Movies and Books

Turning books into movies has been around long before turning video games into movies, mainly because books have been around much longer than movies. So people have been getting a lot of practice with it (which is not to say they have gotten better). As with video games, the main issue is cutting out material to make movies, and adding material in to go the other way.

Novels generally have around 300 pages or so. Which is fine for a book, but a faithful adaptation (one which puts all the events of the book in to the movie) will take about five hours (see the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. I’m still waiting for the movie of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). So to make a movie of a book, you need to cut out about half (or more) of the book. Which, like video games, often makes the movie a lot stupider, as well as pissing off a lot of the fans of the book. And because the fans of the book may not be stereotyped as basement-dwelling geeks, movie makers care a lot more about them (frankly, I’d rather pander to the geekdom than fans of Twilight, but that’s why I’m not in the movie business).

One of the other issues with turning books into movies is how to accurately convey thoughts. Thoughts can be written down in the book, but are harder to get in movies. There are a few ways to deal with this. One, the movie can mute the sound and have the character voice over what their thoughts are in echo-y fashion (this is often used in TV show, but less in movies). Two, you can leave the thoughts out of it entirely, in the hopes that whatever the characters are thinking isn’t necessary to the story (frankly, a lot of times their not ... sort of like real life). Third, the character can speak in the movie what they were only thinking in the book (doing this when alone is a bit of a problem, although not as uncommon as you would think … or say). Fourth, good actors may be able to express their thoughts through facial expression, body language, and so forth. Bad actors will look like they're constipated, and terrible actors will look like a block of wood (Hi, Keanu Reeves).

Another issue is what everyone and everything looks likes. On one hand, nobody’s ever seen what the main character looks like, or what the setting is, so movie makers can’t really go wrong (unless they change hair colour or some other obviously stupid detail). But everyone who’s read the book has an idea in their heads of what each character looks like and what the setting looks like. So what’s on screen is going to different than what just about everyone thinks. Not necessarily wrong, but different.

Turning movies into books can happen in one of two ways. The first, an author writes down everything in the movie, the production company slap eight pages of colour photos inside, and markets it to kids through Scholastic book fairs. I got a copy of Meteor Man this way (a forgettable movie about a meteor that gave people superpowers).

Alternatively, an author can be hired to fill in the missing pages to get a novel-length book. They can add thoughts, lots of descriptions, background on characters, whatever they want. They just need to add something, or it’ll be a 100 page novelette. I think it’s easier than adding material to video games, because there are more options that fit better within a book than interactive media.

The big drawback, though, is that reading a book takes a lot longer than watching a movie, and most people would rather spend the two hours on the movie than two weeks (months, years) on the book. So there needs to be a big draw for the book, which means it either has to be better than the movie (usually by using a good author) or needs to have a well-known author (and keep in mind, good and well-known are not the same thing … Stephanie Meyer). So the good news is that for books of movies, we get authors like Timothy Zahn, R.A. Salvatore, Alan Dean Foster, etc … The bad news is that we know how the story ends, and all we’re getting is a bit of extra detail. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just not worth paying for the hard-cover. Unless it’s for Revenge of the Sith. I’ve heard that it’s much better than the movie, and explains motivations more than the movie. So as always, the lesson is: George Lucas, STOP MAKING MOVIES!