Jessica Palacio
The Paw Print
We have all at some time gone to the movie theater and caught a movie that is based on some book or another. They span every genre from box office fantasy hits like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Harry Potter series to the ultimate romances like The Notebook, The Vow, and Safe Haven by author Nicholas Sparks.
Now if you ask me, these are some of the one that make a successful jump from the novel to the gilded silver screen, but quite often there is some shortcoming between the compelling written word to its on screen adaptation.
As a bit of a bookworm, I have often fallen victim to this plight. I read the book and fall in love with the characters and the story and am sad when the book or the series comes to an end and I have to say good bye to a world that I had been enthralled with over a period of a few days to a few weeks, and in some cases a few years.
Then I come to find that this beloved book is to become a movie and the little bookworm inside me pokes up her head and the anticipation begins to build as the chance to dive headfirst into to the story pops up again. But far too often I find myself disappointed.
I end up sitting through the movie going “wrong” “nope that’s not supposed to happen there” “What in the world?” I apologize now to all you twilight fans, but the movies are a travesty in comparison to the books.
While I will admit to watching all five of the movies, I have to admit that the only reason my friend and I would go was so that we could laugh at how terrible the adaptation was.
It has gotten so bad that rather than be excited at the prospect of a new movie of one of my favorite books, I find myself more tinged with dread about what is going to be wrong this time.
Last summer I was introduced to The Song of Fire and Ice book series and to say I loved them is an understatement. To put it in perspective, I finished all five 800+ page books in the course of about two and a half months and am now anxiously awaiting an official release date of book number six.
While I was reading these I was made aware that they had been turned into a HBO TV series. I thought to myself “hmmm, well this could be ok. At the very least its going to be better than a movie adaptation, there is no way that they could get all of the plot into a movie.”
I finally broke down last December and bough the first season of Game of Thrones on blue ray and was not disappointed. While it is still and abridged version of the novels, the concept of a TV series allows for the detail and attention to plot points that is often lost in a movie adaptation.
My inner bookworm was finally satisfied and would love to see more book series put to an episode format rather than a movie format
What’s Been Said…