Adaptations. We all know what it's like to be the jerk in the room who read the book before they saw the TV show/movie/play/whatever and were just bouncing in anticipation when the rest of the world found out how the Red Wedding played out. Well, at least I know what it's like to be that jerk. But there are a lot of roads you can take with an adaptation of a book.
There are the safe routes, where you eliminate some of the source material but stay very true to it otherwise, or when you might add a thing or two that wasn't in the book but stay very true to it otherwise. An example of the former would be the Harry Potter movies, where some subplots (e.g., Hermoine's elf charity) were eliminated to keep the franchise from being 12 movies long, but we still had all the nuts and bolts of Harry Potter. An example of the latter would be Big Little Lies, which added a few things (e.g., Madeline's affair) in order to make it last however many episodes it lasted, but otherwise was very true to the book and their additions gave Reese Witherspoon more to do.
And then there are the adaptations that completely throw a middle finger at their source material. I'm looking at YOU, The Golden Compass.
But we're not talking about safe adaptations or bad adaptations today. We're going to talk about the truly great adaptations that remade their source material in ways that would leave you saying - gasp - "This was better than the book!"
8. WICKED - THE MUSICAL (M read the book first)
I remember having the realization years ago that absolutely any story can be turned into a musical as long as you can insert a love triangle into it somehow. This is often a love triangle between a man and two women. See: Miss Saigon, Jekyll and Hyde, Aida, Les Miserables, and Wicked. Was there a love triangle in the book? Yes, but not the one you're expecting.
If we examine the musicals Les Miserables and Wicked, you'll see some definite similarities between the love triangles. Cosette and Galinda are the privileged, beautiful characters, while Eponine and Elphaba are the pining outcasts. Each has her own anthem of pining: Eponine's "On My Own" and Elphaba's less belty "I'm Not That Girl." And every emo theater girl who is pining over someone makes these characters their IDOL. I used to know a theater kid whose online handle was "I Wanna Be Eponine" and another theater kid who would tell people, "You don't understand ... I AM Elphaba." If you mad identify with Elphaba, you might want to skip to #7.
I read the book Wicked before it became a musical. When I found out it was being turned into one, I was like, I guess I could see this being a musical, the only thing they'd have to change is ... EVERYTHING. So, I bought the soundtrack, and eventually saw the play. And they did change ... EVERYTHING. They turned a really dismal story about infidelity and political unrest into a heartwarming rom-com that also has some touching girl-girl friendship.
So. The opening number of Wicked is fairly true to the source material in that Elphaba's mom gets taken in by a possibly-wizard-type-person and then gives birth to a green daughter and a daughter with no arms (that's right; in the book, Nessa is not in a wheelchair, but she has no arms, but that would have been way too hard to stage). Elphaba also is allergic to water and has fangs.
Is there a Fiyero in the book? Yes, but they don't go "Dancing Through Life" at the Ozdust Ballroom so much as ... I don't remember, I think they go to some kind of drug orgy where people are having sex with tigers. And he doesn't hook up with Elphaba until years later, when he is married and has kids. They have an affair, and he impregnates her, which doesn't thrill his wife (who is not Galinda, she's a character named Sarima that we don't meet in the musical).
At the end of the book, we have a gear shift, and this is my favorite part of the book. It changes from being a depressing slog to just being an absolute farce in the last 20 pages. Dorothy and her companions are coming to kill Elphaba, and everyone is just so bored, including Elphaba, that they don't even care what happens and are cool with Dorothy throwing water on her. Even Elphaba's son is so enamored with Dorothy and so bored that he's practically ready to help her throw the water. It's the only part of the book I liked, and it's hilarious.
But the musical, by changing ... EVERYTHING ... is so much better. I honestly love this musical. I was really surprised that when I went to see it, they were actually selling copies of the book at the merch stands. I'd think the wannabe Elphabas would want to live in blissful ignorance and not read that. They don't want to read the version where everyone dies.
