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.
No comments:
Post a Comment