Within the past course of couple of decades, maybe even century, there’s hardly been any prominent movie or series that hasn’t been within the pages of literature first. Take the Twilight Film Series, which is really common knowledge that Bella’s story was first seen in a book series (written by Stephenie Meyer). As did Bridgerton, The Fault in Our Stars, The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, The DC Extended Universe & The Arrowverse/CWVerse, The Harry Potter Films, Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Riverdale, The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc…. And thought directors tend not to follow each plot to the t, each one of these, plus many, many more, are at the very least loosely based off of the literature they derive from.
It’s like a guaranteed formula of success: take a well-loved piece of YA literature, keeping the basis and adding your own touches, and you’ve got yourself a blockbuster movie. And not only that, but the cast chosen, if not well-know before, well this’ll just shoot their career straight up — take a look at Robert Pattinson, Cole Sprouse, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Shailene Woodley all who were relatively unknown before their big break in screen adaptations.
But, there’s always the risk of disappointing solid fans of the original; maybe by the casting, acting, general adapting, etc… And this is one of the main differences between creating a completely original script vs basing it off of something that exists prior. Take the attempt of creating an ‘Inhumans’ show. Personally, with this being my first encounter of them, I enjoyed it. But, many had read the comics, evidently expecting something better, as we can see in the ratings and reviews.
On the other hand, screen adaptations help us to visualise the literature. I mean, take ‘The Chosen’, an excellent series on Jesus’ life. On the other hand, screen adaptations help us to visualise the literature. I mean, take ‘The Chosen’, an excellent series on Jesus’ life. The Bible is wonderful as it is, but sometimes it is difficult to properly know what emotions were going around, or to actually know what a scene would’ve looked like, with historic accuracy. For example, Matthew the Tax Collector. Now, back in the day, tax collectors would take what was owed to the Romans, and give it to them, then take extra for themselves, leaving themselves in fortunate positions, whilst the average citizen struggled to make ends meet. In the Bible, we know that he isn’t exactly the most popular person, but we aren’t given a clear picture of the extent to which he was actually hated. In The Chosen, him, and what others think of him are brought alive, with people constantly giving him dirty looks, spitting at him, shouting at him, and on and on, as he passes through the marketplace.
We can see that he’s literally scared for his life; he hires a cart-driver to hide him under a cover and take him through, but the driver refuses to go the full way, knowing if they’re seen together, his family’s status would go down completely and they’d be hated.
Then Jesus willingly sits in Matthew’s house, knowing full well what everyone else is thinking.
And so, this extraordinary series gives a tangible image of what it was like.
And, yes, maybe you may imagine a character’s appearance differently to how they’re portrayed on a screen. But, there are positives to this. Most of the time, the original author closely works with the crew sharing their vision and original intention, meaning what you see may very well be what it was supposed to look like, even though a large part of reading is imagination.
And there are cases where directors and producers may disregard the author e.g. Rick Riordan and the Percy Jackson Movies.
Ultimately, many pros and cons come from literature going from just words to full visual coloured version. Lemme know what you think in the comments.
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Thank you very much for reading my post, and make sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments below!!
