Philip K. Dick is one of the more prolific science fiction writers of the second half of the 20th century. His dark plots, themes, and characterizations differ greatly from those who preceded him. This has seemingly translated well onto the big screen, as at last count, nearly ten of his novels and short stories have been adapted into films. Several of these films have garnered critical acclaim for both their movie credentials and use of source material. Blade Runner, originally released in 1982 and based off a 1968 novel entitled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? along with A Scanner Darkly, a 2006 film based off a book of the same name released in 1977, are two such examples. They provide an excellent base to compare the adaptations in terms of visual style, plot authenticity, and characterization. Both movies took alternate routes, yet both were very well received, though one’s financial success is far greater than the other.
Immediately upon viewing either film, the viewer is struck with the unique visual style each presents. This impression is likely the defining image one is left with after viewing the entire film. Each took a different approach in using visuals to stage the environment and context of the plot. Blade Runner styles Dick’s vision of Los Angeles circa 2019 as a futuristic film noir, with an anachronistic mix of technology combined with dark angles and shadows. Virtually all of the visual styles of this environment happened pre-production; that is, they do not rely heavily on computer editing after filming to achieve the desired effect. The opening scene involving the interrogation of Leon in a dark, smoky, high-ceilinged room could be lifted right out of a 1950s mystery film. The detective then pulls out ...
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...t earned even less at the box office and has not taken off upon home release. Perhaps this is due to Blade Runner having friendlier source material – bounty hunting versus drug use. However, it might also be due to the liberties which the screenwriters took in adapting the film, making it more big screen friendly.
Regardless of their financial successes, both novels and their respective film adaptations are held in high esteem by many. They both utilize unique visual techniques to immerse their audience in the worlds of Philip K. Dick, but differ on their strictness of plot and characterization. In the end, however, the departures from the original source material of Blade Runner are executed so well that they come across on par with the literal A Scanner Darkly. Both movies play tribute to genius of Philip K. Dick’s writing by being complete, well-rounded works.
Blade runner a box office flop in 1982 but a 1992 re release hit set
I don’t like the movie as much as I like the book because the movie doesn’t really demonstrate the futuristic world that the author depicted. It disappoints me because, like I’ve said earlier, the setting of the story is what interested me the most. But the movie, unfortunately, was not able to convey it. And I didn’t expect the movie to create a futuristic world either because back in 1966, technology was not advanced. Aside from technological issues, there are some changes in the movie. In the book, the girl who inspires Guy Montag, Clarisse McClellan, dies due to a speeding car, but in the movie, she still lives. I personally prefer the book’s way because I think Clarisse’s death was a key factor in leading to the main conflict of the book. Overall, I think that the book is far more interesting than the movie because the book is just more descriptive and
...d coloring of certain images. The novel, however, puts much greater emphasis on the imagination and creativity, and on the main character Tita. The novel really makes the reader feel Titas pain and grow with her as she discovers her freedom, whereas the movie failed to achieve this. Moreover, the movie tends to ignore the significant of 3 integral motifs, cooking, tears and sensuality.
Phillips, Gene D. Conrad and Cinema: The Art of Adaptation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1995.
For fans of any novel, it is disappointing to find out its film adaption is sometimes nothing at all like the book. In Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he writes and portrays a multitude of hilarious situations as well as characters. John Singleton directs A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie version in 2005. Most people realize directors take creative liberty in relation to a novel and do not always produce the movie exactly like how readers imagine it, which in turn affects people’s perceptions of the movie. A few main differences between Douglas Adams’ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novel and John Singleton’s film version are Arthur’s character development, the team’s relationship with the Vogons, and
According to the author of “The End of Science Fiction”, Lisel Mueller, our creative innovations have come to a halt. This is a four stanza, free verse poem describing how the human race has advanced some much, so fast, that we have become dull and interesting. Mueller uses parallelism, metaphors,allusions, and imagery to help emphasize her point on how it is important for the human race to become more creative to make the world even better.
Films of this era are criticized for substituting violence and special effects for "substance". Many believe that creating a movie script is a juvenile form of writing, a shrub to the oak of a novel. Upon reading both the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and viewing the film produced by Roland Joffe, one notices the tremendous effort put into both. This essay will explore the many differences and similarities between the book and movie.
Whenever books are adapted for film, changes inevitably have to be made. The medium of film offers several advantages and disadvantages over the book: it is not as adept at exploring the inner workings of people - it cannot explore their minds so easily; however, the added visual and audio capabilities of film open whole new areas of the imagination which, in the hands of a competent writer-director, can more than compensate.
The PBS article on film adaptation points out the difference between written text and film, and the struggle of adapting a book into a movie. Some novels are written in third person and require a narrator. Filmmakers have to be able to replace third person with more dialogue and some first person thinking. Filmmakers also struggle by removing the visual interpretation and imagination by those who read the novel. As some novels take many days to read, filmmakers must also reduce the length of the film to keep the viewers attention. Some of these additions only can be applied by “using tools to recreate and refashion scenes”. With “refashioned scenes”, comes new themes. For example, the reader and viewer notice this in Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” which seems to show that the advancement in technology could possibly pose as a threat to future society.
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.?
The movie The Kite Runner is based on the book and it contains both subtle and explicit differences as all books and movies do. Both the book and the movie have very compelling and moralistic themes though at times the movie’s themes seem limited. The themes presented throughout the movie and the book are penance, loyalty, prejudice, religion and growing up. The characterization, overall plot of the movie and the setting of the book seem to be consistent with each other though at times they both may vary both slightly and drastically.
For example, if one were to suddenly be able to see through solid objects, how would you feel? If you suddenly became invisible, what might not happen to you? However, if in the same story solid objects melted randomly, day flipped irregularly with night throughout a twenty-four hour period, whilst other people disappeared without warning. Then this would result in a situation where anything is possible and nothing was out of the ordinary and interesting occurs. Science fiction is meant to maintain an element of the human and real, in order to captivate its readers.
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 science fiction genre is a very elusive genre of fiction as it deals with futuristic settings, advanced technology, extraterrestrial life forms, parallel universes and space travel. The following essay will analyze and compare three science fiction films in order to explain why ‘District 9’ can be viewed as more evolved than ‘Avatar’ based on the themes of xenophobia, biological advancements, technology and space as well as other worldly settings, that are common to the science fiction genre.
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.