Book to film.
The following blog post contains spoilers.
We’ve all been there. Sitting in the cinema, the film has finished, the lights go up. And we say, “The book was better.”
Of course, some book to film adaptations are better than others. But no one will ever make the perfect adaptation because no two people imagine a book the same way.
The Lord of the Rings
Take The Lord of the Rings. A brilliant adaptation that took the characters from the pages of Tolkien’s epic tome and put them on screen for all to enjoy. The brilliance of Peter Jackson’s adaptation lies in several factors.
One, he kept true to the characters he featured. Mostly. If we ignore Arwen. He had to leave out the beloved Tom Bombadil because, let’s face it, him and Goldberry are a bit weird and it would have broken the pace of the story on film.
Two, it looked real. Mostly because it was. The use of miniatures over CGI paid off and was something the subsequent Hobbit adaptations suffered from. Too much CGI, not enough reality.
Three, he edited out the unnecessary bits but kept the story true to book. Again, bits were taken out, bits were changed, but ultimately, it all progressed the way Tolkien had intended.
As I said before, you will never please everyone but Peter Jackson did a fantastic job of opening up Middle Earth for people not willing to read 1200 pages.
A Clockwork Orange
Anyone who has read and seen A Clockwork Orange will know there is one, very big difference between the book and the film and for many, it was a step too far. Stanley Kubrick likes to change the feel of a book when he makes it into a film. The Shining changed the focus of the book from Danny (the child) to the father (Jack) and, again, changed the ending.
In A Clockwork Orange our hero endures several rounds of conversion therapy to stop his anti-social ways. In the film, they fail and it ends with him enjoying his hedonistic lifestyle with fervour. The book however, ends with him sitting in a café, looking at a younger man who behaves as he used to. The conversion therapy failed but he had matured and changed naturally despite it, to a better behaved citizen. Not an exciting Hollywood ending perhaps, but more interesting social commentary.
The Shining
Now, I go back to The Shining. Those who know me know I am no fan of Stanley Kubrick. But even looking at his from an unbiased point of view. It is a terrible adaptation.
You can like the film, that’s fine. But you can not say it is a good adaptation. If you are into your Hitchcock you might remember an old British film he made with a boy with a bomb on a bus. The camera kept showing you the bomb, you knew it was ticking, you just didn’t know when it was going to go off. This, the master of suspense told us, was how to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. Show them the ticking bomb.
King does this in The Shining. There is an old boiler in the basement which needs to be relieved of pressure daily. If not, boom. As Jack’s mental state deteriorates he starts to neglect the boiler. We know both him and the boiler will blow. We just don’t know when.
This element of the book is entirely absent from the film, Kubrick kept the descent into madness but the focus of his film was squarely on Jack, not the hotel or Danny.
Now, Danny. The little boy on the red scooter. In the book he is very much the focus. His fear and lack of understanding about his power give us the basis of the whole story. In the film we follow Jack as he loses his mind, and his sobriety, in the vast hallways and rooms of the Overlook.
There is also a terrifying scene with a cement tunnel and some topiary that I will never recover from reading but again, this wasn’t included. Probably because it featured Danny and not Jack.
I will leave it up to you which you prefer. But I am firmly in the book camp.
Charlotte Wood is a feminist and writer of the macabre and sinister. She reads horror, fantasy, classic literature and historical fiction (with a preference for history from a woman’s perspective).
Charlotte’s debut novel Heather available for preorder now!
A compelling, frightening and heart-breaking tale of desperation, Heather is a ghost story spanning 100 years that will keep you guessing till the end.