When a story is taken from its original text and transferred onto the big screen, plot points, themes, and author’s intent is often lost in the adaptation. Throughout the history of film, novels have served as the foundation for many famous films: True Grit, Great Expectations, The Maltese Falcon, and To Kill A Mockingbird, just to name a few. Often these adaptations are of children’s stories, like The Wizard of Oz or Babe, and even more modern adaptations like the Harry Potter series are adapted for a wide audience and frequently receive box office success. Adaptations are heavily criticized because of their origin, and take heat for making to may changes, or not changing enough. Critics and moviegoers alike don’t excuse children’s film adaptations from carful analysis of each change. …show more content…
The fantasy book follows the adventures of Sophie Hatter as she tries to reverse a curse, which makes her old, and goes to work for the mysterious, womanizing Wizard Howl. There she meets Howl’s apprentice Michael and his fire demon, Calcifer who promises to lift her curse should she help break his own. At the forefront of the book is Sophie, who develops into a strong, outspoken character, with the looming of a war in the background and the threat of the Witch of the Waste over Howl’s head. Throughout the book, Sophie and Howl’s personalities and characteristics grow and develop, allowing them for a conclusion where they admit that they care for one another. The Academy Award nominated film generally follows the a similar storyline, with the addition of the terrible war happening between two
Film analysis with a critical eye can give the viewer how animation giant Disney uses literary element to relay key messages to the audience. Walt Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” is a perfect example how different literary theories like ‘the Marxist theory’ and ‘Archetypal theory’ can be embedded in the simplest of the fairy tales. The different literary elements in the movie, shows a person how characters like ‘the banker’ and the setting of the houses helps to portray the socio-economic differences in New Orleans at that time. Applying ‘the Marxist theory’ and ‘the Archetypal theory’ to the plot, characters and the setting, shows how movies can be a medium to confront social issues and to prove that all fairy tales are of the same base.
In 1962, Robert Mulligan directed a movie based on Harper Lee’s best-selling novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The film served the audience productively with an outstanding storyline. The movie faced a certain limitation, for of depicting themes from the text. Meanwhile, the novel is more expanded with no sense of limitation. The Ewell’s position hierarchy was not portrayed in the film. Instead, it was heavily implied in the text. Both film and the novel had portrayed Maycomb’s discrimination towards Atticus and his children. Regardless of these adjustments, the film effectively portrayed the main plot of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.
At this point, the readers create their own movie in a way. They will determine important aspects of how the character speaks, looks like, and reacts. Whereas, in the movie, the reader has no choice but to follow the plot laid out in front of them. No longer can they picture the characters in their own way or come up with their different portrayals. The fate of the story, while still unpredictable, was highly influenced by the way the characters looked, spoke, and presented themselves on screen.
As the case with most “Novel to Movie” adaptations, screenwriters for films will make minor, and sometimes drastic, adjustments to the original text in order to increase drama and to reach modern audiences. Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film interpretation of The Great Gatsby followed the 1925 classic great plot quite accurately, with minor deviations. However, Luhrmann made some notable differences to the characters and settings of The Great Gatsby in order for the story to relate to the current generation and to intensity the plot
Over the course of the last century, a young orphan by the name of Annie has been plastered amongst a media-driven world. Crawling into the minds and hearts of many, the iconic tale of Annie and her exposure to the world of the social elite has made way for a magnitude of adaptations. Deriving from a 1885 poem, Little Orphant Annie by James Whitcomb Riley, Annie and her adventures has been illustrated as comic strips (Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray), books (Annie by Thomas Meehan), and musicals (Annie and Annie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge by Thomas Meehan) (“Little Orphant Annie”)(Cronin)(“Annie {Musical} Plot & Characters”). The latest takes on an Annie adaptation has been met with the big screens. Within the last thirty years, directors John Huston and Will Gluck have released two different versions of the life and journey of a young girl (“Annie” {1982})(“Annie” {2014}) .
From a structural perspective, movies and novels appear as polar opposites. A film uses actors, scripts, and a set in order to create a visual that can grab and keep the attention of their viewers. However, an author strives to incorporate deeper meaning into their books. Despite these differences in media, 1984 and The Hunger Games present unique, yet similar ideas.
