The Post in Which I RANT ABOUT GODDAMN BOOK-TO-MOVIE ADAPTATIONS
So, you know how, once upon a time, people used to actually sit down and read books? And how they often made up imaginary people in their heads based on detailed character descriptions and how they could picture far-off magical landscapes because authors knew how to spin words?
And then one day, someone decided, "Hey! I want to make this book come to life for all the fans of this book!" And he sat down with the author and hammered out a screenplay and sent it to a director who decided he could do that and he gathered a team of awesome movie makers and they got the actors and the sets and the music and the makeup and all those other little goodies that go into filmmaking and they made a movie based off a book.
And at first, all was well. People who read the book saw the movie. They loved it. They recommended it to people who hadn't read the book yet because "It's pretty much the same thing." And the people who hadn't read the book saw the movie and they came out of the theater and complained. "That sucked. This should have happened. That should have happened. Where's this? Where's that? We want this. We want that. If this...If that..."
And so, the geniuses up in movie-maker's land decided, "Ok. Let's try this again. Find us a book to turn into a movie and we'll do it." So they did. And they had someone write a screenplay and they got the teams back together and they made another movie, only THIS time, they changed a few things to make it better for the people who HADN'T read the book before. AND THEY FUCKED IT UP ROYALLY BUT EVERYONE STILL WENT TO SEE IT BECAUSE THEY LOVED THE BOOK AND THE PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T READ THE BOOK LOVED IT BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER.
And thus a pattern was born.
Books were written.
Books were adored.
Books were bought, read, admired, fantasized about.
People demanded the books be made into movies.
Movies ruined the books.
People who requested the movies were disappointed.
People who didn't were just satisfied.
At a certain point, you have to ask yourself, "Why the fuck is this happening?"
These movies aren't FOR the people who didn't read the books. They aren't FOR the people who didn't even know the books EXISTED before the movie came out. The movies, my friends, are FOR THE GODDAMNED FANS OF THE BOOKS WHO REQUESTED THE MOVIES BE MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE. WITHOUT THEM THERE WOULD BE NO GODDAMNED FUCKING MOVIES!
So why, WHY, WHY are you changing everything about the books to please the people that didn't even care about them in the first place?
It's not like you're going to lose money. We're all going to see the movie anyway. You know it, they know it, I know it. The people who didn't read the books won't know the difference and they certainly won't miss what they didn't know wasn't going to happen anyway. The people who do know definitely miss everything that was left out, changed around, added in and mocked.
Examples, you ask?
My pleasure.
Why, in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, did Caspian and Susan have a little romance going on? That never happened in the book. In fact, in the books, Susan was a gigantic sourpuss that constantly put everyone down and reminded them that Narnia wasn't actually their home and that they really needed to grow up and get back to real life -- hence why, after Prince Caspian, she never fucking returned. Peter, however, returned in the Last Battle, even though Aslan told him he never would, because he believed in Narnia and wanted with every fiber of his being to go back and live his life there because he loved Narnia and fought for Narnia and would die for his kingdom and his people.
Susan ran away to America and started playing with makeup.
Why, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was there a scene where the Burrow gets blown up? Bellatrix and Fenrir come to the Burrow, lure Harry into the marsh, taunt him, make Ginny follow Harry, Remus, Arthur and Tonks follow both the kids, leave Molly alone in front of her house only to have Bellatrix and Fenrir blast all the windows through with fire.
This was not in the book, people. It served NO purpose. There was no reason for this to happen. In fact, if anything, it makes the next movie MORE confusing to people because all of a sudden, the Burrow is perfectly fine? And where the hell was Ron? He wasn't outside with everyone else. He was probably up in his room. Trapped by the fire. The fire that even despite magic should have burned down the entire goddamn ramshackle building (mostly because everyone just stared at it instead of doing anything about it) but didn't. The fuck, people? You leave out things that were actually in the books and could help people who didn't read the books understand the movies a little better and instead add in a scene that was completely and totally confusing and unnecessary.
Great job, guys.
