Allison Symes's Blog - Posts Tagged "adaptations"

When it comes to adaptations, do you read the original book first or watch the film and then decide to go and read the book?

I must admit I've done both. I read The Lord of the Rings before seeing the films. I read Oliver Twist after seeing Alec Guinness play Fagin on TV all those years ago. (Mesmerising performance in evil manipulation there!).

I must admit one thing I love about the Muppets' version of A Christmas Carol is they plug reading the original book right at the end of the film. (And they're right - you should read it!).

A good adaptation will bring a story to life and help draw people into reading the original book. A bad one will do the exact opposite!

So where DO you turn first - the book or the film? Why do you think you've chosen as you have?

My favourite adaptation has to be Peter Jackson's take on J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings - the vision conjured up seemed to match what I had thought when I first read the trilogy.

It was wonderful "seeing" The Shire. The darkness of Mordor was vividly brought to life too.

I've also loved the adaptations of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, Hogfather, and The Colour of Magic.

I would love to see an adaptation of Men at Arms and Raising Steam.

I still don't understand how you can get three films out of The Hobbit though!

Having said all of that, I am all for film adaptations of books as long as they stay faithful to the book. I don't "get" changing endings, character roles etc. It makes it a different story to the one the author originally intended and I really can't see the point of that.

What are your favourite adaptations and why?

Now there’s a controversial question! And my answer to it is “it depends”.

For The Lord of the Rings, I feel Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films does do justice to the books, though there are scenes missing from the films.

I never understood this incidentally. Given the films were so long anyway, I would have had the missing scenes in the films given another twenty minutes to the running time wasn’t going to make a lot of difference in my view.

Where films can help is encourage people to read the original books.

I watched Oliver Twist where Alec Guinness played Fagin and Oliver Reed played Bill Sikes. Excellent, and scary, performances from both of them.

The story gripped me and I read the book immediately after seeing the film (it was on BBC2 one late afternoon years ago).

And I’ve always loved The Muppet Christmas Carol for where Gonzo recommends viewers go and read the original of A Christmas Carol after watching.

So films can help fuel reading. And if a book I’ve loved is adapted into a film, I’m more likely to want to check the film out, if only out of curiosity to see if they have stuck to the spirit of the book or not.

One of the things I love most about stories is there are so many ways to take them in.

My favourite will always be the paperback, followed by the hardback, followed jointly by ebooks and audio. I especially love audio books for long journeys and will look forward to hearing some old favourites again when I go on holiday later in the year.

But don’t forget audio itself comes in more than one medium. Stories on radio work astonishingly well, whether they are readings from books or plays (which are scripted stories).

Also film and TV can share stories amazingly well. The Lord of the Rings film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson got members of my family into that terrific story.

They would never have read the book. I had read it, loved it, and thought the film trilogy did the original justice. (Though I must admit I would have liked the films to have included what really happened to Saruman after Sauron’s fall).

I also love the fact adaptations to help breathe new life into classic books. Win-win for the written word there I think.