Sci-Fi & Fantasy Girlz discussion
The Weird, Fun, & Miscellaneous
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The book wasn't better, it just came first
There are plenty of books that would make just terrible movies. OTOH, you never know. I would have sworn that it was impossible to take LES MISERABLES to the stage -- shows you what I know.
Hmmm, okay, I only skimmed that post, to be honest (the one in the link). Some books would not only be terrible, but kind of awkward to watch as movies. There's one book where I like the movie adaption butter, though: Stardust
The book was fairy tale fantasy, the movie was your typical hollwood action fantasy. But it worked.
Btw, since the blog picked up 'Fight Club': the book and the movie both work out. The movie orders scenes that are random in the book into an order that works for a movie. In the book, the scenes work as well because it is a book.
Or at least that's what I felt.
There are also movie adaptions which I hate but other people seem to love.
(I rarely use the word 'hate' because I feel that it's a too strong emotion to waste on things I merely dislike.)
He does raise some interesting points, though I am loath to admit to some of them. I too have seen a movie before reading a novel and felt that the experience of reading the novel paled in comparison. It really did have to do with whichever impression was formed first, and the second was inevitably compared to it.As for the rest, I think he's dead wrong. The books did not simply "come first" - they were the original work on which the adaptation was based. This means that the movie is taking its cue and its material from the novel, so why wouldn't people appreciate the novel more?
Sure, movie makers can show originality when they try to adapt written material to the screen. But no matter what, they are picking crumbs of the author's table. To say that books could spoil a movie or show seems ridiculous to me. If anything, it's the other way around.
I would believe this. Except that there are many cases where the movie or the stage presentation is clearly better than the original work. This is especially visible on stage. You ever read LEGALLY BLONDE? The stage musical is dynamite, an absolute honey -- a Broadway sensation. But go look at the GR reviews. It's not that great as a novel. And, Lord knows, LES MISERABLES is a really opaque book for the modern reader. Chapters and chapters of religious philosophy, my eyes glaze over!
Given that the two art forms are so different, in many cases it seems like an apple-to-oranges comparison. One thing I have noticed though is that books can be bloated or meandering, and the filmmakers sometimes see through more clearly to the essential message, doing perhaps what an editor would have done (or should have done). I don't think that is common, but it does happen. Another case I've seen is a book with interesting ideas and a good plot, but lackluster writing. In many popular books, the quality of the writing just isn't very good, and they can translate to the screen pretty well as a result.
Owen wrote: "One thing I have noticed though is that books can be bloated or meandering, and the filmmakers sometimes see through more clearly to the essential message..."And sometimes the movie conflates two book characters and makes one, much better, one. I'm thinking of Chocolat, where the Mayor(?) and the priest(? sorry, it's a long time since I saw the movie/read the book) were made into one character. Hmmm. Or was it that the heroine's main adversary in the book was the mayor, but in the movie it became the priest? Can't remember now! but I do remember thinking that the movie choice made much more sense thematically than the book choice.
But maybe that's just because I saw the movie first. I always seem to prefer whichever version I experienced first. Usually that's the book, but in that case it was the movie.
Marina wrote: "Owen wrote: "And sometimes the movie conflates two book characters and makes one, much better, one ..."I'm not familiar with that example, not having read the book, but I think something similar happened in the LOTR movies with Arwen. As I understand it, her character on the movies combines several from the books (I must admit my attempts to get through the books decades ago were not successful). I believe Arwen doesn't do much in the books, and the movie character is more interesting. (I suppose that was Tolkien's intent, but I see no reason we should be slavishly bound by it at this point. Movies require a degree of reinterpretation. )
I think it’s also true that sometimes an actor can capture a character in his or her portrayal in a way that is superior to the author’s. The best example of this (IMO) is Alex Guinness playing George Smiley. I once read that even John le Carré acknowledged the genius of Guinness’ portrayal, and felt Guinness now owned the character (or words to that effect). At a somewhat less exalted level, I felt that a number of actors in the Harry Potter movies made the characters more interesting and engaging than the portrayal in the books (which have a tendency to rather lack nuance and be over the top.)