In the musical, not only do we get to see Elphaba land her man (who is not a married father in the musical), but we get more exploration of the relationships between the female characters. There's even a duet "Wicked Witch of the East" between Elphaba and Nessa that was not on the soundtrack album and is really great. I'm looking forward to seeing it in the movie. I'm actually expecting they'll expand a lot on all the characters' relationships in the movie, since they're making it into ... two movies. (Another instance of that later.) And ... how are they going to end it? In the trailer, they show Dorothy and friends marching along a yellow brick road, but I can't imagine it will end the same way as the book. Or the seemingly tacked-on happy ending of the musical. Maybe something in between. I can't wait to see this movie.
7. THE MIST - THE MOVIE (M read the book first)
If you've ever read or watched any listicle about most shocking movie endings, surely you know of The Mist. It is one of the most shocking movie endings of all time, and if you don't want it ruined for you, please skip to #6.
Stephen King is secretly one of my heroes, and I read the book "The Mist" during downtime whilst working at a movie theater. The same theater that would eventually show the movie "The Mist."
The book centers around David, who is making a store run with his young son when a bizarre mist overtakes the town. While he and his son are in the store, things escalate, and bizarre creatures are coming out of the mist, blocking any attempt at escape. Some of the people trapped in the store (called "flat-earthers" in the book) believe this is a sign of end times, requiring human sacrifice, because according to Grandpa Simpson on The Simpsons, sacrificing people to your god is something people did all the time in the 30's. David and some of the non-flat-earthers are trying to determine a logical escape, as opposed to the killing-people thing, and ultimately are able to get to David's car. This includes Amanda, who David bangs. They yell other people's names while they are banging. Bad move, David. You just met this woman, and you don't even know for sure whether your wife is dead.
So, what happens to our heroes when they escape from the store? In the book, you never find out. It ends with David scrawling on hotel paper that they are just going to keep driving as long as they can, keep running from the monsters. Because what else can you do when reality has been turned upside down?
It's a running joke that Stephen King can not write an ending. (Way, way, way more about that later.) But this is a book that he just chose to ... not end. "Yeah, we're still out there driving."
The movie created an ending. It wasn't an ending a lot of people liked, but Stephen King himself said that by adding this ending, they fixed his book. David does run out of gas, and everyone in the car (including his young son) decides he will shoot all of them so that the monsters do not get them. He has enough bullets for everyone except himself. After killing everyone in the car, he goes outside to sacrifice himself, only to realize the Army is here and the monster crisis is over, so what he just did was for nothing.
One of my coworkers, who had a young son, was traumatized by this ending.
This was so much grittier than the source material, and I think that's what made it great. Not only the ending, but the fact that there was no love interest, it was purely a survival story. David and Amanda don't hook up in the movie. And the fact that Stephen King completely backed this adaptation reminds me yet again why he is one of my favorite authors. He creates wonderful content but is completely open to changes that would take it next-level.
6. FIGHT CLUB - THE MOVIE (M saw the movie first)
Fight Club, the movie, was a cultural phenomenon. I mean, 1999 brought us Fight Club, The Matrix, and The Blair Witch Project, all of which were huge game-changers in different ways. Did you see it coming that Edward Norton's unnamed insomniac protagonist is actually Tyler Durden? I didn't. The reveal is perfect. They do impose Brad Pitt's face over his a few times, less subtly but much quicker than when Black Swan imposes Natalie Portman's face over other characters'. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it thing.
This movie was amazing. It was slick, cool, and smart, and delivered multiple great performances and an iconic ending. I watched it so many times in high school.
Then we get to me finally reading the book.
When I was 20, I was a bridesmaid in a wedding and my bridesmaid gift was the book "Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk. Reading this book, I became acquainted with Palahniuk's habit of driving a theme into the ground and then keep driving. The premise was that 17 people were sequestered in a hotel or something and commanded to write their magnum opus, but they also thought they were on reality TV. So they started destroying the food that they liked so they would be the thinnest. One of the characters reflects on Holocaust survivors ("they could wear anything"). Another line used I think multiple times in the book is "a reflection of a reflection of a reflection." Eventually, of course, there is cannibalism.
