It’s happened to the best of us. Our favorite books being turned into movies that make us want to look more closely into Oedipus Rex. It’s the same process for everyone.
You read this fabulous book, you obsess about it, and you secretly pray that it is turned into a movie that is worthy of the writer’s prowess. You follow the production closely, constantly wanting updates on who was cast as which character, and what location they’re filming at, and who the director is. These details are all wildly important to you: they could mean the difference between every single Harry Potter movie and the Lone Ranger. Triumph or destruction, basically.
Photo by Megan Allen via Flickr
Despite all of the horrible movies that have resulted from splendid books, we should rehash all of the fabulous movies that have derived from books. All of the Lord of the Rings movies are pretty fabulous, giving tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien. So far, the Hunger Games movies seem to be a pretty decent franchise. All of the Narnia movies are a wonderful token of childhood that each adult will hold with them. And, despite the level of cheese associated with the author, most of Nicholas Spark’s movies are a pretty big success.
In today’s movie industry, we are seeing a serious overload of sequels. There have been four Scream movies, so far. Grease 2 was a catastrophe that should never have been put into production, and there have been far too many Fast and Furious movies.
Perhaps a suggestion that producers should heed is that sequels, unless they have been preplanned, are a poor excuse for an additional movie. There are thousands of books in existence, with thousands of plots. The genres range from horror to romance to westerns. If the movie industry really wanted to make a splash, they should just look into getting the copyrights for fabulous books that are currently being written.
Sequels are pretty bad, but at least they are their own individual movies. There are hundreds of remakes that should never have been remade. We understand that certain movies deserve to be remade because they were made in an era that forced them to be awful. After all, they were only capable of so much. With today’s technology, we can allow the movies to reach their fullest potential.
However, certain movies are such classics that remaking them risks ruining the legacy of the original movie. Making various novels into movies would allow for new ideas to emerge, and new genius to be created.
Instead of making terrible movies and wasting millions of dollars on production, producers should seriously look into the novel industry. It might revolutionize the movie industry as we know it today, as well as allowing each individual reader to go through the agonizing process of waiting until the movie comes out.
There will always be the possibility of A Series of Unfortunate Events, literally. However, shouldn’t we hold out hope for the possibility of The Princess Bride or The Help? I vote yes.