Ella Enchanted had the potential to be an ass-kickingly PHENOMENAL movie. Girl gets cursed by a fairy to always be obedient. Girl struggles with this curse her entire life. Her mother dies. She makes friends with a prince. Her father sends her to boarding school with an evil girl. Her father loses all his money, attempts to marry her off to the highest bidder. That falls through and her father marries the mother of the evil girl. Evil girl uses her curse against her and shows her mother how to as well. They turn the girl into a maid in her own home when her father is away. The prince asks her to marry him but she won't because she doesn't want to put him at risk because of her curse. She makes him hate her to save him. His parents tell him he's got to marry someone and make him throw three balls to find a bride. She goes to the balls in disguise to see him again and ends up making him fall in love with her all over again, all the while keeping her mask on so he can't see who she really is until the very last ball, when the evil stepsister rips the mask off, exposing her. She runs home, attempts to flee but is stopped by the prince rushing after her and trying to convince her to marry him in front of all the staff of the household, her stepmother and stepsisters. She refuses, evil stepsister tries to order her to her room. Prince orders her to stay. Evil stepmother orders her to marry him and give her all their wealth. She's trying to say no, she needs to say no because she needs to keep him safe from harm. She breaks her fucking curse by breaking her own heart and saying she will not marry him. Once the curse is broken, she tells her stepfamily to fuck off, marries the prince and lives happily ever after.
The book version is an interesting take on Cinderella.
The movie version is your basic formula rom/com. With musical numbers. And midriff-baring giants.
Honestly, this is the one that pisses me off the most. You take this wonderful, classical, beautiful story and turn it into one colossal joke. They pretend to be taking the book seriously because in the movie, he asks her to marry him but his uncle has ordered her to stab him with a dagger so she breaks the spell when she refuses to kill him, which plays into the whole "I will not put Char in danger because people can use me to get to him" thing, but honestly? The book version -- where no one has actually used her to try and harm him, where it's her own fear of that happening that finally breaks the spell -- is much more powerful. Basically, the movie used a villain to make a point. The book didn't. Sure, you could argue that Hattie (evil stepsister) and her mother (Dame Olga) are the villains, but they're not, really. They're just big bullies. They don't put anyone's life in danger. They don't kill anyone. They don't breathe fire and wield swords and go around terrorizing the neighborhood. They simply use Ella's curse against her to humiliate her. It's grossly evil, but in no way does it a villain make.
No. There was no villain in Ella Enchanted. There was only a girl who was smart enough to use ogre magic against ogres. Who understood the beauty of Elvish art in a way her father did not. Who was strong-willed enough to take matters into her own hands and get back at her enemies by succeeding when they wanted her to fail. She stayed strong when she was weakest. She found hope when there was none to cling to. She fell in love and forced herself to break his heart because she couldn't stand the thought of someone using her to hurt him. She was clumsy and socially awkward and she slid down stair rails and tripped and fell and cried and made a mess of herself, but she was a real girl. And she broke her curse.
I don't know about you, but that story sounds a hell of a lot better than a girl who saves a prince by saying "drop that crown".
And then one day, someone decided, "Hey! I want to make this book come to life for all the fans of this book!" And he sat down with the author and hammered out a screenplay and sent it to a director who decided he could do that and he gathered a team of awesome movie makers and they got the actors and the sets and the music and the makeup and all those other little goodies that go into filmmaking and they made a movie based off a book.
And at first, all was well. People who read the book saw the movie. They loved it. They recommended it to people who hadn't read the book yet because "It's pretty much the same thing." And the people who hadn't read the book saw the movie and they came out of the theater and complained. "That sucked. This should have happened. That should have happened. Where's this? Where's that? We want this. We want that. If this...If that..."
And so, the geniuses up in movie-maker's land decided, "Ok. Let's try this again. Find us a book to turn into a movie and we'll do it." So they did. And they had someone write a screenplay and they got the teams back together and they made another movie, only THIS time, they changed a few things to make it better for the people who HADN'T read the book before. AND THEY FUCKED IT UP ROYALLY BUT EVERYONE STILL WENT TO SEE IT BECAUSE THEY LOVED THE BOOK AND THE PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T READ THE BOOK LOVED IT BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER.
And thus a pattern was born.
Books were written.
Books were adored.
Books were bought, read, admired, fantasized about.
People demanded the books be made into movies.
Movies ruined the books.
People who requested the movies were disappointed.
People who didn't were just satisfied.
At a certain point, you have to ask yourself, "Why the fuck is this happening?"
These movies aren't FOR the people who didn't read the books. They aren't FOR the people who didn't even know the books EXISTED before the movie came out. The movies, my friends, are FOR THE GODDAMNED FANS OF THE BOOKS WHO REQUESTED THE MOVIES BE MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE. WITHOUT THEM THERE WOULD BE NO GODDAMNED FUCKING MOVIES!
So why, WHY, WHY are you changing everything about the books to please the people that didn't even care about them in the first place?
It's not like you're going to lose money. We're all going to see the movie anyway. You know it, they know it, I know it. The people who didn't read the books won't know the difference and they certainly won't miss what they didn't know wasn't going to happen anyway. The people who do know definitely miss everything that was left out, changed around, added in and mocked.
