Designer: Tamryn Taub
People flock to the movies, filling the theaters. Some of them leave disappointed that the film was nothing like the book they read – but most of them never read the book at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I love movies and extremely adore the work that people have put into these phenomenal films, such as “Project Hail Mary” and “The Odyssey.” However, not every single book needs to be adapted into television.
Books have the ability to write as many pages as the author wants, with countless amounts of books in a series. Movies can also have many films in one series, but they also must fit complex stories into two hours, forcing directors to cut crucial scenes, subplots and character development. This time crunch can also force directors into switching up storyline order.
Along with lack of details, authors rely heavily on internal monologues for characters, which is rarely executed in films. And when it is, it’s awkward and hard to represent. For instance, mystery and thriller movies like Frieda McFadden’s “The Housemaid” and Colleen Hoover’s “Verity” felt like a fast-paced “popcorn thriller” rather than a psychological page-turner. They both watered down the psychological cruelty and backstory because of the lack of internal monologue, making the films less suspenseful and moving.
Speaking of the lack of suspense, this lack of detail often flattens dark and important themes in books. Without the lack of detail in diction, it’s harder to create an understanding of what the characters are feeling. Reading allows people to pause and sit with an uncomfortable or dark idea. Movies must keep moving at a rate with a time crunch, ultimately defeating and softening the themes.
On Tiktok, the concept of a literary crisis has been spread across social media. Many audiences use these visual adaptations or plot summaries as a substitute for reading complex or lengthy source material. For example, with the new adaptations of media, students often will watch movies for class instead of the book, such as “The Great Gatsby” and “Frankenstein.”
Moreover, this only worsens with the spike in book to movie adaptations. Due to the abundance of remakes, people tend to have a lower attention span because movies are more of a passive consumption. This happens a lot in romance movies, like Emiliy Henry’s “People We Meet on Vacation,” these adaptations often play out like a series of fast-paced, highly visual highlights rather than deep narrative explorations. The audience passively consumes these light-hearted movies, some even just watching it through Tiktok. The book itself is not even that dense, but some people can’t even pay attention to a movie without doing something else.
However, on a social level, people who did read the book often get upset with casting or if certain scenes get cut out for the audience’s pleasure. In “Wuthering Heights”, directed by Emerald Fennell, they casted objectively attractive characters who were purely to lure people into watching the film. The film was supposed to be about a slave who is lower class, who is also heavily impacted by his race in the book. However, they casted Jacob Elordi, a white man.
Budgets can also cause movies to lose their “magic” and the aesthetic. When one is reading, they normally can imagine a variety of possibilities, which can be limited with money. In books, authors can write as many words and create endless possibilities of worlds and concepts. However, when directors and authors have to make a movie, every little thing costs money.
Film is so impactful and important, but it is crucial that we recognize the novels and the depth that the movies are being adapted from. When the film industry relies too heavily on existing books, it transforms the books from a mental activity into a passive watered down adaptation, ultimately losing the creativity on both ends.
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