LOTR Voted 'Best Movie Adaptation'

[Jnyusa]

Yeah ... (purist raises hand) ... when I saw that list I wondered if the voters knew what the word 'adaptation' meant.

Wasn't there a film called Adaptation, about adaptation? Some silly thing that folded back on itself ...

[Andreth]

Is Gone With the Wind listed?

To me, that film is an excellent example of adapted a rather long and unwieldly book into a smooth linear story. Alot was cut but nothing critical to the main relationships between Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley and Melanie. Oliva de Havillad's Melanie is so much better than the one in the book. Clark Gable was Rhett Butler and Vivian Leigh was Scarlett.

[Alatar]

Yeah ... (purist raises hand) ... when I saw that list I wondered if the voters knew what the word 'adaptation' meant.

Good question. Do you?

Its funny, I have my own very personal definition of the word adaptation, but your post challenged my assumption so I had a look on Dictionary.com. Obviously there are lot of different biological and social form of adaptation, but the definitions that seem to apply are:

# Something, such as a device or mechanism, that is changed or changes so as to become suitable to a new or special application or situation.
# A composition that has been recast into a new form: The play is an adaptation of a short novel.

Now, I think its fair to say that PJ's Lord of the Rings fits both of those definitions perfectly. A lot of people seem to rate an adaptation by its faithfulness to the source material. Why is that? As many have said before, the strengths of one medium are not the same as another. In fact, the strengths in one medium may be weaknesses in another. Now the challenge in adapting a work for another medium is not to transfer the entire body of work to a new medium. That is not adapting. Adapting is "recasting" the work into a "new form". Its a good analogy actually. The same ingredients or elements, if you will, are there, just recast in a new form.

Now, some would argue that vital ingredients were missing from PJs (I'm combining PJ, Fran and Phillipa for convenience) adaptation, but for the most part those ingredients that some see as vital are not considered so by others. So then the question becomes, "What defines a good adaptation, if not its faithfulness to the source?". Well, to my mind its taking the source and making a successful adaptation. I don't think anyone can argue that PJ's LotR is not one of the most successful movies of all time. That in itself makes it one of the most successful adaptations of all time. You may not like it. You may argue that it was not a faithful adaptation. But was it a succesful adaptation? Hell, yes. They don't get much more successful.

Wasn't there a film called Adaptation, about adaptation? Some silly thing that folded back on itself ...

There was indeed. It was an excellent movie by probably the best screenwriter and adaptor currently working, Charlie Kaufman, based on his own writers block while trying to adapt a novel called "The Orchid Thief". It was quirky, stylised and challenged his own deficiencies. Sterling work. Far from silly. You should really see it before judging.

[Jnyusa]

Got a bee in your bonnet, Alatar?

when I saw that list

You know what the word list means, right?

For something to be a 'best' adaptation, my view is that there should first be something singular about the source material, or something which makes it challenging to adapt. And the resulting movie must also be exceptionally good in its own right.

What was so great about Red October? This is my question, and I'm not the only one who asked it.

My impression of the list is that it is a list of movies that a certain sample of people really, really liked, which also coincidentally happened to be books before they were movies. Not the same thing as giving thought to the meaning of adaptation and deciding which screenwriters and directors had done it exceptionally well.

Someone earlier in the thread mentioned The Godfather. That, I must imagine, was a challenging work to adapt. Two generations, two countries, excessive sex and violence that had to be softened for the screen but upon which the whole story depended for its message and its power, and a main character that had to make a believable 180-degree turn in his worldview, leaving viewers with a final sense not of the horror of the mafia but of the tragic loss of innocence in Michael. Scorsece succeeded to great acclaim. That movie (the first one at least) belongs on a list of 'best' adaptations, in my opinion, and its replacement by something fluffy like Red October speaks volumes about this particular list.

One hesitates to use the word 'adaptation,' in the case of writers like Clancy, though I suppose that technically it is the correct term since book and film are two different media. 'Hybrid' would be a better word to my thinking: strongly visual, simplistic plots with conjoined book and film rights, written with the intention of maximizing sales in two markets simultaneously ... like the full-length toy commercials that now pass for children's programming.

This has nothing to do with whether I like Tom Clancy novels and the movies made of them. I do enjoy them. However, "Best" and "What I Happen to Like" are not synonymous terms in my dictionary, though they would seem to be synonyomous in the minds of very many people. Hence my question about the voters who generated this list.

If there were a genuine list of the best adaptations, LotR might still be on it. I don't know. I did not comment on Jackson's place among the actual greats earlier, and I won't comment on it now.

I did see the Kaufman movie, btw, and thought it far below his usual skill level. High concept still has to show the viewer something by the end, and the unravelling of that movie at the end was just silly, to my taste. Your mileage may vary of course.

Jn

[Alatar]

Sheesh. We had a brilliant set of posts here where I completely disproved your theory of "hybrid adaptations" and everyone agreed that I was wise and all knowing.

Pity.

The ending of "Adaptation" makes perfect sense if you were paying attention. What you call silly, I call irony. Your mileage may vary.

[Jnyusa]

Sheesh. We had a brilliant set of posts here where I completely disproved your theory of "hybrid adaptations" and everyone agreed that I was wise and all knowing.

You mean for once I came out ahead because of a computer glitch?



I don't really have a theory of hybrids versus adaptations, though articles about the ubiquitousness of the multiple market approach do appear in the media with some frequency.

The only thing I really wanted to say is that I wasn't rejecting the list because Jackson was on it but because I thought it was a faulty list.

