Adaptations And their Merits, Source Material Aside

There are nearly countless commentators who say that book versions are better than movie versions and movie versions are better than the game versions. There is, it seems, a hierarchy of media supremacy that ranks the oldest media as the "best". It has to do with faithfulness to the source material, it seems. "The book is better". It's a common mantra of criticism that along with "the book has more details", "the book has better character development", and " the movie is not faithful to the book" seem to form a mantra of adaptation commentary. Instead of repeating it, let me instead posit that the value of adaptations should not be measured on how accurately it follows the original, but on how well it uses the native elements unique to its given form of media. 

To support this claim, let us look at The Golden Compass. Phillip Pullman's masterpiece grabs the imagination of the viewer and never lets go. The movie adaptation, however, leaves much to be desired. Although it follows the plot of the book fairly accurately, it doesn't use the full power of what film can do to depict the religious allegories and serious themes from the book, which leaves viewers with a mediocre adventure film. The same is true of Prince Caspian from the Narnia series (although The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was incredibly well done). Other adaptations try to interpret the source material, but fail at capturing the essence of what made the source text interesting. Here we see examples such as Fantastic Four, Eat Pray Love, Eragon, Treasure Island, and that one movie featuring two brothers and some monsters with lizard heads called Goombas.

Now let's consider Resident Evil, a videogame series set during a zombie apocalypse (talk about reductive summaries). In the game, the player takes control of Jill, the "master of unlocking", or Chris. As the player explores the mansion, they have to keep an eye out for zombies and other *cough* biohazards *cough* in order to escape the mansion. The themes of the game include survival and suspense, with the player being kept at the edge of the chair at every moment. The movie, despite following the story from the game very loosely, includes the core elements of Resident Evil: there is a mansion, there are zombies and hunters, and there is a lot of stress and suspense. The videogames exploit interactivity, while the film exploits visuals and camera angles to portray the same sensations. 

 Now let's consider Twilight for a bit. An okay book for fans of contemporary takes on gothic romance (a topic that can be discussed at length in another post), the books present the struggles of Bella as she navigates the pitfalls of being in love with a 104 year old vampire. It's not my cup of tea, but it's an ok book with complex themes. The film tries to follow the events of the book, and provides viewers with one of the blandest, least interesting romance movies in a while, them being successful only because of the fame propelled by the books and because of massive publicity and well crafted trailers. However, in the entire movie series there is one scene that stands out from the rest. Towards the end of  the endless scenes of Edward brooding, Jacob being angsty, and Bella being stoic, viewers are treated to one of the better crafted battle scenes in film - the fight scene where the vampires and the shapeshifters team up to fight the Volturi. Visually, this scene is almost as stunning as the CG in Avatar or the Crazy 88 scene in Kill Bill or the fights in Sucker Punch. There is some agreement that this scene is the best thing out of the entire film series. However, this scene is not on the books. This is an example of an adaptation failing when it tries to stick too close to source material, but succeeding when it breaks away from source lore and takes liberties to exploit the strengths of a new medium. 

In the end, the point I'm clumsily grasping at is that people should stop looking at adaptations in terms of how faithful to the original, but in terms of how well it captures the spirit of the original in the new form of media.