First, it was Harry Potter. Then Twilight, and The Hunger Games. And now it’s Divergent, with movies like The Giver, The Fault in our Stars, and many more on the way. Once a slow-rising endeavor, now the book-to-movie industry enters a film craze, opening the floodgates to many movie adaptations of Young Adult stories.
It seems like a great idea, right? Many of you remember the exciting days when a Harry Potter premiere date drew near, and fans lined up at midnight to get a visual experience of the story that up until then only existed on page and in their imaginations. YA movie adaptations provide a franchise and publicity for the book, the fans, and the respective author. On the other hand, popular YA books have solid fan bases, which means that based on the book fandom, there will be an established consumer crowd for the movie adaptation of the book. Win-win situation, right?
But it’s not that simple.
Promotional image for the Divergent movie.
I watched the Divergent movie a few weeks ago. I had heard very mixed reviews about it—some found the movie disappointing, some were blown away and compared it to The Hunger Games (I LOVED Catching Fire). Having loved the Hunger Games movie adaptations, I had pretty high expectations. Being a huge fan of the Divergent series amped the excitement.
And as it turned out, Divergent the movie was…okay.
On a surface analysis, the movie was great. The casting worked decently, and despite the absence of a few minor plotlines, the story moved exactly, chronologically, through the events of the book. The movie didn’t heavily alter the book. Still, I felt like something important was missing. It seemed like there was a small piece from the book that didn’t translate onto the screen. It was miniscule, but it dampened my feedback in regards the movie—and it took me a long while to figure out what exactly bugged me about the movie.
Sure, the movie had the thrilling story in it, but without Veronica Roth’s brilliant, haunting writing that conveyed Tris’s journey, I feel like the experience was incomplete. There were some passages and lines in Divergent that asked important questions and deepened the underlying themes of the book, but nearly all of them were missing from the script. With nothing but the surface story to focus on, the story could easily be badly mistaken by movie critics as a shallow, archetypal teenage scenario—which it clearly is not.
In other news, the trailer for The Giver went up a while ago, and sparked a bit of an outrage among dedicated readers. Common comments on the trailer were, “Why is it in color when the world in the book clearly is devoid of color? Why is there a spaceship? Where did all the sci-fi technology come from?”
Basically, they were all asking one question, one that rose to my mind as more and more YA adaptations were gracing the screens: “Why is this adaptation not accurate to the book?”
The answer is almost deceively simple: “Because movies are not books.”
Some of the consequences that come with YA book/movie adaptations are that people are forming opinions on the books that are based purely off of the movie. They think that the movie is a 2-hour substitute for the novel.
Once again: movies are not books.
Promotional image for The Giver movie, in theaters August 15th 2014.
Different kinds of art are born out of different foundations. Imagine if you are given a painting, and told to write a graphic novel from the picture. How much would the standards shift? How could you possibly convey every bit of a piece of art in an entirely separate medium?
Isn’t it the same for book-to-movie adaptations?
Movies are visceral stories. They call for thrilling action, and high, easy-to-understand stakes. Movies rely on a different set of tools to convey the story. They touch on a world of color, sound, and stunning graphics. Not all books are created to be 140 minutes and PG-13, with heart-pounding action and a full-color spectrum. Books make an art and a magic out of words, but when making the shift to movies, some of the art is lost in translation.
Which leads to my point: Don’t judge a book by its movie.
To be honest, I felt a little bit lost at first, sitting in that movie theater while the Divergent credits were playing. I felt like the film adaptation had reached its goal, but failed to truly bring Roth’s story to life. And I’m not alone. In the world of readers, there has been the constant fear that once a book gets its movie adaptation, the movie version will “ruin” the book by not portraying it 100% accurately. While I don’t think that movies “ruin” books, I certainly see where those opinions are coming from, especially if the movie versions are vastly altered from the original story.
But in the end, did it matter? The books were still there for me to read, and I loved them. As for the movie? It brought to life some things that weren’t in the book—like some of the characters. The action scenes were pretty kickass. And the movie soundtrack was great. There was the book, and there was the movie, and together, they made the world of Divergent a little more whole.
Even as YA book-to-movie adaptations grow as a trend, readers should keep a very clear distinction between books and their movie adaptations. Movies can be adapted from books, but they will never completely embody the stories that inspire them—and vice versa; not all books are made to become movies. YA adaptations vary widely. There are some books that mesh beautifully with their movies, and some that clash. But books and movies are different kinds of art, and at the end of the day, each deserves to be evaluated and respected in its own way.
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