Creativity, surely, is the indispensable need of every human being. As a creation of new feelings, new emotions, and with newly acquired knowledge that our species have, all of us have the need of explaining themselves. Yet, so far, the literature has never turned its back to us.
Certainly, It is undeniable that humankind has reached a worth a king’s ransom pile of “literal work” containing stories, legends, poems, novels, fables, and much, throughout history. With this richness; many iconic and well-written characters and their storylines or worlds, universes have born along with more need and desire to consume these. Just like Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf, and Prince Hamlet; as well as Narnia, Land of Oz, and so on.
Henceforth, this richness was never behind the eyes of other creators in different mediums such as movie, game, and art sectors. However, especially cinema stands out from its competitors as from the famous adaptations of literal works, beginning with novels. It is clearly illuminated to all that recently most of the TV series and movies have been establishing their foundations onto the colorful world of literature, creating the need for discussion.
Yet, before sticking to our judgments, we must be aware of the differences of both mediums: Literature along with cinema.
Literature has always been a home to words, the sound structure that are used since the dawn of the humankind. Strong, powerful, thoroughly thought ones in wise hands, especially. This talent allows the medium to be more versatile. Significantly more powerful if it is used right. Therefore bringing the huge advantage of the effectiveness of transporting emotions to the reader in many ways, using highly dependent subjective imagination. Also, literature has the “upper hand” with being more accessible to all since the invention of writing.
On the other hand, cinema holds a stronger yet, only used correctly, side: The visual upper hand. Unlike literal work, cinema uses its power to recreate a fictional medium in a real one with the cleverness of cinematography, visual effects, and methodology heritage. Movies reconstruct a single point of the event with all its characters, places and human emotion in form of visuals, piece by piece, even the audience does not even think of it. Consequently, giving the magic of giving life to a scene.
Initially, this vital difference affects every single movie in the process of the book adaptation. Therefore, naturally, it does not align with each other very often causing a great debate of “book versus movie” as well as the big fans filled with hatred towards the adaptations.
To begin with, we should all be able to understand and recognize one thing: a job is great if only it is done in wise and talented hands. This never changes, including the topic. There are many movies adapting books that have achieved great success and brought pride to their authors with the mostly love full words from their fans. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and The Life of Pi are great examples among many, which are great novels originally too. Furthermore, adaptations like “The Giver” have also improved their original with being more artistic, creative, and clear in terms o storytelling.
Nevertheless, there are bad works, too. One of the most tragic ones I feel might be the “Transformers” franchise from Michael Bay, which is based on a series of comic books. Although The Transformers had a great profit in the box-office along with getting positive reviews from action-lovers, it could not escape the vital flaw of betraying the core-fan base. Even though years, the original fans of the comic series are still beating the Transformers franchise. Because of the dirty acts of the directors; destruction of original designs in comics, false imitations of Decepticons as well as the humiliating destruction of the main lore of the universe with fancy visual effects and attractive looking cast just for some more views.
In conclusion, movie adapting is a difficult process, which essentially must be the main concern of the directors. The wise advice to the future adaptation may be just visualizing the original as well as being creative about certain parts and taking innovations only if it is needed for improvements. Keep those fans happy, please!