Many time in our lives, we have seen the transformation of novels into movies. Some of them are equal to the novel, few are superior, and most are inferior. Why is this? Why is it that a story that was surely to be one of the best written stories ever, could turn out to be Hollywood flops? One reason is that in many transformations, the main characters are changed, some the way they look, others the way they act. On top of this, scenes are cut out and plot is even changed. In this essay, I will discuss some of the changes made to the characters of the Maltese Falcon as they make their transformation to the ?big screen.?
Filmmaking and cinematography are art forms completely open to interpretation in a myriad ways: frame composition, lighting, casting, camera angles, shot length, etc. The truly talented filmmaker employs every tool available to make a film communicate to the viewer on different levels, including social and emotional. When a filmmaker chooses to undertake an adaptation of a literary classic, the choices become somewhat more limited. In order to be true to the integrity of the piece of literature, the artistic team making the adaptation must be careful to communicate what is believed was intended by the writer. When the literature being adapted is a play originally intended for the stage, the task is perhaps simplified. Playwrights, unlike novelists, include some stage direction and other instructions regarding the visual aspect of the story. In this sense, the filmmaker has a strong basis for adapting a play to the big screen.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most respected and admired novels of all time. Often criticized for lacking substance and using more elaborate camera work, freely adapted films usually do not follow the original plot line. Following this cliché, Roland Joffe’s version of The Scarlet Letter received an overwhelmingly negative reception. Unrealistic plots and actions are added to the films for added drama; for example, Hester is about to be killed up on the scaffold, when Algonquin members arrive and rescue her. After close analysis, it becomes evident of the amount of work that is put into each, but one must ask, why has the director adapted their own style of depicting the story? How has the story of Hester Prynne been modified? Regarding works, major differences and similarities between the characterization, visual imagery, symbolism, narration and plot, shows how free adaptation is the correct term used.
Even though the story has been adapted to fit into today’s society, so children can
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
The first chapter of George Bluestone’s book Novels into Film starts to point out the basic differences that exist between the written word and the visual picture. It is in the chapter "Limits of the Novel and Limits of the Film," that Bluestone attempts to theorize on the things that shape the movie/film from a work of literature. Film and literature appear to share so much, but in the process of changing a work into film, he states important changes are unavoidable. It is the reasoning behind these changes that Bluestone directs his focus, which is the basis behind the change. He starts to look at the nature of film and literature, as a crucial part in the breakdown of this problem. It is only through a discussion into nature of each of these, that Bluestone can discover where film and literature seperate, and also develop a close to accurate theory on the laws that direct the course of change from novel to film.
Adaptation of any kind has been a debate for many years. The debate on cinematic adaptations of literary works was for many years dominated by the questions of fidelity to the source and by the tendencies to prioritize the literary originals over their film versions (Whelehan, 2006). In the transference of a story from one form to another, there is the basic question of adherence to the source, of what can be lost (Stibetiu, 2001). There is also the question of what the filmmakers are being faithful to or is it the novel’s plot in every detail or the spirit of the original (Smith, 2016). These are only few query on the issue of fidelity in the film adaptation.
Literature has been part of society since pen met paper. It has recorded history, retold fables, and entertained adults for centuries. Literature intended for children, however, is a recent development. Though children’s literature is young, the texts can be separated into two categories by age. The exact splitting point is debatable, but as technology revolutionized in the mid-twentieth century is the dividing point between classic and contemporary. Today’s children’s literature is extraordinarily different from the classics that it evolved from, but yet as classic was transformed into modern, the literature kept many common features.
In certain types of children’s literature the child is asked to use their imagination to travel to a different time, or a different place. Throughout history, and more recently, fantasy stories as well as science fiction have grown in popularity. The idea of being able to visit these different places and meet new characters, think of book like Harry Potter, that was later made into several movies, or The Chronicles of Narnia. In these types of books, the character is relatable as well as other parts of the tale. The author will then twist reality as we know it and take the reader in a new direction. This form of storytelling is used not only for children’s literature but also in those meant for adults, adding mystery, suspense , and common