By Skylar Neafus
Twilight, The Mortal Instruments, and many other titles should sound vaguely familiar to the common person. Why? Because they have been converted to movies. These highly rated, high earning films were books before they appeared on the big screen to capture fans everywhere. It’s a lovely thing to see, but nowadays, slightly redundant.
Books being turned into movies has become a very popular experience in today’s world, but conflicts arise because most of the movies do not perfectly match the book or graphic novel from which they are originally based.
There is a reason for this, though. Whenever an author sells a book title to a producer, usually he or she loses all rights to how the movie is made. Therefore, the director and producer usually have their own cinematic vision of how it should be made, which does not always include all of what is depicted in the book. Books can hold more information, but movies have to stay within a reasonable length of time and keep up the pace to hold the viewer’s attention.
Book conversions have taken over the cinematic world, making titles such as The Maze Runner, Divergent, and The Hunger Games cultural phenomenons, when nine times out of ten, the book is better. The book tends to have more description and the freedom to create our own movie, so to speak. The titles above were sometimes unheard of until they were sold and turned to movies, which is a shame. I have read all of these books and seen the movies, and I must go with the majority opinion and say that I enjoyed the books more.
Along with books, graphic novels are being converted to movies as well, taking the cinematic world by storm with high ratings and large incomes. They stay close to the plotlines of the comics, since usually the owner of the comic series typically assists in the production.
These books and comics being turned to movies can be a good thing, but as of now, they seem overused and overdone. It is taking over the movie theaters and screenwriters and directors cannot show their creativity and fresh ideas are not being brought to the plate. Some time needs to be taken to come up with plotlines straight from the brains of people unaffiliated with the book-writing business and turn their vision into a reality instead of an author’s.
The Bagpiper 