The last original movie to come out of Hollywood was Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Instead, directors are basing films off of other sources, mostly books and, in rare cases, board games (like Battleship, but we don’t talk about that). Utilizing preconceived ideas is typically a surefire way to turn a movie into a box office hit. But like all things, there are many sides to the story.
The Good
Harry Potter: a series that captivated most of a generation and spawned a theme park, an online interactive narrative and a couple of accompanying books made the best transfer from pages to the silver screen. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone arrived in theaters in 2001-about five years after the book first came out-and the series gave worldwide moviegoers of all ages something to look forward to for a decade. The first movie was as true to the book as it could possibly have been in the allotted time limit. Less important plot points got lost in the adaptation as the series went on, like the character Peeves the Poltergeist in his entirety, and some scenes, like the burning of the Burrow in Half-Blood Prince, were added to interest those who hadn’t read the book.
The overall outcome, however, pleased everyone involved.
The Hunger Games is currently attempting to follow in Potter’s footsteps, and is so far doing a good job. The second installment of the series, Catching Fire, comes out in theaters this November. While hardcore fans of the books were a little disappointed in casting news initially, the film stayed almost completely true to the plot, and it made for an overall entertaining movie.
The Bad
As far as a movie goes, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief was a quality movie. It had the action, the humor and the plot needed for any standard blockbuster. However, to fans of the books series, it was a nightmare. Half the plot was changed in order to come to the same ending and some of the characters were not true to their form. The second movie in the series, Sea of Monsters, which came out this past summer, was just as bad as an adaptation as the first, if not worse. But it was the same deal as its predecessor: good for a movie theater, bad for a library.
One of the all-time worst book-to-movie adaptations of pretty much ever is Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. The director and screenwriter tried to put the first three books of the thirteen book series into one movie, only one of their many mistakes. It seemed promising, with Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep headlining the cast, but no number of famous actors could have made this movie any better. They mixed up the three plot lines in the movie, and although they all build off each other, placing the end of the first book at the end of the third was just a confusing travesty.
The Yet-To-Be-Seen
And then there are those novels that are next on the list for the silver screen treatment. All the cult followers hope theirs turn out well, but there’s always the chance that the worst could happen. Upcoming book-to-movie adaptations include works by authors Veronica Roth, John Green and James Dashner. Roth’s Divergent and Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, both starring Shailene Woodley, are both scheduled to come out in 2014. Dashner’s The Maze Runner, starring Dylan O’Brien of Teen Wolf fame, is set to release this coming Valentine’s Day.