BTW: It is true for me also that whichever version I encounter first tends to set my expectations, and if I like the movie (having seen it first), elements of the book may not then work so well for me. So that factor cannot be discounted.
Yoly wrote: "I found this post and thought it was relevant to the movie adaptations discussion Gary started earlier.http://www.theroyalfrontier.com/the-b...
I'm sure sometime..."
Glad you mentioned the Hobbit, because that's a perfect example of where a movie-maker can ruin a story by needlessly extending it. If there's one thing that most people I've talked to who have read the book and seen the movies agree on, it's that Jackson should not have made it into a trilogy.
Sure, the first and second movie had all kinds of things thrown in to try and recapture the sense of high-stakes drama the original had going for it. But the third was way worse! After Smaug, he had pretty much run out of material and just made things up - which apparently included reinventing why there had to be a battle on the Lonely Mountain to begin with.
It's a lot like Season Four of a Game of Thrones too. Since they cut book three (A Storm of Swords) into two parts to make seasons three and four, season four was short on material and had to be padded with all kinds of things from book five or that the writers simply made up. But since they couldn't alter the story in any real way, those threads they invented also had to go nowhere.
As someone who read the original books, I found these sorts of changes to be kind of insulting. It wasn't just that they were straying from the material, they were throwing in things that made little sense and served no purpose other than making the run-time longer and cashing in more. You can't tell me that doesn't make an adaptation worse.
Someone is sure to do a Fan's Cut of the HOBBIT movies, and throw out all the extraneous stuff. What will be left will be very much like the original book.But it is true -- the dramatic medium is quite a different animal from books, and we have to accept that and not complain too bitterly. A further jump for instance, would be from book to ballet. Do we complain when the ballet of CINDERELLA has a lot of extra stuff?
Probably the hardest thing to adapt from a novel is the narration, particularly in the first person, and especially the thoughts of characters. Voice-over is often done badly, and even when done well can get tiresome pretty quickly, and it seems like a lot of adaptations stumble over that kind of content. So much mental activity gets turned into "smell the fart acting" or the characters staring off into space doing "blue steel" from Zoolander. Take, for example, the Dune adaptations. The first Dune movie has a lot of "smell the fart" acting. On the other hand, the Syfy adaptation(s) have an awful lot of "blue steel" going on.
Brenda wrote: "Someone is sure to do a Fan's Cut of the HOBBIT movies, and throw out all the extraneous stuff. What will be left will be very much like the original book."And probably 90 minutes long (Assuming there is no singing in the movie).
Is there singing in the movies?!? (I haven't seen them yet, waiting for all of them to be available on Bluray)
Yoly wrote: "Is there singing in the movies?!? (I haven't seen them yet, waiting for all of them to be available on Bluray)"I saw 15-20 minutes of the first one, and the dwarves do sing at that first meal. I don't know about the rest of songs/lyrics.
Personally, I kind of like the music done in the old animated adaptation of The Hobbit, but I'm a child of the 70's, so my taste is forever schooled by Saturday morning School House Rock videos.
The dwarves singing was very good (And is in the book.)
*cries**sigh*
oh well...
I guess that's why they invented the fast forward button...
Gary wrote: "Probably the hardest thing to adapt from a novel is the narration, particularly in the first person, and especially the thoughts of characters. ..."This reminds me of The Hunger Games. The book was in first person, so we got Katniss warts and all, and she wasn't always a terribly likeable character, though you could certainly understand why she was the way she was and even sympathise with her. In the movie, because we didn't get that inner view, she came across as much more likeable.
Something like WOLF HALL, which is coming to both stage and screen, has to get away from the narration. There's no other way to do it.
And here we go - you knew someone would do it:https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/2...
Slide over and see the Tolkien HOBBIT, before the suits make this guy take it down.
I didn't make it through the first Radagast scene in the PJ edit. I'll have a look at this one, though an awful lot of the characterization of the dwarves themselves, the shifts in the dialogue and such-like also offended my sensibilities. Still. I'll give it a go. It's worth a try as a nod to the old master, eh?