So, I'd read that book, so why don't I read Fight Club? I loved the movie.
It's not a very good book.
To start, the unreliable narrator thing is not pulled off very well. Am I just saying that because I'd already seen the movie and knew what was going on? Maybe, but this book dives into the Palahniuk method of driving a point too far (I'm assuming, I've only read two of his books) and it absolutely does not land the ending. Our narrator is still aiming to take down modern society, but it lacks the slick dark humor of the movie. There's a subplot the movie completely avoided with Marla constantly fighting with her mother because Marla wants lip injections and wants her mother to donate her fat, fat that the narrator thinks could be used for making soap and other things. And, at the end, the narrator shoots himself and wakes up in ... heaven? It's unclear whether this was a complete hallucination, but it's a pretty ridiculous scene.
Anyway. Fight Club. Perfect example of a book where they saw the seeds that could grow into something great, and pulled it off. More on that in my #5.
5. JUMANJI - THE MOVIE (M read the book first)
I'll probably have the least to say about this one, because it has been many years since I read the book or saw the movie. I mean, I was probably like 5 when I read the book. It was a picture book.
In the picture book, we have siblings Peter and Judy playing a board game they got from ... I forget where ... that is jungle themed and once you start playing the game, you have to finish. This results in a lot of jungle animals actually showing up, creating mayhem, and probably well drawn (it was a picture book). When they finish the game, everything goes back into the game board, and the kids' parents come home to find them just asleep. One of the kids says "we were bitten by tsetse flies and got the sleeping sickness" and one of the parents says "it looks like you both have the sleeping sickness" and we get a good larf and that's Jumanji.
The movie decided it was going to create a mythology and a dark history for this board game and for these children (I mean, in the movie, their parents are dead), and add a lot more characters, and created a blockbuster I totally wouldn't mind watching again right now.
I remember the movie being so good. The deliciously creepy atmosphere, the generations-repeating-themselves and going-back-in-time-to-fix-things themes, Robin Williams whispering the word "Jumanji" toward the end with a look of complete victory on his face. I miss him, we all do. Jumanji did the same thing Polar Express did. It took a book that was like 20 pages long and had a couple pictures in it and built up an elaborate backstory. Except Jumanji was actually GOOD, whereas Polar Express is a plague upon humanity. But, more about movies with multiple Tom Hanks roles later.
4. JURASSIC PARK - THE MOVIE (M saw the movie first)
For most of my childhood, I was not allowed to see Jurassic Park. But my parents, especially my mom, were ravenous for Jurassic Park. It was the second coming. Of dinosaurs, of course, what did you think I was talking about? My mom, at one point, CONSIDERED buying me "Jurassic Park: The Junior Novelization" so that I could at least be exposed to the Word if I was still not old enough to experience its incarnation, but she said she flipped through the first chapter and it actually described the worker being killed in the opening scene (not graphically, just "the worker was gone"), so she decided not to buy it. So, it would be another year or two before I was allowed to watch Jurassic Park, along with my younger sister, because if you have a sibling who is within three years of you, you get all privileges at exactly the same time, regardless of who is older. And we watched it. And I wrote in the diary I now know was never private, BEST MOVIE EVER! A MILLION STARS AND MORE! I frickin loved Jurassic Park. And, shortly after, I read the book. And its sequel. And pretty much any Michael Crichton stuff I could get my hands on.
When I read the book, one of the things that really surprised me was that Ian Malcolm died, and Gennaro lived. In the movie, the very opposite happens, and Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm returns as the protagonist in the sequel, The Lost World. I don't remember exactly how they explained that in The Lost World, since I was like 11 when I read it, but I believe he was believed to be dead from his wounds, but managed to hang in there. But I believe that when Crichton wrote this book, he meant for Malcolm to be dead, and then realized that he had bet on the wrong horse. Maybe even before the casting of the charismatic Jeff Goldblum. Malcolm is an expert in chaos theory, whatever that is, and that alone makes him a fascinating character. He's ... pretty much expecting whatever mayhem is coming.
