Tonight I plan on watching the film adaptation of a favorite book of mine: Odd Thomas.
I love the first book in the series (and despise all the ones the that came after).
I know the movie will not live up to my love of the original. But I must swallow my fears, and adhere to my Theory of Adaptations*.
The Theory is that since film and book are such different mediums, they should be judged as parallel univeres (universi? Universae?) that contain similar elements. LOTR's is a great book series and a great film series, and is one of the few exceptions. My Life Without Me is an amazing movie, and one of the worst books I've ever not finished reading.
The best examples come from comic book movie adaptations: Wolverine looks great on the printed page, but thirty feet high in yellow spandex he looks stupid. I'm glad of the fact the films kept the core of the tones, but left out the translations (characters HAVE to be bigger than real life in a drawing in order to convey action and emotion to the reader. On film exaggerations like this are met with incredulity and seem hammy).
So I will judge the film by the information it presents, the acting, and if it pulls off what it set out to do (what it establishes tonally in the first fifteen minutes of the film).
*Brand new theory I just thought of for here, but it borrows from previous comments I've made.
I love the first book in the series (and despise all the ones the that came after).
I know the movie will not live up to my love of the original. But I must swallow my fears, and adhere to my Theory of Adaptations*.
The Theory is that since film and book are such different mediums, they should be judged as parallel univeres (universi? Universae?) that contain similar elements. LOTR's is a great book series and a great film series, and is one of the few exceptions. My Life Without Me is an amazing movie, and one of the worst books I've ever not finished reading.
The best examples come from comic book movie adaptations: Wolverine looks great on the printed page, but thirty feet high in yellow spandex he looks stupid. I'm glad of the fact the films kept the core of the tones, but left out the translations (characters HAVE to be bigger than real life in a drawing in order to convey action and emotion to the reader. On film exaggerations like this are met with incredulity and seem hammy).
So I will judge the film by the information it presents, the acting, and if it pulls off what it set out to do (what it establishes tonally in the first fifteen minutes of the film).
*Brand new theory I just thought of for here, but it borrows from previous comments I've made.
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