Matthew wrote: "Yoly wrote: "I found this post and thought it was relevant to the movie adaptations discussion Gary started earlier.http://www.theroyalfrontier.com/the-b...
I'm ..."
I disagree with you about Peter Jackson's decision to make it a trilogy. I'm glad it got made into a trilogy because I liked the way Thorin's cousin Dain was fleshed out, the original book didn't really tell HOW Thorin snapped out of the Arkenstone's spell AND we got to see Lord Elrond kick Ringwraith ASS!
Yoly wrote: "Brenda wrote: "Someone is sure to do a Fan's Cut of the HOBBIT movies, and throw out all the extraneous stuff. What will be left will be very much like the original book."And probably 90 minutes ..."
The Dwarves singing at Bilbo's "tea party" was kept.
Gary: Do you mean a song like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKdsB... (Old Fat Spider)?
Marina: Oh please... . Do we REALLY HAVE to drag dystopian crud into what started out as a discussion of THE HOBBIT?
Brenda wrote: "And here we go - you knew someone would do it:https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/2...
Slide over and see the Tolkien ..."
YES! He needs to be hired for the BluRay Collector's Edition Box with the "short(ish) version" of the saga.
Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Yoly wrote: "I found this post and thought it was relevant to the movie adaptations discussion Gary started earlier.http://www.theroyalfrontier.com/the-b......"
That's what I'm talking about, the fact that elements from LOTR were thrown in there. Aside from it being where the One Ring turned up, the Hobbit was a distinct adventure with its own stakes, crisis, and characters. There was no mention of Sauron, no sense that things were related to a coming war that would decide the fate of Middle Earth. All of that seemed like an obvious attempt to cash in on the original trilogy's fame.
Matthew wrote: "Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Yoly wrote: "I found this post and thought it was relevant to the movie adaptations discussion Gary started earlier.http://www.theroyalfrontier.com/the-b......"
Elrond kicking Ringwraith ass was IMPLIED behind the scenes as part of the business Gandalf said he was late for in the original book. Thorin's cousin Dain was part of the original Hobbit novel but there really wasn't a whole hell of a lot of info about him other than that as Thorin's cousin he gained the throne when Thorin and both of his nephews died. Ergo, neither of those elements was actually in LOTR either.
In The Hobbit, Sauron was simply called "The Necromancer."
Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Yoly wrote: "I found this post and thought it was relevant to the movie adaptations discussion Gary started earlier.http://www.theroyalfrontier.com/t..."
I know Dain was in the original books, but Tauriel wasn't. And there was no relationship between her and Kili in the story, that too was added just to pad things. As for Sauron coming up in the novel, you are right I think, he does merit some mentions. However, it was left deliberately vague and mysterious. In the movies, Jackson took material from the appendices and used them to create scenes where Gandalf was meeting with the Grey Council to discuss him.
This was done not only to give Gandalf more screen time and pad the run-time, but to try and establish a sense of connection between the new movies and old which wasn't meant to be there. They even implied in the third movie that the battle for the Lonely Mountain's outcome would somehow lead to Sauron's conquest of Middle Earth, which was a total fabrication.
Matthew wrote: "Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Yoly wrote: "I found this post and thought it was relevant to the movie adaptations discussion Gary started earlier.http://www.theroyal..."
White Council, not Grey Council. The Grey Council belongs to The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.
That's not what I gained from it. What I think they were trying to tell us was that if the Elves, Dwarves and Men failed at the Battle of the Five Armies, it would lead to disastrous consequences decades later. And in BOTH the movie and book they damn near did fail. It was only the intervention of Beorn AND the Eagles of the Misty Mountains that pulled the collective asses of the other three good guy armies out of the fire in both the movie and the book.
Amber wrote: "It was only the intervention of Beorn AND the Eagles of the Misty Mountains that pulled the collective asses..."Makes you wonder why Middle Earth adventurers didn't just make a booking with the eagles before they started. Would have saved a whole lot of trouble!
