{DISCUSSION} Movie Adaptations

Should books be adapted into film?

Wow. I can’t honestly believe it’s taken me over a YEAR to actually have this discussion, especially considering it’s such a vehement topic among readers (and God knows among me and anyone within my unfortunate proximity.) But better late than never, right? 😀

So, let’s get into it.

Movie adaptations SUCK!
Absolutely, completely, unfortunately.
*sigh*

But why? How can a story you love so much be so brutally destroyed in less than 2 hours? Well… a lot of reasons! And I think I should tell you ALLLLLL about them. 😈

🎶“And I’d like to take a minute.
Just sit right there.
I’ll tell you how I became the
[Queen of Unpopular Opinions]” 🎶

1) Movie adaptations are abhorrent because of the excessive amount of important content left out from the original novel.

Now I know some people would say that all original content is important and well… duh! But what I’m talking about is vital plot points, character developments, and world building aspects. Too many of these are just skipped over. This may not be a big deal for the reader who knows absolutely everything there is to know about the story, but for newbies, whole chunks may not make any sense now. This is not okay!

Example: The Hunger Games adaptation never explained in the movie what an ‘avox’ was.

2) Whoever is in charge of casting… needs to be fired. And then banished to the depths of Hell. And then submitted to Chinese water torture.

I cannot STAND some of the god awful casting choices they have made for recent YA movie adaptations. Not only can the chosen actors and actresses not act, but they don’t look or act LIKE the original characters. Their interpretation is just blasphemous! A bad character ruins the ENTIRE adaptation. Especially when it’s the MC.

Example: The Divergent adaptation cast Shailene Woodley as Tris Prior, which was an awful choice because she didn’t appropriately portray the female heroine we came to know in the book series.

3) Directors are allowed to take liberties with the direction of the movie/story/character development.

God. Do I really need to talk about this? Apparently I do because for some reason whoever handed over the rights of the novel to the producer/director/WHATEVER also sold their soul because they allowed WAY too many changes to be made. This results in the movie being almost NOTHING like the original. Maybe this works sometimes, but more often than not, it’s a shit show. Yup! I said it! You suck at writing, Hollywood. It’s why you’re being forced to steal plots from authors. Sincerely, I hate you.

Example: The Maze Runner honestly had so many changes from the original book. Not so much plot-wise, but event-wise (like how exactly they escape.) This led to the movie seeming ten times dumber than the original novel (and I’m not even talking about the vocabulary.)

Alright. I won’t bog you down with any more god-awful adaptations or reasons (even though the list could go on and on and on.) And yes, the examples were all YA dystopian, but that’s because I don’t read YA contemporary, which are what more of the other adaptations are. But I’m sure those who have read those books/seen those movies have noticed these horrid trends, as well.

The point is that most YA book adaptations are screwed up by Hollywood in some way, shape, or form. And I get that you can’t please everyone. I get they can’t fit everything, etc, etc. But it’s like they aren’t even trying. It’s like they think YA books are a joke because that’s the way they are treating them by turning them into trash movies with sub-par acting, horrible choice-making, and a track record that has me worried about future adaptations.

Side Note:
I can think of only one, ONE YA book adaptation
that I actually thought was done well.
(If I Stay by Gayle Foreman.)

But what do you think?
Are there any good YA book adaptations out there?
Leave your thoughts below!

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And check out my discussion from last week:
“Manga“