Movies vs. Books (Round One)

One of my biggest pet peeves—and right now more so than ever—is the fact that directors feel free not just to turn someone else’s written work into a screenplay (that’s fine, provided they have permission), but to utterly and completely mutilate the story.

WHY? Why do they feel a need to destroy the think they are trying to breath new life into? Most of the books they take, particularly the classics, already have that breath of life, and that’s why they are classics and have survived the test of time.

Now, I understand that there is a difference between “mutilation” of a novel, which disgusts me, and a movie that has been “inspired by” or is a spoof, or otherwise is not meant to be a definitive direct translation of the written to the screen. Sleepy Hollow, for example, was not meant to be a serious movie accurate to the story, but rather borrows main ideas and plays with them while still giving credit. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, on the other hand, is trying to be a definitive, direct translation of the Tolkien novel to a screenplay format, and several interviews with the director, screenplay writer, and other people involved quote them as having tried to be true to the book. Bull crap! If you wanted to be true to the book, then where the hell is Tom Bombadil, or Glorfindel? How about the Barrow Wights? And why, exactly, is Narsil being stored in Rivendell instead of in Strider’s sheath?

Let me rant about this for a while.

You see, I am not a completely unreasonable person. I can understand why the three entire chapters of the book covering the Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil, and the Barrow Wights were cut. Those scenes would have extended the movie out for at least another hour to an hour and a half. That’s not my biggest problem, or rather set of problems. My real issues include:

1. Frodo losing his status of a remarkable hobbit who’s willing to leave his comfortable hole and go into a dangerous outside world filled with terrors chasing him, as well as his bravery and hero-status. In the book, Frodo stood up to the Black Riders on Weathertop, and crossing the Ford of Rivendell… and stood up to them good! This is lost in the movie, where Aragorn and Arwen save his butt. Also in the book, Frodo handles a unexpected company of Strider in the Inn of the Prancing Pony cool and calm, and endures the Morgul knife wound for over a week (possibly up to two weeks). Again, this is entirely lost in the movie.

2. One word: Arwen. I understand that the tragedy of Aragorn and Arwen’s love is easier expressed by bringing it onscreen, and I understand they wanted a strong female character. (What? Galadriel wasn’t enough?) However, it was Glorfindel that rode out from Rivendell to meet the party still on the road, and he threw Frodo up upon his horse alone. When Frodo is chased across the Ford, it is the magic of Elrond (and a few touches of Gandalf) that saves him. Yet in the movie, somehow it’s ALL Arwen. HELLO! Arwen is a delicately brought-up elven maiden, not a champion jockey and mage!

3. Narsil laying around in Rivendell. It’s supposed to be at Strider’s side, and one of the clinching bits that seals Strider’s good intentions in the Prancing Pony is the fact that he shows Sam the Sword that was Broken and tells them his true name.

4. That “fool of a Took” threw a stone in the well, not bumped into a skeleton. Sheesh! That one’s really easy people!

5. The Dungeons and Dragons-style stereotyping of Gimli and Legolas. Oh, come on! “Nobody throws a dwarf”? ~gags~

And et cetera. It’s not the big stuff that irritates me, it’s the stuff they could have kept from the book without adding onto the length or budget of the movie that pisses me off. (Like number 4… how freakin’ complex is that?)

I’m also a little irked that they cut ALL the poetry and song, with the one, very faint, exception of Bilbo’s “The Road Goes Ever On”.

And what could be a completely different rant at another point, the advertising and commercialism. Lord of the Rings action figures? Vomitorium.

But it’s not just LotR that pisses me off, although that one really gets me since I’m such a die-hard Tolkien fanatic. How about gothic horror classics, like Dracula and Frankenstien? Same thing. Mutilated to hell. Recently watched a new version of Frankenstein (the one with Helen Bonham Carter and Robert DeNiro) in my Literature and Science class after just having read the book, and all I wanted to do was stand up and start shrieking something to the effect of, “It’s not a complex plot; it’s not an especially long book. Why, why, WHY do you have to ruin it?!”

But noooo… they had to rehash the whole “Victor is punished for playing God” thing, and give him (in my opinion) completely different (and nauseatingly obvious) reasons for making the creature. They made Elizabeth a little more on the snippy side, and I think, honestly, that Victor was a miscast as an actually decent human being. And what’s with the scene of Victor carrying Elizabeth up the stairs and resurrecting her? Needed a little of Pet Semetary or what? (It reminded me fiercely of Louis Gage, mad as a hatter, carrying his dead wife over the deadfall in an attempt to resurrect her, never learning from past mistakes.)

When William Frankenstein comes across the creature in the forest, all I could think was, “Come here little boy… I’ve got some candy.”

And don’t even get me started on the disgusting overload of melodrama. “I’m Victor…” Long Dramatic Pause. “…Frankenstein.” Or the creature standing in the snow and screaming about revenge. Or how about Elizabeth and Victor running toward each other and embracing—coincidently—in a bright pool of sunlight. ~rolls eyes~ Please, Lord, make the hurting stop.

And so on. Really, the only movies based off books I have any measure of respect for so far are Jaws and Gone with the Wind. The movie Jaws slims down and trims the plot to the shark and the three men, instead of leaving all the unnecessary flotsam like the ichthyologist’s affair with Brody’s wife, etc.; GwtW tries really damned hard to keep up with an incredible novel of over a thousand pages, and does an admirable job of keeping almost every single thing (with the exceptions of Will Benteen and Scarlett’s other children).

So that’s my problem with movies. I might get around to putting up a section comparing movies to the books and stories they are based off, just because I need to rant about this frequently as a therapeutic measure.

That, and I think it’s fun.