The Adaptation Problem

By Elizabeth Cannon

Most of the time, when a popular book gets adapted into a movie, the film more often than not fails to meet the standards of its paperback counterpart. This is due to the fact that a good, adaptation-worthy book is packed full of information and three-dimensional characters that are important to the plot’s progression. These books usually span twenty or thirty chapters at a time, and more likely than not, they take up multiple books to tell the full story. However, this full journey and all of its characters are difficult to accurately portray when compacted into a two-hour film.

For example, The Inheritance Cycle, a book series written by Christopher Paolini, is a book series that spans five different books. In 2006, a movie was made based off of the first book, Eragon. Film critics felt that the movie was rushed and didn't properly explain the mechanics of the universe that the movie was set in. So, if you hadn't read the books prior to watching the movie, you wouldn't have a single clue as to why the main character was able to use magic. Additionally, the movie altered the entire reason that the protagonist was fighting the antagonist in the first place. In the books, the main character, Eragon, was fighting the antagonist, Durza, because Eragon believed that what Durza was doing was wrong, and that he needed to save the people that Durza had hurt. However, in the movie, Eragon was fighting Durza simply to prove that he was stronger than him in battle. Therefore, the movie changed both the worldbuilding and the motivations of the main characters that the book had previously set up for readers. This movie turned out to be a considerable failure, with only a 5.1/10 on IMDB and a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Another example of this problem in the media is with the Harry Potter books. When J.K Rowling wrote these books in 1997 and established the “Magical Wizarding World'', she included a multitude of characters that had backstories and plotlines within the universe. However, when the books were converted into movies, certain characters were cut out of the story. This even included Charlie Weasley, the older brother of one of the main characters, Ron Weasley. This character played a major role in recruiting other characters for the fight against the main antagonist, Voldemort. If this was kept in the movie, it would have offered watchers a glimpse at the universe that the movies were set in, outside of Britain.

A solution to this issue would be to make these kinds of adaptations into multi-episode productions instead. This allows for the needed time that it would take in order to compile the information correctly into a live action production. An example of this can be seen with the book series Outlander written by Diana Galbaldon. The book series was originally going to be made into a movie, but the author fought for it to be a television series instead. Gabaldon believed that writers and directors would not be able to convey the needed amount of information while staying true to the original books if it was just a movie. Gabaldon turned out to be right. The series is now seven seasons long and is rated 8.4/10 stars on IMDB and 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In conclusion, when books are adapted into movies, it usually turns out worse than people were expecting. This could be due to the fact that the movies don't have enough time to properly explain things, or that characters that would have benefited the plot are purposefully left out.