Marina wrote: "Amber wrote: "It was only the intervention of Beorn AND the Eagles of the Misty Mountains that pulled the collective asses..."Makes you wonder why Middle Earth adventurers didn't just make a book..."
*snorting giggles* Thanks for the laugh.
Matthew wrote: "All of that seemed like an obvious attempt to cash in on the original trilogy's fame. "Thank you.
It feels like he's just milking it.
Well like I said, Yoly, that's not what I felt when I watched it. Besides milking it or not, it's still a better story than the entire Twatlight Saga, Hunger Games Saga AND Divergent trilogy combined!
Marina wrote: "Makes you wonder why Middle Earth adventurers didn't just make a booking with the eagles before they started. Would have saved a whole lot of trouble! "Hahaha.
This site needs a +1 button for comments!
Amber wrote: "Well like I said, Yoly, that's not what I felt when I watched it. Besides milking it or not, it's still a better story than the entire Twatlight Saga, Hunger Games Saga AND Divergent trilogy combi..."Taking content out of a book for the movie adaptation because you won't be able to fit the whole story due to time constraints, I can understand. Adding more stuff that wasn't in the original book, specifically for a classic, just to make me go to the movies three times in three different years to tell me a 350-page story, I say you're milking it.
I wouldn't say it was a "better" story than those other three sagas.
And I also wouldn't put The Hunger Games in the same category as Twilight and Divergent even though they're all YA trilogies. Why the hate?! Peace and love for books! :P
Why would you say it is a better story. Just because it was written a long time ago?
Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Amber wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Yoly wrote: "I found this post and thought it was relevant to the movie adaptations discussion Gary started earlier.htt..."
Doh! Right, White Council. The Grey Council also belongs to Babylon 5, fyi. God, I'm such a nerd!
And yes, they did establish that losing the battle would have grave consequences in the third movie, claiming that a loss at the Lonely Mountain would lead to the "age of the Orc". But what was that if not an attempt to artificially raise the stakes and recreate the spirit of LOTR? In the books, the characters were only fighting for their own survival and to make sure the Orcs did not take over the mountain.
The same was true of the other two movies, like how the townspeople were frightened of them going into the mountain and angering Smaug and the Bard even goes as far as to tell them "you have no right!" - again, didn't happen that way in the books. All along, they tried to imbue things with far more consequence than what was originally there in the books, and I thought that it just seemed so phoney.
Yoly wrote: "Amber wrote: "Well like I said, Yoly, that's not what I felt when I watched it. Besides milking it or not, it's still a better story than the entire Twatlight Saga, Hunger Games Saga AND Divergent..."Because the actual LOTR and Hobbit stories are better written than the rest of the YA/NA SLOP and they weren't written to PANDER to teenage girls! A trained GORILLA could do a much better a job than the "authors" of 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999ad infinitum% of ALL YA/NA TRIPE!
Not to mention that REALITY is dystopian ENOUGH!
Matthew: We're ALL nerds here! Book nerds. *BG*
Phony as it may have been, it was a hell of a lot more believable than emo sparkly blood fairies who THINK they're vampires (Twatlight), kids killing kids at the behest of their government for sponsorships and food (Hunger Games) and a single genetic trait determining 100% of your place in society (The Divergent series)! Plus that inane slogan: "Faction before blood!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPUZo... (Divergent), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hp_x... (Hunger Games), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gugB..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnYPq..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvo5_... last couple are for Twatlight.
Amber wrote: "Yoly wrote: "Amber wrote: "Well like I said, Yoly, that's not what I felt when I watched it. Besides milking it or not, it's still a better story than the entire Twatlight Saga, Hunger Games Saga ..."Compared to those movies, the Hobbit was like Bach, Beethoven and Mozart teamed up to do the score for a Kubrick-Hitchcock visual masterpiece - with unlimited budgets, no CGI, and the best actors in the business!