Examples, you ask?
My pleasure.
Why, in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, did Caspian and Susan have a little romance going on? That never happened in the book. In fact, in the books, Susan was a gigantic sourpuss that constantly put everyone down and reminded them that Narnia wasn't actually their home and that they really needed to grow up and get back to real life -- hence why, after Prince Caspian, she never fucking returned. Peter, however, returned in the Last Battle, even though Aslan told him he never would, because he believed in Narnia and wanted with every fiber of his being to go back and live his life there because he loved Narnia and fought for Narnia and would die for his kingdom and his people.
Susan ran away to America and started playing with makeup.
Why, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was there a scene where the Burrow gets blown up? Bellatrix and Fenrir come to the Burrow, lure Harry into the marsh, taunt him, make Ginny follow Harry, Remus, Arthur and Tonks follow both the kids, leave Molly alone in front of her house only to have Bellatrix and Fenrir blast all the windows through with fire.
This was not in the book, people. It served NO purpose. There was no reason for this to happen. In fact, if anything, it makes the next movie MORE confusing to people because all of a sudden, the Burrow is perfectly fine? And where the hell was Ron? He wasn't outside with everyone else. He was probably up in his room. Trapped by the fire. The fire that even despite magic should have burned down the entire goddamn ramshackle building (mostly because everyone just stared at it instead of doing anything about it) but didn't. The fuck, people? You leave out things that were actually in the books and could help people who didn't read the books understand the movies a little better and instead add in a scene that was completely and totally confusing and unnecessary.
Great job, guys.
Ella Enchanted had the potential to be an ass-kickingly PHENOMENAL movie. Girl gets cursed by a fairy to always be obedient. Girl struggles with this curse her entire life. Her mother dies. She makes friends with a prince. Her father sends her to boarding school with an evil girl. Her father loses all his money, attempts to marry her off to the highest bidder. That falls through and her father marries the mother of the evil girl. Evil girl uses her curse against her and shows her mother how to as well. They turn the girl into a maid in her own home when her father is away. The prince asks her to marry him but she won't because she doesn't want to put him at risk because of her curse. She makes him hate her to save him. His parents tell him he's got to marry someone and make him throw three balls to find a bride. She goes to the balls in disguise to see him again and ends up making him fall in love with her all over again, all the while keeping her mask on so he can't see who she really is until the very last ball, when the evil stepsister rips the mask off, exposing her. She runs home, attempts to flee but is stopped by the prince rushing after her and trying to convince her to marry him in front of all the staff of the household, her stepmother and stepsisters. She refuses, evil stepsister tries to order her to her room. Prince orders her to stay. Evil stepmother orders her to marry him and give her all their wealth. She's trying to say no, she needs to say no because she needs to keep him safe from harm. She breaks her fucking curse by breaking her own heart and saying she will not marry him. Once the curse is broken, she tells her stepfamily to fuck off, marries the prince and lives happily ever after.
The book version is an interesting take on Cinderella.
The movie version is your basic formula rom/com. With musical numbers. And midriff-baring giants.
Honestly, this is the one that pisses me off the most. You take this wonderful, classical, beautiful story and turn it into one colossal joke. They pretend to be taking the book seriously because in the movie, he asks her to marry him but his uncle has ordered her to stab him with a dagger so she breaks the spell when she refuses to kill him, which plays into the whole "I will not put Char in danger because people can use me to get to him" thing, but honestly? The book version -- where no one has actually used her to try and harm him, where it's her own fear of that happening that finally breaks the spell -- is much more powerful. Basically, the movie used a villain to make a point. The book didn't. Sure, you could argue that Hattie (evil stepsister) and her mother (Dame Olga) are the villains, but they're not, really. They're just big bullies. They don't put anyone's life in danger. They don't kill anyone. They don't breathe fire and wield swords and go around terrorizing the neighborhood. They simply use Ella's curse against her to humiliate her. It's grossly evil, but in no way does it a villain make.
No. There was no villain in Ella Enchanted. There was only a girl who was smart enough to use ogre magic against ogres. Who understood the beauty of Elvish art in a way her father did not. Who was strong-willed enough to take matters into her own hands and get back at her enemies by succeeding when they wanted her to fail. She stayed strong when she was weakest. She found hope when there was none to cling to. She fell in love and forced herself to break his heart because she couldn't stand the thought of someone using her to hurt him. She was clumsy and socially awkward and she slid down stair rails and tripped and fell and cried and made a mess of herself, but she was a real girl. And she broke her curse.
I don't know about you, but that story sounds a hell of a lot better than a girl who saves a prince by saying "drop that crown".
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