Adaptions flooding the market

Whether it’s sparkling vampires, magic spells or a popular kid turned beastly, the world of cinema seems to become overrun with book-to-movie adaptations.

Recently, Hollywood seems to be targeting the young-adult readers with movies like “I am Number Four,” and “Beastly,” along with more well-known series, such as “Harry Potter” and “Twilight.”

“It’s been said a million times, ‘There are no new ideas,’ and I believe that’s probably true,” Doug Rittenhouse, founder and director of The Center for Creative Media in Garden Valley, said. “A lot of times, you’ll see something that will trigger a new concept or another idea.”

This can be seen in movies, such as “She’s the Man,” in which the idea and some of the plot of Shakespeare’s play, “Twelfth Night,” is used, but there are some differences like the location and setting.

This isn’t a recent occurrence. “First Blood,” “The Thing,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Psycho,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Death Wish” and “Die Hard” are all based on books.

“Many times you need publications and research to fuel creative ideas that are totally fictional,” Rittenhouse said. “I don’t think the two are divorced but rather go hand and hand.”

Rittenhouse said he believes movie makers and publishers are “riding the wave of each other” in regard to the pop-culture phenomena of “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” wherein producers release an entire series over an extended period of time.

English professor Victor Scherb said one reason filmmakers are attracted to books and literature as inspiration is that it’s easier to pitch something that is familiar.

“I think that books and literature are a huge pool of ideas, and I’m not sure that that many film makers feel that originality is necessarily an end in itself,” Scherb said. “They want something that makes a good movie not necessarily something that is a new idea. “

He said the movie makers who work with novels are still aiming to please an audience and that “there are specific expectations from the film studios and the audience itself.”

In order to do this, some changes must be made, even major ones such as the ending.

“I think that since books already have a fan base, it makes it easier to launch a movie of it,” Daniel Simpson, a junior history major, said.

Hollywood has a habit of releasing several movies following one character’s adventures.

“I think (extended movie series) work for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and the ‘Narnia’ books because the appeal of the series is the appeal of the overarching plot, which is essentially the maturation of the main characters,” Scherb said. “The core audience is going through the experience themselves, and the older audience is coming to terms with it and don’t mind reliving it.”

Regardless of how successful a book-to-film adaptation is, it seems there is always an argument from readers who claim, “the book was better.”

It can be difficult for film makers to decipher legitimate criticism from print bias when evaluating this public response.

Rittenhouse said he believes books tend to have an advantage in that they are more suited for describing a true story.

“Sometimes real life is the best story possible,” he said. “And a lot of those publications carry real-life stories.”

Because writers can insert more content into a full-length novel, it may be better suited for audiences interested in the details of a story.

Rittenhouse said that film makers sometimes run the risk of lessening the quality of a film when they try to follow the book too closely.

“Sometimes it can be harder to make a movie off a book,” he said.  “I think the Da Vinci Code ... is one of the worst movies in recent years ... mainly because they were a slave to making sure they relayed parts of things Dan Brown wrote.”

Research shows that readers of a series hold the film to a higher standard than the rest of the public.

For example, an online poll of more than 10,000 voters cited “Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix,” “Twilight,” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” as the top three movies that failed to live up to reader’s expectations.

However, all three of those films earned at least $191 million at the box office.