"The Book is Better" - A Retrospective on Adaptations

Written by Pennen Quill

It's not a new debate when discussing the adaptation of one source of media to another. Whether it's books to movies, or even video games to movies, there always seems to be some dissonance that arises from this process. Oftentimes, these conversions cause an upset: "How could they mess this up?!" or "Why did they do that?" become common expressions when our favorite stories take a different direction than the one we know.

We're still left with the question: why does this happen?

The answer is both simple, and complicated.

The Simple Answer

Movies are an entirely different beast from other forms of entertainment. This means that the investment has to ensure returns for all of the work that goes into it. When it comes to adaptations, there must be solid evidence that studios will profit. This is why studios often look to beloved franchises as their next project. There is one large problem, films, despite their large investment are under intense constraints.

The cinematic experience only allots roughly two hours, meaning that large amounts of content must be compressed. Plots need to be streamlined, characters are cut, and moments--regardless of their prior importance-- are all scrapped to fit the silver screen. The end result feels scrambled, as if someone were trying to retell a story from memory rather than understanding what the original piece intended.

This is why projects such as Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and The Olympians or Shyamalan's The Last Airbender was met with so much backlash. The original works were forced to take such strong creative liberties that much of what made aspects of the story appealing were no longer present.

I didn't have the heart to post a picture of Shyamalan's Airbender, so here's the animated show (2005)

The call of Hollywood is always tempting, but under the rigorous pressures, what comes in often leaves a majority of the original material behind in the cutting room, tampering with the integrity of the work that had been met with such excitement.

The Complicated Answer

Money and time constraints, both in production and for the final product, are obvious limitations. But there is a deeper conflict that affects the outcome of a flawed adaptation. Modern entertainment has seen a shift from movie theaters to in-home screenings. What's more, the focus has shifted toward TV series rather than one-and-done cinematic experiences. When making a TV-series, a single season contains somewhere between nine-to twelve episodes. With episodes tallying up to about an hour per episodes, you reach some eleven hours to tell a portion of a story. Much more room than a movie could offer. When met with proper funding, a satisfying adaptation of your favorite fantasy series should be assured!

Amazon's The Wheel of Time (2021)

But, it's not. There are still problems. Look to shows such as The Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones. You'll see that there are still issues, despite the freedom of runtime, and a suitable budget.

This is where things get complicated.

Like Hollywood, show-runners are drawn into the potential returns after securing large IP's such as the renown fantasy series The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

When the series was announced, excitement grows, and after some debate, executives green lit the project. It's in the writing room that things begin to change the story. Not because they only have two hours to cover a one thousand page book, but because of a different tendency--creativity. When writers begin working with the original material, they start by taking names, locations, settings that belong to the story they are adapting. But creative minds are creative, it's only natural that they begin to slowly deviate, causing a split between what was first written, and what will be adapted.

The 'adaptation' evolves into something new overtime. What began as small deviations grow and grow. In some instances, the process becomes less about honoring the original work, and instead crafting their own version of the story. In most cases, this isn't done out of malicious intent, but rather comes from the writers longing to see their own spin of the tale come to life.

Good Adaptations

So, are adaptations always doomed to fail? No, adaptations can work, and it's not the fault of any one person. The core what happens must be around respecting what made the source material accessible and intriguing. Rings of Power has been the most divisive series of recent date. It had the money, it had the room, but it still fell into the same pitfalls. What it did went against mythos founded in J.R. Tolkien's writings. That, and paired with looser storytelling beats, the series met a lot of push back.

(cries) - Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)

When the writing isn't being faithful, neither will the audience.

That being said, in recent years, there have been stellar reimagining of worlds and stories. But this is because of a difference in practice, not production.

Shows like League of Legends: Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, or Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. movie proved that adaptations can work, they just need to honor the source material that paves a way for it to become it's own. What made these stories work was not their ability to tell a different or detached story, but to frame a narrative that worked in it's own favor. They told stories that would have been difficult to project in their previous formats. They worked because they were something you watched, not because you could play them.

So, good adaptations can only be from Video Games? Not at all; franchises such as The Hunger Games, Dune, Harry Potter and The Lord of The Rings-- to name a few--have all stood the test of time thanks to the way they preserved their original story. While we have only talked about fantasy and sci-fi, the same outlook is needed for more grounded stories like novels by Agatha Christie or Stephen King.

The Hunger Games (2012)

The heart and soul of these intellectual property need to be respected if it wants to make executives and the fans happy.

There are some mediums which have a reputation of staying consistent to it's source material. Take for example, Japanese anime. Studios work as closely as they can to best capture the intended effect the manga artist (author) had for their story. If you enjoyed a show and were looking to read more, you would find the same story, and even get the chance to move beyond what has been animated. In most cases, you would find the exact same story when the time comes to see it brought to life.

The result is both satisfying and engaging. If adaptations consistently respected their source material while embracing their new format, perhaps one day, we'd hear the unthinkable: "The movie is better than the book."