Excuse me, I need to go sweat out the poison these videos have filled me with ;)
Amber wrote: "Because the actual LOTR and Hobbit stories are better written than the rest of the YA/NA SLOP and they weren't written to PANDER to teenage girls! A trained GORILLA could do a much better a job than the "authors" of 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999ad infinitum% of ALL YA/NA TRIPE!"One would think you don't like the genre? :)
Well, there may be some books we don't like or think should have never been published in the first place (50 Shades of Gray comes to mind) but I don't think saying a whole genre sucks because of a book or series we didn't like. I would imagine some of these book snobs that only read highbrow literature say science fiction and fantasy is crap. I think it's all relative.
Matthew wrote: "Amber wrote: "Yoly wrote: "Amber wrote: "Well like I said, Yoly, that's not what I felt when I watched it. Besides milking it or not, it's still a better story than the entire Twatlight Saga, Hung..."Thank you!
Yoly: The entire genre IS crap but not because of books I don't like. The genre is crap because most of the books in the genre have crap writing, compared to say the Department 19 series which is one of the only series in that genre I can actually read w/o thinking my brain's gonna rot!
I've read some YA books that I really, really liked. Or, at least, I've read books that were lumped into that particular marketing term--and I liked them. Daughter of Smoke & Bone, for instance, was presented to me as a YA book. Isn't Holes in that category? I liked that one.That said, the last time I went to that section of the bookstore I found very little that interested me, and a random selection that I leafed through contained some pretty horrible prose.... And there's an awful lot of it! They literally pile up on one another in a local used bookstore, and I'm pretty sure that's indicative of the quality of the books on a certain level. They are meant to be disposable if not recyclable.
There are some gems in the genre, but I can't say if that's because they are gems that got put in with the coal because they'd be easier to market/advertise that way, or if they are exceptions that prove the rule....
Gary wrote: "There are some gems in the genre, but I can't say if that's because they are gems that got put in with the coal because they'd be easier to market/advertise that way, or if they are exceptions that prove the rule..."I think the whole popularity of the genre created room for bad stories.
Authors and publishers saw a big opportunity with YA literature and everyone and their mother started publishing young adult. It became an issue of quantity, not really quality and when that happens you either lower your standards because not every author out there is going to give you a masterpiece or you don't have the quantity you're looking for. So you're going to go with quantity because you want the numbers.
Same thing happened with Romance only this happened way earlier.
Gary wrote: "I've read some YA books that I really, really liked. Or, at least, I've read books that were lumped into that particular marketing term--and I liked them. Daughter of Smoke & Bone, ..."Actually, I think HOLES is in the younger genre than NA/YA...in other words, I think it's still considered "Kiddie lit."
As for "And there's an awful lot of it! They literally pile up on one another in a local used bookstore, and I'm pretty sure that's indicative of the quality of the books on a certain level. They are meant to be disposable if not recyclable," I would be EMBARRASSED to send any of those books to the recycling facility! Hell, I wouldn't even use them as TOILET PAPER!
The "gems" are OBVIOUSLY the exceptions that PROVE the rule, like the Department 19 series I mentioned in my previous post.
Amber wrote: "Yoly: The entire genre IS crap but not because of books I don't like. The genre is crap because most of the books in the genre have crap writing, compared to say the Department 19 series which is one of the only series in that genre I can actually read w/o thinking my brain's gonna rot! "I think it would more accurate to say you personally don't like the genre or are not interested in it. The whole thing is subjective, there is no way to determine that a genre is either good or bad.
Amber wrote: "Actually, I think HOLES is in the younger genre than NA/YA...in other words, I think it's still considered "Kiddie lit.""According to Wikipedia (so, take it with a grain of 'pedia salt) "Holes is a 1998 young adult novel written by Louis Sachar and first published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux."
But I think that is part of the "YA problem" in general. It's a very successful marketing term, so things get lumped into that category because rightly or wrongly publishers think there is a ready audience who'll snap them up. It's turned into something of a meaningless standard. I don't know if it really exists as a genre in and of itself. I guess it must have at some point, but nowadays? I'm not so sure. At least, I've lost track of what really fits as YA other than having a young protagonist.
