don't care how awesome a book is; there are many things that you can get away with doing in literature that you cannot pull off with as much success in a visual format-- And the same is true the other way, too. Furthermore, when you read a book, you concoct your own images; you pick and choose what the most interesting or important parts are to you, whether you do it consciously or subconsciously... And that's just not going to be universal from one person to the next, like, say, from you to the director who landed the opportunity to adapt the book.

So, the idea with adaptations is to perhaps consider them linked... But holding one on a pedestal for comparison of the other is always going to damage your perception. Try to take a step back. Don't worry so much about inaccuracies; look at the bigger picture. Is it still a good story on its own?

This, this and a thousand times more - This.

Cyanscat you and Belloc you quoted before truly understand how adaptations work. May you continue to both relish in your higher understanding of the world, and broader vision allowing you to see things in ways others don't.

[draica]

You must also remember that the first movie is always going to be made as a stand alone, so they can judge it's popularity before going ahead with the rest of the series. Of course this usually results in them butchering into existence the missing details

[TheWerebison]

I'm just really hoping the Odd Thomas movie will be good.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Thank goodness George R.R. Martin held onto A Song of Ice and Fire to make into a TV series instead of a big screen abortion.

Yeah well he's not exactly the most wise of people to listen to.

[Zao]

Glenn Cook's Black Company Chronicles would have been better, or Erikson Malazan Book of the Fallen.


Edit: Granted Erikson's would encompass entirely too many actors; all the main Bridgeburners, Hood, Rake, important Imass/Tiste Andii/Edur/Liosan, etc.

Yeah, no chance at all that Malazan could be made into a series. (The Bonehunters and Bridgeburners alone are more characters than SoIaF)

Black Company I could see but a lot of the appeal comes from the ego perspective and the different viewpoints from Croaker/Murgen/Sleepy which would not be possible to translate into any other medium.

[MMKing]

Just listening to the sounds in the trailer really puts me off. It's the generic switch from scene to scene, image to image really fast, add in some quotes and some ''trembling'' noises here and there. It's also important to establish a hero and a villain in the trailer. It's just another mediocre experience we will all forget in 1-3 years.

[lawow74]

Glenn Cook's Black Company Chronicles would have been better, or Erikson Malazan Book of the Fallen.


Edit: Granted Erikson's would encompass entirely too many actors; all the main Bridgeburners, Hood, Rake, important Imass/Tiste Andii/Edur/Liosan, etc.

I'd love to see the original Black Company trilogy adapted into a series. Personally I couldn't stand to read the series when Murgen started chronicling it, the tone was so different from the first few books I had to stop and let that be the end of it. That said, I loved the Silver Spike, it made a great bookend to the original three's story.

[tigojones]

i just checked the percy jackson sequel, release expected 7th august, are you 100% sure that there's no trailers? because damned, if they haven't gotten any trailers or advertised it less than a month of release, they gotta have low expectations.

They've had a couple trailers out for it. They're on IMDB, they've been on a couple channels on TV in my area (don't remember which channels). I think the first one didn't do as well as they would've liked, so they were a little more conservative with this one.

My biggest issue is when they have a book that could make a good transition to film with few significant changes, but they still change things for no real reason. Eragon was a big example of this (to me, anyways). Love the books, but the movie was crap. They altered too much and a lot of what they changed really screwed with the storylines of the rest of the books.

I'm intrigued by "The Mortal Instruments" (yeah, sue me, I'm a 29 year old guy that likes cheesy teen scifi/fantasy). It has potential to be interesting, but the trailers seem to deviate from the books a fair amount. That could just be the trailers trying not to be too specific, but who knows.

[Rocket Surgeon]

I think they all go into wanting to create the next Harry Potter, LOTR, The Hobbit... but just fail.

See "the golden compass" as the example.

From what I understand, part of that movie's problem was that they did whatever they could not to touch on how similar the antagonists were to the Catholic Church like in the book, because of the shitstorm it may create. Read somewhere that if they make sequels, they're not going to hold back. Which will be interesting.

OT: Another example I can think of is How to Train your Dragon. I really liked that book, and the trailers alone showed that they completely disregarded the story.

[Rocket Surgeon]

Except there's a new Percy Jackson movie coming out, like, next month. They also fully intended to make all the Eragon movies but it did so poorly at the box office the plans got dropped. Golden Compass suffered because the author came out and said it was all about killing the concept of God for children before the movie came out.

I've heard that Disney's planning on remaking Eragon with a 2014 release and possibly Eldest in 2017. Not sure how true it is, but here's hoping!

[Flaks]

I'm honestly not expecting Ender's Game to be all that great...which is why it'll be good...wait, oh no! My expectations are rising. NO STOP!

- - - Updated - - -

I've heard that Disney's planning on remaking Eragon with a 2014 release and possibly Eldest in 017. Not sure how true it is, but here's hoping!

That book series has amazing potential.

But I've realized that for me the best media for story telling are as follows from best to worst: books > tv series ~ video games >>>> movies.

[Rocket Surgeon]

I'm honestly not expecting Ender's Game to be all that great...which is why it'll be good...wait, oh no! My expectations are rising. NO STOP!

- - - Updated - - -



That book series has amazing potential.

But I've realized that for me the best media for story telling are as follows from best to worst: books > tv series ~ video games >>>> movies.

True, but it's mostly because a movie can only be so long, and a lot more money goes into making a good two-hour movie than two hour's worth of a TV show.

And I agree, the Inheritance Cycle has a lot of potential, it's one of my personal favorite series. Paolini's a pretty cool guy, I met him at a signing once. He did a cartwheel off the little stage in the library when he was done talking. It was glorious.

[Redmage]

I think they all go into wanting to create the next Harry Potter, LOTR, The Hobbit... but just fail.

See "the golden compass" as the example.

Or narnia, or percy jackson, or eragon, etc etc.

The answer is yes, when book-to-movie is remotely successful every book in that genre gets fielded for a quick cash-grab.

[Rocket Surgeon]

that was an april fool's joke... Sorta. From the page that made the "announcement"

those bitches.

[Todgruppe]

Yeah, no chance at all that Malazan could be made into a series. (The Bonehunters and Bridgeburners alone are more characters than SoIaF)

Black Company I could see but a lot of the appeal comes from the ego perspective and the different viewpoints from Croaker/Murgen/Sleepy which would not be possible to translate into any other medium.

True, it would be interesting to see an attempt at Malazan. Iskaral Pust and Tehol for life.

Yeah, Black Company is fun because it's not so much bad vs good etc. They are the bad guys for parts and good guys for other parts. It's just their story, well at the start. I would like to know who'd they cast as Lady.

[Deleted]

Lord of the rings is the only one that worked for me.

[Deleted]

The main reason movies based on books suck is because books aren't exactly scripts. If you leave the visualization to the mind then it's alright, but if you show it in the typical Hollywood Computer-generated bullshit-o vision then everything starts to suck.