ollywood's gone literary. Lately Tinseltown has been adapting a lot of books for movies.
Why is Hollywood looking to books for movie material? Well, consider the type of books being adapted. They've all become best sellers and generated a large readership. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first book in the hugely popular series, was published in 1997. Since then, it and the subsequent three books have sold more than 100 million of copies worldwide.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings, 50 million copies have sold
since it was first published in the mid '50s, according to Clay Harper,
Tolkien Projects Director at Houghton Mifflin, which is the longtime U.S.
publisher of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It doesn't take a genius to
figure out that there's a built-in audience for movie adaptations of these
books. And when movies cost millions to make, a pre-existing audience
looks awfully attractive. Gone with the Wind (1939), The
Godfather (1972), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and many
more movies were adapted from books. However, the trend is now stronger
than ever. Consider High Fidelity
(2000), Bridget Jones's Diary
(2001), Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone (2001) and The
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).But taking a story from page to screen is a difficult challenge. How do you effectively distill the experience of a 200-page novel into a two-hour movie? Filmmakers would likely say, "With great care." Books and film are different mediums. Movies are visual and need action and activity; books paint pictures with words, leaving room for the imagination, and often rely on exposition to move the plot forward. Obviously, a book and movie require different techniques to tell a story. The trick for a filmmaker is to remain faithful to the spirit of the book's story but make adjustments so it can be effectively conveyed in a different medium. It sounds simple but the execution is difficult. That's why many book fans are disappointed with movie adaptations.
When a book is turned into a movie, some of the material must be cut. Chris
Columbus, director of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
said: "Obviously certain scenes are not in the film because the film
would be six hours long." He did assure fans though that "In
terms of being faithful, it follows the structure of the book fairly
closely, and for the most part every major sequence remains intact."In the movie Bridget Jones's Diary, you really don't get the same detail about the lives of the secondary characters as you do in the book and you aren't treated to numerous detailed diary entries. The movie only has time to present the essence of these characters and show Bridget writing in her diary a few times.
However, sometimes material is added or enhanced to increase dramatic effect. This can upset die-hard fans who insist on integrity to the original story. Indeed on the official The Lord of the Rings site director Peter Jackson felt compelled to dispel rumors of tampering when he explained his decision to increase the role of Arwen. "Arwen was NOT part of the Fellowship, Arwen will NOT be a warrior princess - in order to make her a character with some weight and to be able to simply show what is at the essence of Arwen's story, which is the love of an immortal person for a mortal man, we have had to create more material for Arwen because there's just not enough from the books to actually show. But where we have gone for most of our extra Arwen material is actually the appendix - the story of Aragorn and Arwen, which appears at the end of The Return of the King".
"Substituting a movie technique for a book device is one of the most tricky translations to make. Literature allows you the benefit of being able to get inside a character's head," explains Harper. High Fidelity drew fire from critics for the director's decision to have the main character, Rob, address the camera directly. It was the film's way of translating Rob's first-person narrative in the book.
Peter Jackson believes that exposition scenes are some of the most difficult to translate. Scenes such as the Council of Elron at Rivendell have been fiendishly difficult to turn into cinema because it is a group of people sitting around and talking about the plot. Fantasy movies have successfully portraying a convincing magical world. In 1978 Disney made an attempt at a The Lord of the Rings movie. It used a mixture of live action tracings and drawn animations. Unfortunately, the technology wasn't sophisticated enough to recreate Middle-Earth successfully. Things are different now with sophisticated computer effects.
Characters, settings and even movie titles are also sometimes altered with varying results. The title of the Harry Potter book was changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the American market to ensure that audiences get the alchemical reference. The movie title still has Harry Potter in it, so there is little chance the change will create much confusion.
However in the movie Bridget Jones's Diary, some fans grumbled when American Renée Zellweger was cast in the role of a clearly British Bridget. Yet, moving the setting of High Fidelity from London to Chicago came off well. The story was still credible in a different location. In contrast, J.K. Rowling was not keen on an American setting for the Harry Potter movie. The Sunday Times reported that one of the reasons Steven Spielberg didn't end up directing the Harry Potter movie was because Spielberg wanted to set the film in an American high school and have Harry played by Haley Joel Osment. Rowling apparently resisted, and Spielberg withdrew.
Which brings us to the matter of author involvement. Movie adaptations appear to have a greater chance of success when the author is brought into the project. Helen Fielding was actively involved in the making of the Bridget Jones movie and J.K. Rowling has been consulted all the way through the creation of the Potter movie. Warner Brothers executives want the movie to accurately reflect the author's vision. After all, they don't want to be known as the Muggles who botched the most magical children's movie in recent history. Also, they view the integrity of the movie as critical to its success at the box office.
Yes, the tie between movie adaptations and books is financial as well as creative. It's a symbiotic relationship where each entity helps to generate revenue for the other. It stands to reason that a good movie can help promote sales of a book.
According to Exhibitor Relations the movie Bridget Jones's Diary
has taken in approximately $62.4 million. It's the second-biggest grossing
film of all time in Britain according to the BBC News. That's a lot of
exposure - and not all of the people who see the movie will have read the
book. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, "An awful lot of
people are reading and re-reading Tolkien right now. Some will be
motivated to go to the bookstore after watching the movie. Whether they'll
buy The Fellowship of the Ring or The Two Towers is the
great unknown," explains Harper.On the flip side, the ready-made audience of book fans can be a boon to the movie. Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of Harry Potter, realized more than $90 million from all the Harry Potter books in the first quarter of 2001, after Harry and the Goblet of Fire was released in hardcover in 2000. Just imagine all those faithful readers who will spend at the movie theater to see their favorite book come to life on the big screen - and later on videos, DVDs, toys, and video games.
Still, let's not forget risk is also a part of the equation. At a cost of $270 million, The Lord of the Rings is one of the most expensive productions in movie history. True, New Line filmed all three installments, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King at once to save money. But after that kind of investment, you can bet the studio is counting on a big return.
In the end though, the most important question for a book fan is not financial. It is rather whether the movie adaptation will live up to the book. "You shouldn't think of these movies as being The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings is and always will be a wonderful book - Jackson said, one of the greatest ever written. Any films will only ever be an interpretation of the book."
On the same subject, Harry Potter director Columbus gracefully said: "The best thing I can hope for is that people will see the film and say, 'This is exactly how I imagined it.'"
- Deena Waisberg