BOOK-TO-SCREEN ADAPTATIONS
I always enjoy a good book to screen adaptation, whether that’s a movie, TV show, mini-series, or even a musical! I’m super far behind on so many of them but I’ve actually caught up on a few recently with some book binges that I did in preparation of the new productions!
SIMON VS. THE HOMOSAPIENS AGENDA to LOVE SIMON (movie) | Last weekend, I went to go see Love, Simon in theaters and it was SUCH a great movie! I only just read SIMON this year, in part to prepare for the movie, and it was an amazing novel and the movie held so much of the book’s original feelings and messages. Obviously with an adaptation, there were a few changes made. Most of them really added to the fun of the movie — adding a couple characters for comic relief or to adapt the plot in a different way, updating a few character relationships to streamline some secondary and tertiary characters, etc — and there was only one glaring thing that was a big part of the book that was changed that I was not a fan of, mostly because I didn’t feel it was necessary and changed one big feeling. Really other than that, I absolutely loved it and thought Hollywood did a great job of adapting this book to the big screen!
The Magicians trilogy to THE MAGICIANS (TV show) | I love that this was taken on as a TV series so the full story could be told, and I also love that SyFy took it and that it’s on cable TV so that much of the mature content in the books could still be kept in the TV show. I loved that it was like Hogwarts with lots of swearing in the books (okay, it really wasn’t like Hogwarts that much) and I love a good book with really good cursing, so that’s actually a really fun part of the show for me too haha.
Surprisingly what I like about the TV show is that it’s very much an adaptation in it own right. The show keeps the feel of the whole series but a lot of minor, and even major, plot points are changed to keep the TV show fresh and original. It kind of frees things up to not follow things so strictly to the books and I’m not ready and waiting to pick things out that don’t follow the series because it really doesn’t follow it strictly at all. It also provides series readers with the ability to still be surprised about plenty of things on the show! I’ve been binge watching and just started the third season so I’m interested to see what else happens, both represented from the books and what’s new to everyone!
THE GIVER (book) to THE GIVER (movie) | It’s hard to talk about this one since I don’t really remember all the details of the book, but it seemed like it followed pretty closely? (Right?) I actually did re-read THE GIVER as an adult after first reading it when I was about 12 or 13, but even still that was maybe five years ago by now so the details are fuzzy. I actually didn’t really feel like it made a great movie and I kind of feel like a lot of the emotion that I felt while reading didn’t really come through on the big screen. I also didn’t like the casting of Jonas’ parents. I guess they’re not really his actual blood-related mother and father, but it still felt weird and not like a good fit.
1 thought on “Discussion: Book-to-Screen Adaptations”
The first Hunger Games is one of my favourites. The ultimate for me though is The Princess Bride–it’s just perfection!
I really liked Love, Simon as well but some of the changes fell a little flat for me. I love the overall message though and how they brought that to the big screen so I would still consider it a great success!