And then we get to the kids. I've always been pretty adamant that Crichton did not know how to write kids. They would always be hyper intelligent robots, or insufferable damn wiener kids. In the book, Tim was a young teenager or preteen who was a hyper intelligent robot (he's the one who got the park back online in the book) and Lex was I think 6, and an annoying kid to the point where you'd want to just throw her to the dinosaurs; she offered nothing. In the movie, they swap the ages of the children, and also flesh them out. Neither of them is one-dimensional and neither is insufferable, even if they bicker like normal siblings. You can see why Grant would want so badly to protect them. And I love that they kind of divided Tim's character (if you can call it that) between the two siblings. Tim is a dinosaur nerd, while Lex is the computer nerd who manages to get the park back online, part of the reason I loved this movie as a kid (the girl a few years older than me turned out to be a hero!).
Another huge difference between the book and the movie is that in the movie, Hammond actually has a good deal of humanity. In the book, he seems to hate his grandchildren and see them as a burden, and, hold on to your butts, he actually dies in the book, and based on how his character was portrayed, you wouldn't really care. In the movie, we feel for him. As they're fleeing the park, you can see his dreams crumbling, and you feel all the feels.
Hollywood has horribly botched some of Crichton's best books (see: Sphere, Timeline), but Jurassic Park is a darn near perfect movie. And maybe even made Crichton rethink some things (e.g., "I shouldn't have killed off Malcolm, but that lawyer getting eaten while he was sitting on the toilet might be fun"). Like other 90's movies I've mentioned, this was a game changer, and the reason people still continue to be horny for dinosaurs and Chris Pratt.
3. CLOUD ATLAS - THE MOVIE (M saw the movie first)
I love this movie so much I don't know if I can even write about it without drooling all over my keyboard. But, write about it I shall, so I'll put on a bib and continue. Like all of the other items on this list, the writers and directors saw the seeds of something great in the book, and turned it into a masterpiece.
I saw this movie in theaters and fell in love with it, so of course I read the book, and a few other David Mitchell books, and I realized I'm kind of meh on David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas, of course, I liked, but not as much as the movie. I liked The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I HATE Ghostwritten. Please, stay the **** away from that book. And I was kind of all in for the first half of Bone Clocks but then it got too meta and weird.
Cloud Atlas was an incredibly ambitious book. If you're not familiar with the premise, there are six protagonists. They live in different eras, spanning from the 1840s (Adam Ewing) to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii (Zachry). There is a link from each character to the next. For example, Robert Frobisher (1930s) is reading Adam Ewing's memoir. Sonmi (2100s) is watching Timothy Cavendish's movie. They also all have a birthmark that looks like a comet, and David Mitchell has said it was intended for readers to understand that all six of the characters had the same soul.
The book has a nested format. We start with the earliest story, Adam Ewing's, and tell half of it, then move forward until we get to post-apocalyptic Hawaii, tell that entire story, and then start moving backwards, ending with Adam Ewing again.
The filmmakers made two brilliant decisions, and to be fair neither of them would work in book format, they took what was kind of laid out for them and they ran with it. For one, rather than the nested format, they constantly switch between the six timelines, so that all six of the storylines are playing out simultaneously and we can see all the common threads. For two, they cast the same actors in each of the storylines. Every actor in this movie plays multiple roles.
Cloud Atlas is a life-affirming work of joy, which further removes it from the book, because David Mitchell, as I've come to understand from reading his books, loves ambiguity and hates joy. And part of the comfort and joy this movie brings me does come from the fact that the same actors are used in all six timelines. One of the most dramatic scenes in the movie is when Sonmi (played by Doona Bae) is about to be executed, right after seeing her lover Hae-Joo (played by Jim Sturgess) killed. She says she is not afraid of death, that she knows she will always be in love with him, and she feels that in some reality she will open a door and he will be there. We then cut to the Adam Ewing storyline, where Adam (Jim Sturgess) is coming home from his sea voyage and running into the arms of his wife (Doona Bae). Geez, I tear up just thinking about it.
