Chuckles Chat #52 Films and Books

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This week I'm looking at Films and Books. There are Harry Potter spoilers from The Order of the Phoenix. There are NO Game of Thrones spoilers.

There's always that debate isn't there when books are turned into films. When a book we loved is announced to have a film being based on it, the first feeling is joy that we are going to see it on the big screen in all it's glory and we really can't wait to see it. That is followed by rumour and debate over who might be in it and if an actor we don't like is mentioned in connection with our favourite character in the book, we start to get that feeling of dread. There is also genuine fear that they are not going to do justice to the book by turning it into some Hollywood version aimed at a certain demographic and ruining the essence of the book.

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean. Every time there was talk of a YA book being put into production, Kristen Stewart was mentioned and the Twilight fans who never liked her as Bella would all go rabid at the thought of her in another film version of a book they loved. We all have an idea in our head as to what the characters look like and who we would want to play the part and sometimes the actors chosen are just not what we would want. That can be disappointing! 

Sometimes we get the exact actors we want and excitement builds for it. When they were casting Lord of the Rings, a rumour came out that Sean Bean was being considered and my first thought was that he was perfect for Boromir, the flawed hero. Yes he would have played Aragorn equally well but I saw him as Boromir and thankfully so did Peter Jackson. In fact, I thought casting for the trilogy was brilliant. When I read Harry Potter, in my head when I read Snape, I saw Alan Rickman, and Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid so it was great to see them in the film shortly after. I was pleased when they said they were finally filming The Forest of Hands and Teeth with Maisie Williams (Arya Stark, GoT) as Mary. I thought that sounded perfect but that was 2015 and we are headed into 2018 with still no word on this film ever happening. Pretty soon, Maisie may be too old to play Mary and uncertainty will start again. 

I like to read the book first where possible, to see where the author wanted the story to go. I read things like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter before the films came out so when actors were mentioned I could imagine them in the parts and think 'yeah, that could work'. These were good examples of when casting were done right. Things so often change when the book goes film and sometimes our favourite scenes could be cut out or changed into something bad. As an example I would like to use The Order of the Phoenix. They cut the scenes that showed Umbridge as being truly evil like when she and her team attacked Hagrid and almost killed Minerva. Instead they had her as being slightly nasty which lost the whole essence of the book. They turned Cho into the one who betrayed Harry and handled the failed romance badly. The end sequences with the Department of Mysteries and the Order duelling with Death Eaters felt clumsy and lacked the tension of the book. The emotional death of Sirius failed to impact in the film. I found it a disappointing adaptation but the director did redeem himself with the next three films. The Maze sequence in The Goblet of Fire was equally poor.

As I said I generally prefer to read the books first but it doesn't always happen. I had decided I was going to watch Game of Thrones on dvd before I tackled the books because of the huge cast list and my poor memory! I figured that I would do better if I could imagine the show cast in my head as I read and that has worked out well, especially for the background characters. The difficulty with this, however, is that the books do go off on their own arc and feature people and events never shown in the series. I am not going into spoilers here but there was a big storyline that GRRM really wanted in the series that the TV people insisted on cutting. To be honest, seeing both I prefer the TV version but that is personal taste. It's also weird how much younger the characters are in the books. I imagine the book readers were taken by surprise at some of the deaths in the series too. 

The other thing about a good book being turned into film or TV is that sometimes they don't work out so well. I enjoyed the atmospheric character based book of The Girl with all the Gifts but I was disappointed by how dull the film actually was, other than the performance of Glenn Close. It just didn't work for me. Along came a Spider was a good book but despite the great cast, I felt the film just fell flat. I love The Other Boleyn Girl but was disappointed by both film versions of it. I liked the Twilight series when I first read them years back but I wasn't overly impressed by any of the films. I'd probably find the books too slow for me now as well though, as my book tastes have changed.

On the other hand there are certainly films that were much better than the books with Jaws being a great example. I thought the book was boring with all the focus on Ellen having an affair with Hooper, rather than the shark being the main event. Jaws is one of my favourite ever films. I liked The Killing Fields film better than the book and had the same thoughts on Jurassic Park 2 Lost World. I really didn't like the book and much preferred the film. I wasn't a fan of The Silence of the Lambs book either but I liked the film. Never let me go was ok as a book but I liked the film better. Lolita was a poor book for me but I liked the Jeremy Irons film. I liked Q&A as a book but hated Slumdog Millionaire as a film.

Sometimes they do get it right. I liked the books of The Godfather, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire, and loved the film and TV adaptations as well. I seem to be in the minority here but I liked The DaVinci Code book and film! I enjoyed the first version if It, which is one of my favourite books and I've still to watch the new version which I'm looking forward to. Sometimes it all goes wrong. For me I didn't like His Dark Materials either as books or film.  

Do you prefer to read the book first or see the film/show first? Which books were better than the adaptations? Which films were better than the books?