Kaufman is really one of the best writers around - I agree with you there. And I did pay attention during Adaptation. But I thought that having to kill off one of the brothers was a weak denouement. (Were they brothers? - I've forgotten details now, it was so long ago). There were other, more subtle ways to arrive at the same singularity in the end, imo. And the US reviews were pretty tepid. I suspect they would have been a lot worse if any other writer had done it.

Idea: Way cool
Execution: Not so hot

But like I said, it's only my opinion. You're welcome to love the movie! That doesn't offend me at all!

[Alatar]

Not to osgiliate this further, but the whole irony of the final act was that Kaufman falls back on all the cheap hollywood cliches, just as his character swore he wouldn't. In other words the strength of the ending was its weakness (or vice versa... its a bit confusing).

As one reviewer puts it:

Some critics have complained about the lunatic third act of Adaptation, claiming it tramples on everything that comes before it. But that's both short-sighted and, if you've paid attention to the movie, simply wrong. As Orlean wrote in her book, adaptation is a process of survival, of learning to adjust to the demands of the environment around you. It's what orchids do in the wild, and it's what Kaufman does in order to complete his screenplay: He betrays everything he swore he wouldn't do at the outset (''I don't want to ruin it by making it a Hollywood thing . . . I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car crashes or characters learning profound life lessons.'') in order to accomplish his job.

[Jnyusa]

Yes, I got that. But it's a tricky thing to pull off, attempting to parody something by embodying it. You have to engage the audience in the wink at the end ... get the whole audience above the action and into the meta-story, if you know what I mean. And I thought that the movie collapsed at that point. Kaufman kind of got stuck in the bog himself.

Remember the chimp repressed-memory scene in Malkovich? He needed a mechanism like that, something that would launch the audience out of the characters' perspectives and suddenly see the whole story through the eyes of Kaufman himself. Very complicated stuff, really. Kudos for him for trying.

[solicitr]

Why are my posts disappearing??????

[Faramond]

The overwhelming memory of Adaptation I have is of the movie "the 3" that the brother was writing. That was hilarious. It was about a cop, a killer, and a hostage who all ended up being the same person, even though they were all chasing each other and stuff, including a chase scene with a horse and a motorcycle. I find even the title funny, for some reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_3

To my horror I see that some movies based on the idea in "the 3" have actually been made.

[Jnyusa]

Identity was pretty good. Didn't see the other one they talked about in your link, Faramond.

[yovargas]

It was said that O Brother Where ARt Thou was an adaptation of The Odessey.
Don't know if it's true, I adore that movie.

[axordil]

It was said that O Brother Where ARt Thou was an adaptation of The Odessey.
Don't know if it's true, I adore that movie.

It was indeed. John Goodman made a great cyclops, didn't he?

[Primula Baggins]

I really enjoyed the music in OB,WAT.

Everything else about the film irritated me, for some reason I can't figure out. Great cast, and the writing was clever . . . there was just something cold about it. I bought the soundtrack but feel no need to buy the DVD.

An adaptation I love unreservedly, that's based on books I also love, is Peter Weir's MASTER AND COMMANDER. When I remember how outraged I was that Russell Crowe had been cast as Aubrey (huff! sputter!), and other "liberties"—well, I try to remember that in reacting to early news about other films.

Peter Weir, of course, was always good news.

[narya]

I remember reading Jurassic Park when it first came out, and watching the complete screenplay in my head. Part of me said "No way can this actually be done on the screen!" But a few years later they did, and it worked beautifully. But I have to wonder if the book was written with a future movie in mind. Rather than making a list "best adaptations" and allowing the voter to decide on the definition of "best" and "adaptation", I would like to see a list of the best job of adapting - making fundamental changes to fit into a new medium - for books that were not written with the intent of making them into a screenplay or play. My list would not include books written with a future movie or play in mind (Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Shakespeare). Items on the list would include making a fundamental change to the story in order to make it fit the movie genre, and do an extremely good job of it - it would have to be both a great movie and a clever adaptation. My list would include LOTR of course. I could add others, but I've got to go right now.

[Faramond]

I don't think JK Rowling writes the Harry Potter books with a future movie in mind. They're too long, for one thing, and she can't really have thought the first one was going to become a movie, back when she wrote it.

[Primula Baggins]

Now that each book is inevitably going to be filmed, though, I don't see how it could help but affect her writing, at least subliminally. Not in the way it does some writers, who seem to have written the screenplay first, but at least a little. For example, the departure of the Weasley twins in OotP seemed to me to be a consciously "cinematic" moment.

Just my opinion; of course I don't actually know.

Narya, I think I'd include "The Wizard of Oz" on a list such as you suggest. In the books, of course, Oz is real; but to make a self-contained film with a beginning, middle, and end, it had to become a dream. With the idea of telling a single story, one that would be the only Oz story, that was a brilliant way to go.

[Crucifer]

Prim Sez...

For example, the departure of the Weasley twins in OotP seemed to me to be a consciously "cinematic" moment.

You're whole book strikes me as cinematic. In a good way. It would not be difficult to adapt for screen.

[Faramond]

But it would have to be rated NC-17!

[Primula Baggins]

Faramond, come one—more like R. Maybe. You could shoot around some of the worst Rafael bits and end up PG-13.

Crucifer, it was cinematic, and consciously so. (1) I hoped to make it vivid and entertaining and (2) I would have to be an idiot not to hope someone might option the film rights. A very slim hope, of course, but always worth trying for.

I didn't, however, structure it like a screenplay; that's way too confining for novels, I think. So it would probably be changed considerably.

There's nothing bad about writing cinematically, but books that are structured like screenplays can seem slight and predictable to me. "Oh, here's the mid–Act II crisis." "Oh, here's the final rising action." Yawn.