Mitchell doesn't give us that scene. In fact, he ends most of the storylines in ambiguity. We don't get to see Adam Ewing reunite with his wife and tell his father-in-law that they are leaving to join the abolitionist movement. In the book, we know from his memoir that he was planning to do that, but we don't really know whether he even made it home. There's also ... not a lot of love in the book. It's typical sterile Mitchell narration. Did Frobisher love Sixsmith? Did Sonmi love Hae-Joo? We don't know. It kind of doesn't seem like it. But the screenwriters filled in the gaps, and gave us all the feels.
Anyway, I can't drool on my keyboard anymore, but when I researched this movie I found out some fun stuff. Like, David Mitchell actually has a cameo in the movie. And James McAvoy and Ian McKellen were both asked to be in the main cast. And, speaking of James McAvoy and Ian McKellen, oh boy, it's time to get to my #2 and #1 adaptations.
2. IT - LET'S SAY THE SECOND MOVIE (M read the book between seeing the 1990 miniseries and the 2010's remake)
So many improvements in, well, both film adaptations, but I'm going to focus on the one I've seen more recently. Improvements ranging from 1) cutting Audra was a good idea/no adultery 2) no animals are harmed 3) actually has an ending 4) the kids don't all have sex in a sewer. I should never have to say that last one about any movie.
What is my history with IT? Well, I know for a lot of people in my generation, the original miniseries sparked a fear of clowns that would linger until adulthood. I first saw IT when I was maybe 8 and my dad had fallen asleep in front of the TV. I walked in during the scene where Pennywise crawls out of the shower drain and it was so cool that it cemented my love of murder clowns. I sat there, rapt, for the rest of the movie. IT would remain one of my comfort movies for the rest of my childhood.
Flash forward to when I'm 15 and starting to read Stephen King. I find a copy of IT at the library and am so excited. Sure, it's 800 pages long, but I'm down. And for the first 500 pages, NOTHING could tear me away from that book. I LOVED it so much. The book, unlike the movies, is constantly jumping between past and present and also has several scenes filling you in on the history of Derry (which is only nodded to in the film adaptations). There was one night I was supposed to help my sister with something but I was reading IT, dammit, so I wasn't going anywhere, and she yelled, "That had better be the best book ever!" And I yelled back, "IT is!"
Until it wasn't. Stephen King ... just didn't know how to end this book. I touched on this when I talked about The Mist, and I'd say the same for the Dark Tower series and The Stand. It's kind of ... especially egregious in IT, though. The last 300 pages are just a story completely spinning out of control. Suddenly Pennywise is everything and also nothing, and the end of the book ... well, we'll get to that. It felt like Stephen King had taken a bite too big to chew when he started this novel.
But, I really love the movie. And let's get to some of the improvements the movie made.
1. Cutting Audra was a good idea/no adultery
IT is about the Losers Club. They are blood brothers (and sister) and always will be, and the only ones that can defeat Pennywise.
In the book, and in the 1990 miniseries, Bill's wife Audra decides to follow him to Derry, gets sucked into the deadlights, becomes catatonic, and needs to be rescued. As much as this book needed another female character, it just seems like ... too much. Especially because IT: Chapter Two already had six protagonists and was already the longest horror movie in history. And especially especially because in the book, adult Beverly sleeps with both Bill and Ben while they're in Derry. In the movie, there's romantic tension between Beverly, Bill, and Ben, but we don't feel bad about it because Audra is not a heroic wife coming to find her husband. In the one scene they give Audra at the beginning of the movie, she's hilariously insufferable, though perhaps not as insufferable as Eddie's wife (played by the same actress who plays his mom). And they completely removed the adultery. That means we can continue to root for our main character, Bill (played brilliantly by James McAvoy), and we don't have to feel like Beverly just, kind of, settled for Ben.
