If I ruled the world, I would enforce a strict law decreeing that people are not allowed to complain about book-based movies not following the exact details of how the book was written. I know this inhibits free speech and all that jazz, but this is not a democracy, this is a John Mark-ocracy.
As teenagers of the new millennium, we witnessed the rise of Young Adult literature (known as YA in the publishing industry). This book genre took the whole world by surprise when it did the unthinkable: It sparked the love of reading within the hearts and minds of teenagers everywhere. Before YA took over, all there was really to choose from for a teenager were the dull textbooks written in ancient prose force-fed by our schoolteachers or the old, yellowed books with cartoon covers on the fringe of the children’s section. And then YA plowed a trench through bookstores and libraries everywhere and made way for the teen fiction aisle. Sure, we weren’t reading Moby Dick or Wuthering Heights in our free time, but we were reading.
But then movies cashed in on the YA excitement and teen readers everywhere rejoiced when they heard their favorite books were being portrayed on the big screen, special effects and all.
And of course, it all started with Harry Potter. Without the Boy Wizard and his otherworldly boarding school to captivate the imagination of an entire planet, YA would probably not have the financial success it has today.
Kicking off the millennium in 2001, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint brought Harry, Hermione and Ron to life, but with some plot holes showing through. Audiences everywhere collectively gasped when they saw Daniel Radcliffe’s bright blue eyes staring at them from the silver screen. Harry is supposed to have green eyes, the color of his mother’s eyes, which is a huge element to the story. And do not even get fans started on Harry forgetting to fix his wand before breaking the Elder Wand at the end of the last movie.
The YA books we read over and over and over again as youngsters are near and dear to our hearts. And thanks to the powerful writing styles of the authors, we can imagine their worlds in our own image. But then Hollywood comes along, makes a film out of our favorite book, we pay copious amounts of money for the midnight release and then we leave disappointed because it was not how we pictured it.
Hollywood is a weird industry created when expressive, visual art and consumerism at its fiercest fuse together into one very successful, but oftentimes very awkward business.
Filmmakers in the book-to-film genre are always forced to fit 400 or more pages worth of material into a two-hour timeframe, while keeping the theme, plot and characterization of the books. Add on to that making sure the fans are happy.
I too am one of those people too who can easily be angered by plot discrepancies between book and film. Sure, I hated how Katniss got her Mockingjay pin in “The Hunger Games” film compared to the book. Sure, I thought the mutts looked boring and a lot like overgrown pugs. Sure, I would have rather preferred to see Madge make an appearance in the film. But filmmakers, like all workers in any industry, have limitations imposed by the higher-ups.
So how about we give filmmakers a break when it comes to book adaptations? They are not telepaths with access to our brains. It will rarely be just how we imagined it. And if you did not catch it in the credits, these movies always say “based upon the novel” not “a word-by-word film version of the novel.”
