Today Booking Through Thursday asks the following question:
What are your literary “pet peeves”?
My biggest pet peeve is when a film-maker takes a well-loved book and changes something in the story dramatically. This includes, but is not limited to, such things as leaving out essential parts of the plot, changing the plot, changing a character so much that you don’t recognize them, or leaving out major characters. Connected with this are people who then come along and think that what is portrayed in the movie adaptation is the real story, or people who claim that such major alterations are not really that big of a deal. I understand that not everything can be included in the short span of a movie, but when major things are changed or left out that are a large part of the story then I get a little annoyed!
Examples that come to mind are The Lord of the Rings movies. The movies in themselves were cinematic wonders, but Peter Jackson, in my opinion, wrecked the stories and left us with something that I don’t think Tolkien could have lived with himself. He left out major parts of the Return of the King, things that were definitely part of Tolkien’s vision. He left out Tom Bombadil and gave some of his lines to other characters. He made strange breaks in the stories. He changed the whole character of Faramir. And that is only scratching the surface. Then I read somewhere that he claimed to be a big fan of the books! I’m really dreading The Hobbit coming out on the big screen soon, because some of the things I’ve heard that he’s doing with it have me really worried.
Another recent one is Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Almost everything about this movie is wrong – the age of the main characters, the location of many of the events, there is no mention of the prophecy (which is one of the main things driving the complete series), and there is no mention of Clarisse or Ares (other than when the gods are arguing). I have no idea how any of the other books in the series could be brought to the big screen now, because there is just so much about the first movie that is wrong.
So, that’s my biggest peeve. It just means that now I try to read the book first before even contemplating seeing the movie. I’ll probably see The Hobbit, but I don’t have to like it!
Two weeks from everywhere 