2. No animals were harmed
It's a common trope in Stephen King novels that there is a group of characters that are just baddies, and that's the case in IT, where the Losers band together partly due to a group of bullies that is a shared enemy. In addition to having circle jerks (more about that later), the bullies enjoy killing animals. And, thank God, that wasn't in the movie. In one scene, one of the bullies is about to shoot a cat, but his father stops him and the cat gets away. If that had gone differently, this couldn't be one of my favorite movies.
3. Actually has an ending
Yeesh, Stephen King did not know how to end this book. I mentioned how when the book completely spins out, Pennywise is both everything and nothing. In the movie, they streamline it much more. Pennywise is basically the embodiment of fear, and the reason Beverly is able to survive the deadlights is that she is not afraid of him. Yes, their lack of fear and their diminishing Pennywise to defeat him at the end of IT: Chapter Two may seem like a weak ending, but I feel like it makes a lot of sense in context.
In the book, the adult Losers lose their memories about as quickly as the child Losers do. Beverly and Ben (since Bill was taken, I guess) rush to get married immediately before they forget who each other are.
Compare that to the absolutely beautiful ending of the movie. You can tell that the surviving Losers have healed and that they will continue to remember everything and share a bond forever. The fact that their scars fade and they don't lose their memories proves Pennywise really has been defeated. Ben and Beverly don't have a rushed wedding, but we see Ben asking Beverly how she slept last night and she says, "I had a beautiful dream." This is more confirmation that Pennywise is no more, because previously Beverly had been haunted by dreams of her friends' deaths every night. And one of the last lines of the movie is Bill telling Mike, "I love you, man."
My second favorite scene of IT: Chapter Two is Stephen King's cameo. Bill grows up to be an author, and one of his books is being made into a movie but it doesn't have an ending, he just doesn't know how to write them. While back in Derry, he goes into a shop where the shopkeeper is - Stephen King. Bill sees a copy of one of his books and asks Stephen King if he'd like him to sign it. Stephen King responds, "Nah, I didn't like the ending." That scene continues to bring me infinite joy.
4. The kids don't all have sex in a sewer
Yeah.
I had already read Firestarter when I read IT. The main character of Firestarter is supposed to be 10 years old, and she has some kind of uncomfortable sexual awakening, I think when she has a dream about riding a horse or something. So, I had kind of uneasy feelings reading a Stephen King book that had an 11-year-old female protagonist, and oh man, things just went from bad to worse.
Beverly basically puberties all over the whole book. IT could have been titled "IT: The Story of Beverly's Vagina." I think there was a line when she first reunited with the other Losers as an adult like, she had a memory of her first period, and she thought it had something to do with Ben. Beverly's father, in the book, seems to really want to have sex with her. Thank God, in the movie, he is just generally verbally abusive. Beverly, meanwhile, is exploding out of her clothes in all the right places. Yes, the book actually describes this. And when she happens upon the bullies having a circle jerk, she thinks she probably has figured out how sex works.
After the kids THINK they have defeated Pennywise in the book, there is one more obstacle - they're losing their memories and they can't figure out how to get out of the sewer. Beverly has an idea for how they can remember the way out of the sewer. That idea involves all six of the boys having sex with her, one at a time. They're 11.
I did not know this was going to happen when I started reading the book. I was starting to get worse and worse feelings about Beverly, but I never imagined this. Apparently, though, the magic of Beverly's vagina worked, and they made it out ok. Is that why Ben rushed to marry her? So he would have access to the anti-amnesia vagina? Your hair is winter fire my butt.
Anyway, Beverly doesn't have sex with anyone in any of the movies, and her dad is not a pervert. Good job, filmmakers. Good job.
1. LORD OF THE RINGS - THE MOVIES (M read the books first)
How to even start on my history with Lord of the Rings? When I was in high school, one of my classmates who I looked up to (he would end up being our valedictorian) said his favorite book was Lord of the Rings. I was intrigued, and I read it.
Shortly after that, we started seeing posters for the upcoming movie adaptation, and my classmate was upset about the casting of Elijah Wood as Frodo. He complained, "They cast a teen heartthrob as Frodo. Frodo is supposed to be a hobbit. They're supposed to barely look human. And he's supposed to be 50 years old."