Somebody in another GR thread pointed out that The Catcher in the Rye would probably be published as a YA novel if it came out this year, a statement that is, if one thinks about it for a moment, equal parts true and horrifying. C. S. Lewis' Narnia books would, no doubt, get the same treatment by the 21st century. Maybe even Romeo and Juliet would... and they'd want a happy ending, of course.
And it is the same for all other genres. Tolkien is a cultural phenom with a three-volume quest fantasy? SWORD OF SHANNARA and its friends surge onto the market. 50 SHADES OF GRAY a hit? Let's all write bondage porn! Vampires, zombies, youthful wizards -- they all come and go.
Regarding my previous reply: Looks like we were writing at the same time, Yoly.If I 100% didn't like it, I wouldn't praise the few books in the genre I consider worth reading...like the Department 19 series.
*BG*
Gary: Because it's so old, HOLES does NOT read like a YA novel, at all. It reads like a DECENT book.
Like the food marketing term "artisanal," eh? *wink* The part about "meaningless standard," that is.
Ugh...Romeo and Juliet stank. I know it's Shakespeare but that particular play is overrated. The best R & J reference is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV7xJ...
Brenda: Yep...pretty much brings the "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" cliche to life, doesn't it?
It's probably true to say that a lot of YA authors/publishers have simply jumped on the bandwagon after watching the success of some of the current authors, however there is good stuff out there.Several that come to mind are The Rithmatist, the early Artemis Fowl books, and John Flanagan's Rangers Apprentice Bundle: Books 1-8 series.
Dystopia is currently the fad of all fads, (as were vampires/paranormal a couple of years prior to that) but it has a long history of popularity in particular.
Leonie wrote: "Dystopia is currently the fad of all fads, (as were vampires/paranormal a couple of years prior to that)..."Is the storm surge of vampires & werewolves abating? Might it be safe to back in the water? ;-)
Amber wrote: "Regarding my previous reply: Looks like we were writing at the same time, Yoly.If I 100% didn't like it, I wouldn't praise the few books in the genre I consider worth reading...like the Department 19 series..."
*sigh*
lol
Guess I should add this Department 19 masterpiece to my to-read list, right?
I forget -- did I promise to let people know when I reviewed EXODUS? A grand case, btw, of the movie wandering far, far from the original book. Anyway, here is the link:http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/01/...
Owen wrote: "Leonie wrote: "Dystopia is currently the fad of all fads, (as were vampires/paranormal a couple of years prior to that)..."Is the storm surge of vampires & werewolves abating? Might it be safe to..."
Not yet. The zombies still haven't cleared out ;)
Yoly wrote: "Amber wrote: "Regarding my previous reply: Looks like we were writing at the same time, Yoly.If I 100% didn't like it, I wouldn't praise the few books in the genre I consider worth reading...like..."
It's up to you but the only female in the series who is weak is the main protagonist's mother, the vampires kick ass when they fight and one of the good guys is Frankenstein's monster, plus it's NOT set in some dystopian future! It's set, aside from some flashbacks giving the backstory of the Deportment itself, in the contemporary world! One of those flashbacks is set in the last days of December the first year of Prohibition and the fist day of the following year and shows how Frankenstein's monster became a member of Department 19. That said, I've only been able to read the actual first 2 books of the series because that's all my library system has.
As far as this group goes, the only drawback is that it's NOT written by a woman.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Girlz
Books mentioned in this topic
The Rithmatist (other topics)Artemis Fowl (other topics)
Rangers Apprentice Bundle Books 1-8 (other topics)
Daughter of Smoke & Bone (other topics)
Daughter of Smoke & Bone (other topics)
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I'm sure sometimes the movie is better than the book, I don't think it happens often but I'm sure it happens. But I think the main reason the book is usually better than the movie is because so much of the original book has to be taken out in order to make a 2 hour long movie, that you lose some of the essence of the story.
I realize Peter Jackson's The Hobbit is the complete opposite case, how many movies can you make out of a book that's 350 pages long?!.
Also, a novel was originally conceived as a book, it doesn't mean it will adapt to another medium the same way, it can but maybe not always. In a similar case, I wouldn't dare read a novelization of a movie, I'm sure it would be just terrible.
What do you guys think?