Great books, great TV series. Definitely a successful adaption
So much these days is based on books. So many TV shows, so many movies. It’s great, but when I watch something I’ve never read the book of, unless it is SERIOUSLY awesome I spend the whole time wondering what the book is like. Is it better? Worse? Totally different? With all that in my head even if the show was ho-hum I really want to track down the book and read it.
Unlike some book purists though, I like a bit of deviation between book and screen. Obviously you can’t change too much – please screen adapters, keep the main characters the same, they are the ones we love for a reason! But I do love a storyline twist. For example, if you’ve read the first Dexter book and watched the first season of the TV show you can see a HUGE difference in the endings. I mean a character that was killed in the book’s ending (don’t worry, naming no names!) is still alive in the TV show. I welcome changes like this, changes that create some surprise.
Another example is The Walking Dead comics and TV show. So many of the situations are the same but the outcomes are different(more people dead in one medium are alive in another). I’m trying to avoid spoilers here, so forgive me for vagueness. I love this because it means that even if you read the book, you still get that wild tension pulling all the muscles along your spine tight when you watch the same scene on the TV because you have no idea how things will turn out. You’ll lean forward and your eyes are dragged by a special kind of gravity to the screen while you wait to see if they will make it out alive.
I think I’m also quite lenient on screen adaptions. I understand it’s hard to put in everything from the book into the movie/series. How do I know that? Because I can’t fit everything in my head onto the page! Writing a book you have all these scenes and back story to every character and so much of it doesn’t get shared for reasons like ‘probably won’t captivate the audience sufficiently’ or ‘doesn’t need to be mentioned’.
Are there any books you love (or hate) the screen adaptions of? What and why? Also, any book you’d love to see adapted?