You know, he really wasn't wrong, but, I really think the filmmakers made the right choice here. Sometimes, per every other example in this blog post, you have to sacrifice absolute adherence to the source material in order to make a more palatable movie. If this movie had starred a 50-year-old, furry, big-nosed troll, how well would it have done? Instead, the hobbits look like people, but smaller. I understand this wrecked my classmate's childhood, but I'd just read the books like, a few months ago, and I didn't care.
And the movies (especially the first one) are better than the books.
The Fellowship of the Ring
I'm sorry if it ruined people's childhoods, but, this movie VASTLY improved upon the source material.
I don't remember the book that well, but it takes ... half of the book for the story to actually get started. Frodo finds out there's a ring and he's going to have to do something with it at some point, so he waits several years and gets old and fat. Then, he and his three companions start out on their mission. They encounter various dangers, and I start to think, oh boy, the story is finally starting! But then they are immediately saved by a Deus ex machina or Tom Bombadil ex machina (thank God they made the only right decision and didn't include him in the movie).
Halfway through the book, they meet Aragorn, and then the story actually DOES start. This is a trilogy of books where you can completely skip the first half of the first book, and the last half of the third book. More on that later.
Not only does the movie get us to Aragorn much quicker, but we actually feel like there were some kind of stakes prior to the formation of the fellowship, so you're already invested (which I hadn't really been in the book up until that point). Also, the characters are fleshed out to the point where viewers can actually latch onto a cast of nine protagonists, which is a staggering feat. In the book, Pippin is the youngest of the hobbit crew, but not necessarily stupid, but the movie endears him to us by making him comic relief. In the book, Legolas and Gimli initially don't like each other but it's told in a single sentence that they "became fast friends." In the movie, we see their rivalry and Gimli's dwarf pride actually play out.
And then there's Arwen. She actually gets to do something. In the book, I don't think she says a single word, but they see her at some point and she is beautiful. The thing is, the only other female character in the trilogy, Eowyn, kills the MFing Witch King. If she did that and Aragorn still went for Arwen, there would be riots by people who had not read the books (probably). We needed a reason to get behind Arwen, so they had her do something badass. (We'll ignore the fact she does nothing in the next two movies.) When I saw the midnight preview of The Two Towers and Eowyn was starting to get flirty with Aragorn, someone in the audience yelled out, "You got a elf, man!"
This is by far the strongest installment in the trilogy, with music, visuals, and acting that will continue to haunt you. You feel like you are going on the journey along with Frodo. And because you're new to the trilogy, you don't realize that Lord of the Rings should have been called Lord of the Plot Armor. You see Boromir die, you think Gandalf died, maybe you even thought Sam was going to drown for a hot minute or two.
This movie came out at the same time as the first Harry Potter movie. I remember my cousin asking if we wanted to go see Harry Potter and I told her that Lord of the Rings makes Harry Potter look like two apes scratching each other. Why Fellowship is not in my top 10 movies of all time is: 1) I saw it too many times. I guess the mines of Moria scene is always gonna be great but how many times can I watch Merry and Pippin having fun antics with fireworks and mushrooms 2) The fan base scares me. And as someone who had friends who were obsessed with this movie and someone who was on the internet, I came frighteningly close to that fan base 3) I'm just a jaded, jaded individual now.
The Two Towers
I was disappointed when I saw this movie.
I mean, let's backpedal a little. In the book The Two Towers, we get a lot of boringness with Merry and Pippin hanging out with Ents, but then there's also the showdown in Shelob's lair. The book literally ENDS with Frodo being presumed dead (because you haven't realized this is Lord of the Plot Armor) and Sam taking over as ring bearer. And, yes, Sam is our favorite lovable oaf in the movies, but he is TERRIBLE in the books. I was PISSED at the ending of Two Towers.
Then the movie came out and I was like, oo, Shelob and the cliffhanger ending should be cool.
And they saved that for the third movie. I walked bleary-eyed out of that midnight showing like, what the ****.
