Movies based off books

This past weekend I had the good fortune of being able to watch Laz Burhman's version of The Great Gatsby, based off the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I personally loved the film because of how over the top it was. I thought the audio was unbelievable and was so well done that I don't think people even caught everything they did unless you watched it twice intentionally listening for things. The one thing that I loved was how the high pitched noise you heard whenever you saw the green light from Daisy's dock was the same exact pitch and most likely derived from the ringing bell of Gatsby's phone. They fade it  together so well at the end that they really over emphasize that it's Daisy he's waiting for to call. It's obvious in the storyline but the sound was just over the top for me. That being said I really enjoyed the movie but my little brother's reaction was completely different. He recently just read the book for his English class and his main problem with it was that it didn't match the book enough for him. Of course I told him that they are two different mediums and it's like comparing a photo to painting and not being happy with the painting because it's not identical to what was really there. This made me think of movies that were based off books and did well and why they did well.









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The first one was Perks Of Being A Wallflower originally a book by Stephen Chbosky who also directed it. That I think was key for it doing so well. The guy who wrote the book was able to be there step by step to make sure the movie did the book justice. I personally thought the book and the movie were pretty similar in quality but that being said it probably isn't fair when the director was the author of the book.

The next one I thought of was the Harry Potter series based of J.K. Rowling's books which had 3 or 4 different directors. To me these movies did not capture the books at all but they weren't bad either. I mean some of them were bad but come one they had 8 movies and for all them to be pretty decent is an accomplishment in itself. I think these movies did well because they focused on the characters and the biggest and most important story in the book, to end the everlasting threat of Lord Voldemort. They did have to cut a lot of minor story lines and scenes out but after experiencing the stress of producing a 16 page fiction one film, approaching a 600+ page book and turning it into a film is daunting.

Finally I thought of the opposite situation of the Harry Potter books and looked at The Hobbit directed by Peter Jackson and based off the book the Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien. In this movie they added completely new story lines and reasons for the treasure hunt that the book didn't have. After reading the book I completely understood why they did because to me the real reason they went after the dragon was because they wanted some gold. They weren't looking for their old home but they just wanted money and I guess that isn't a completely good moral reason for heroically fighting dragons in Hollywood. And also they added the white Orc which I thought gave a nice conflict through out the film but there was no such character in the book. If you stuck to the book, I personally don't think the story would have fit a movie screen as well because that story wasn't meant for that medium. Leading me back to my original statement in which you shouldn't think a movie is bad because it doesn't match the book it's based off of. The movie is an artistic expression inspired by the book not an identical recreation.

Why I'm incredibly Excited about J.K. Rowling's New Film

I have absolutely no shame in admitting how much I love Harry Potter. It will always be an enormously important and influential part of my childhood, and I still rewatch the movies and reread the books to this day. So you can probably imagine my excitement this morning, when (while waiting to inevitably get denied for tickets to see Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse) I discovered that J.K. Rowling would be penning a script for a brand new movie set in the Wizarding World that I know and love.

Based on Rowling's short guide (which in itself was a required textbook for students in the Harry Potter universe), "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" will be set about 80 years prior to the events of the Potter series. The film will supposedly follow the adventures of the book's fictitious author Newt Scamander, and many people have been hypothesizing as to whether or not the movie will have cameo appearances by other iconic characters from the series, such as Albus Dumbledore. 

However, the prospect of returning to the world of Harry Potter doesn't excite me nearly as much as the fact that the woman who created the world will be taking us back into it.  Much how the newly announced Breaking Bad spinoff "Better Call Saul" would not be as exciting if Vince Gilligan wasn't attached to produce it, a new movie based on the books by J.K. Rowling would not be nearly as newsworthy if it wasn't written by....J.K. Rowling. There is nobody else that I would trust with the responsibility of bringing fans a satisfying and welcoming return to the Wizarding World. It's nice to see original creators (like Rowling or Gilligan) sticking to their roots and pleasing the fans that they've come to gain over the years. 

Which brings me to one final point: in a world where Hollywood is looking to adapt any kind of book, toy, or board game into the next huge blockbuster, it's interesting to see a mega company such as Warner Brothers take a (presumably unfinished) script from someone who has previously only written novels and turn it into a film. For the previous Harry Potter movies, the scriptwriters already had a plethora of material to adapt into a film, but now, with no source material and an obvious desire to keep the series going, Warner Brothers went straight to the source. To be blunt; I like this, and I hope it happens more in the future. Instead of making crappy summer blockbusters, give authors (people who know how to really tell stories) a chance to pen their own films. Take, for instance, the current Game of Thrones situation. With only two books left until the TV show catches up with the books, why not let author George R.R. Martin write the sixth season of the show? It would be interesting, and I think it is potentially something that we'll be seeing more and more of.

Either way, the ten year old in me was giddy with excitement when he heard that there was more to come from the Harry Potter universe, and the 19 year old pretty much felt the same way. Too bad we'll have to wait until 2015 (at the very earliest) to find out what comes next.