Adaptation...The Process Not The Movie

Talking about Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban with my sister got me to thinking about the process of adapting something to another medium. She and I debated about the things in the movie that were changed or removed. There is no question that whenever a book is made into a movie that things will be (or even have to be) changed. How much should be changed or taken out is another issue entirely.

Most of the time, I tend to see the adapted version before I’ve seen the original. I have seen the Lord of The Rings films but have yet to read the book, for example. In fact, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban is one of the few times where I have indeed read the book before seeing the movie.

I’ve always read that adapting something is hard work. I guess that makes sense. I mean, what’s better...making a good movie from a book or making a movie that’s close to the book? Do you keep in a scene that’s great in the book but may slow down the movie? Do you change the way certain events happen to make them more entertaining? When is an adaptation too loose? Those are questions that many writers face as they take familiar TV shows, books, plays, and even movies and adapt them to other mediums.

It’s interesting to see how creators adapt works. For Kare Kano, the look, style, and dialogue of the manga were recreated nearly word for word. I saw the anime first and when I read the manga, I was amazed at how closely the anime followed it. On the other hand, it was interesting to see the choices made by the producers of the classic film version of To Kill A Mockingbird. I read the book for my English class in high school. We watched the movie version after we covered the book. Many characters and situations were cut or reduced in the movie version. However, it’s still a great movie.

I guess, in the end, it might be better to actually see an adapted version before the original. Seeing an adaptation lets you appreciate it for what it is as opposed to automatically comparing it to the original. In fact, it may give you even more appreciation of the original. I really enjoyed the anime of Fruits Basket, but I like the manga even more. Instead of griping about what the anime took out or changed, I appreciate the things the manga has that the anime doesn’t.

I think it also helps to think of each version as its own entity. A book is not a movie and shouldn’t be like one. A movie isn’t a book, and won’t have everything the book has. A play isn’t a movie or a book and will have its own quirks.

As a writer, I hope to see someone adapt my work. I’d take the approach of J.K. Rowling (who approved of Cuaron’s adaptation of POA) instead of David Mamet (who rejected an all-female production of his play Glengarry Glen Ross). I might be mad at what they change or I might not. But I hope whatever they did would be good.