Don't worry, this movie is still three and a half hours long or something like that. And there is a LOT of padding/filler. It's the weakest of the three. But, to the movie's credit, I feel like they focused on the right things. And also, they made Sam suck a lot less than he does in the books.
There is a whole lot of Ent stuff in the book, because Tolkein is more into lore than he is into writing the next big holiday blockbuster. And they minimized that in the movie, because they realized people probably aren't going to care a whole lot about some slow-talking trees. If you haven't read the books and you're invested in this franchise, you care about those 9 main characters! (Yeah, there are still 9, Boromir has a brother, and Gandalf magically came back to life.) So you want to see Legolas and Gimli having their little orc death count rivalry, you want to see Legolas and Aragorn having a fight that comes out of nowhere, you want to see Aragorn fall off a cliff but be saved by plot armor, and, guess what, we have a love triangle now! Arwen even shows up in a dream sequence to remind you that she still exists.
So, takeaways for The Two Towers: 1) Sam isn't terrible like he was in the book 2) Some of the stuff they added was dumb (like Aragorn falling off the cliff) but I get why they added it 3) I can maybe understand why Helm's Deep and Shelob's lair might have been too much for one movie, especially granted how much they squeezed out of Helm's Deep 4) still would have liked to see the giant spider tho.
The Return of the King
This is Peter Jackson's victory lap, and boy did he bask in it. This movie was nominated for 11 Oscars and won all of them, including Best Picture. I remember my friend showing me a conversation between her and her boyfriend the following day where she asked him how the Oscars were. He said, "Well, kind of boring, because Lord of the Rings just won everything. They got best horse in a movie, Seabiscuit was pissed."
I think that Fellowship made the exact right choices in what they were going to cut from the source material, and Return even more so. Did you think Return of the King had too many endings? Everyone does, but did you read the book? The movie basically cuts out the second half of the book. Now you know why they put Shelob's lair in this movie rather than Two Towers.
So, what happens in the second half of the book? Well, halfway through the book, they've defeated Sauron and destroyed the ring, so everyone just goes home. But when the hobbits get home, they find out there's a new crop of baddies (well, old ones assuming new identities) messing up the Shire. So they have to get rid of them. And so we have the whole story-after-the-story chapter "The Scouring of the Shire." When I read that chapter, I was like, seriously? Why? It was so anticlimactic. But, as I said before, Tolkien was more about lore than narrative structure, so of course he'd be like, I just told this incredibly epic story and it ended and we're supposed to have emotional release, but I have another idea for a short story that might be cool and I'm going to throw it in there.
It would have been awful if this had been included in the movie. Our hobbit heroes wouldn't get their homecoming, and, of course we know they're going to defeat the baddies easily. This is the Lord of Plot Armor, after all. Then there are a ton of appendices where we find out what happened to each character from the end of the book until death, I think Sam was mayor like 8 times.
Going back to the plot armor thing. You KNOW everyone is going to make it through this movie (except Theoden, but he's old and he was crazy for a while). You know there are no stakes. But the movie goes out of its WAY to wring every feel out of you. Every character thinks they are going to die. There are lines like
"Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?" - Gimli
"I'm glad you're here with me, Sam, at the end of all things." - Frodo
"I didn't think it would end this way." - Pippin
"Death is just another path, one we all must take." - Gandalf
Did anyone really think any of our buddies we're so invested in at this point were going to die? Was anyone like, well, my money's on Sauron? Those are the same people who thought Toy Story 3 was going to end with the toys going into the incinerator. But, just like Toy Story 3, this movie set out to make you cry, and I will say at the end I was SOBBING.
All that said, I'm proud of whoever decided to throw the second half of the book in the garbage before writing this screenplay, even if they did make up for it by adding scenes of the hobbits ... jumping on Frodo's bed ... sitting in a pub saying nothing ... I forget what even else. I know the audience was getting pretty twitchy with the multiple endings when I saw this in the theater, but, think, how much worse it could have been.
So, in conclusion, book adaptations are a land of contrast. But not these. All these were good ones.
And screw Flanders.
No comments:
Post a Comment