Literature to movie adaptations

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                            10/20/11

Literature to movie adaptations.

            Since the creation of film, there have been two ways to make a story for the films to follow and the audiences to watch. One is by doing an original story, where the idea is not based on anything but just made up, and the other is adaptations. That’s when you make a movie out of a story from something else, like a historical event, from a play, from other shows or movies, books, and others.

            The best known and profitable of film adaptations is when a form of literature, like novels, short stories, and comic books, is adapted to film. Some work while some don’t, and some films might be true to the book, in that they have all or almost all that’s in the book, or they’re totally different from the source material.

            Some famous literature to movie adaptations include some of the James Bond novels and short stories by Ian Fleming, Gone with the Wind, the Batman films, Lord of the Rings, The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather, Psycho, Ben-Hur, and many others. Many of these films are also famous for making sequels with their own stories that are sometimes adapted into literature, like some of the James Bond films, The Godfather Part III, the Psycho sequels, and so many others.

            There are some movies based on certain types of literature that are very different from the source, but can either be successful or hurt it. Some include Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining, by Stephen King, which when it came out was not well received because of how different it was. Although today it’s considered one of the best films ever made, even if King still has a problem with how different it is. Other changes into film include Hannibal, since no one was happy with how the novel ended, which is why Jodie Foster wound up not reprising her Oscar-winning role of Clarice Sterling since it took so long to rewrite an ending for the movie.

            While there are some adaptations which are different, there are ones who are like the books they’re adapted from. Like the Lord of the Rings, which is why it was split into three movies, or the last Harry Potter novel being turned into two films because they wanted everything in the book into the movie as oppose to the other book to film adaptions.