When filmmakers adapt a novel or story for the silver screen, something always gets lost in the translation. For one, films are limited by running time, and two, they’re limited by budget, which in turn, means that their resources and time may never be enough. A scene or a passage in a book might end up costing millions of dollars to film. Even if the story were carried across sequels or a series, scenes might even be cut out because the filmmakers didn’t find them necessary to include.
Books stimulate our imagination to create scenes (for free), and the difficulty of adapting a story into a film are 1) the cost (as aforementioned), and 2) what a vision of the story looks like according to the filmmakers. Of course, we must keep an open mind since it’s impossible to meet everyone’s expectation/vision of a book, but an adaptation can succeed to some degree if it at least captures the essence of the narrative, as well as the meaning behind it.
Filmmakers have to make a choice as to what they film. Adaptations usually end up covering the essential parts, and highlight key moments in the story.
Depending on whether they follow the story closely or not can produce a wide range of results. The movie might be great apart from the book, even if it doesn’t follow it closely. A movie that follows the book closely might feel like something is missing cinematically (i.e. certain scenes might not be suspenseful when they should be). And movies that take too many liberties with the plot might feel like an affront to the source material.
However the film turns out, an adaptation rarely meets the quality of the book. Because in a book, the writing style of the author captivates the reader to see their world through the lens of their words. On screen, that world flashes by and extinguishes after 90 minutes or 2 hours (depending on the length of the film). When reading a book, however, that world might stay in one’s mind for days or weeks, depending on how long it takes them to finish it. And the author’s words created a world that only the mind’s eye can see.
Fallton Havenstonne 