Top Ten Tuesday- Books as Movies

This week the Broke and the Bookish are asking us what our top ten movie adaptations are (for better or worse). 

Here are two general theories I have that both have considerable exceptions:

1. Slightly crappy books tend to make better movies (see 2, 5, and 6)

2. The less I like a book the less I care if the movie adaptation screws with the plot and characters

Two other preliminary theories still in the works:

1. Movies with Karen O songs are good.

2. Movies starring Jennifer Lawrence are good.

One theory based on no solid evidence whatsover:

 

1. A movie with a Karen O soundtrack and starring Jennifer Lawrence would probably be spectacular. 

Anyway.

Done Well

1. Where the Wild Things Are

by Maurice Sendak

I had some serious doubts before seeing this movie. How would Maurice Sendak's children's masterpiece be turned into a full-length feature film? Turns out Spike Jonze (and Dave Eggars, who co-wrote the screenplay) did a great job filling in between the lines (ps: watch this video of Christopher Walken reading and improvising the book).

2. Silver Linings Playbook

by Matthew Quick

This is one of the few books that I read after I saw the movie and thought that it did an even better job of developing the characters and the plot than the actual novel.

3. Much Ado About Nothing

by William Shakespeare

I saw the newest version directed by Joss Whedon last month and felt he did a great job of capturing The Bard's tongue-in-cheek tone and staying true to the dialogue.

4. The Harry Potter Series

by JK Rowling

I have only seen a few of the movies, but I thought the ones that I have seen captured the overall story well. Obviously the books are incredibly long so things must be out, but the directors did a decent job picking and choosing. (Shameless ploy: read my recent post about The Wizarding World of Harry Potter here).

5. The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

Honestly, I didn't care for the series or the movie, but I do have to say that the film was completely on par with the novel (another Jennifer Lawrence movie!).

6. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

This is another book that I wasn't in love with, but I thought the movie (albeit there were definitely changes) wasn't bad at all. The opening with the Trent Reznor and Karen O song was good enough for me. 

7. To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

This is one of the few movies I've ever shown to my high school students. While it is unfortunately in black and white (minus fifteen cultural points for Christine for liking color), it does hone in on the essence of Lee's story.

Done Shittily

8. The Hours

by Michael Cunningham

I really hate this movie- the tone of Cunningham's writing is poorly replicated and was completely over-acted. Things were added, things were taken out... it just wasn't right.

9. Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

What a nonsensical, disappointing clusterfuck. 

10. The Great Gatsby (the most recent)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

What a nonsensical, disappointing clusterfuck.

Got some good ones? Some bad ones?

Gatsby the Book vs. Gatsby the FIlm

Sometimes I make stupid decisions. Like, oh, telling my students if they read The Great Gatsby and saw the movie they could get extra credit if they took a quiz. This, unfortunately, meant that I had to see the train wreck of a movie. I read it the day before seeing it so that the story would be fresh in my mind, which made the movie just that much more disappointing. 

First of all, the soundtrack was an experiment gone very, very bad. I'm a fan of Jay-Z, don't get me wrong, but pairing his talents with a movie set in the roaring twenties was just plain stupid. And along with the music often came this sort of rap music video feel that's so far from Fitzgerald that it was comical. There's one scene where Gatsby and Nick are driving over a bridge, with some sort of rap song playing, and in the opposite direction comes a car full of scantily clad women drinking champagne and dancing. No! Just no! This was the Jazz Age! Come on!

Secondly was the glitz and glamor surrounding the movie, as well as within in it. Yes, Gatsby's parties were extravagant, but they were supposed to be somewhat elegant and stylized. Baz Luhrmann created a bona fide mess out of Gatsby's mansion- he took "over the top" and multiplied it by a million. Fitzgerald's message behind the novel is that too much wealth ruins lives, not that it's something to be celebrated. The overall feel of what the novel is was lost completely.

Another issue that I had was Carrie Mulligan's portrayal of Daisy. I generally like her, but I felt that she played this role as a total space cadet that was void of anything substantial. In the book she is quite silly at times, but she's not a simple character that is totally clueless about what is happening and what she's a part of. Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and Tobey Maguire as Nick were fine casting choices, but Mulligan failed to impress. 

The film starts off with Nick Caraway in a mental institution talking to his psychiatrist, a choice Lurhmann makes in order to provided the necessary back story and voice overs. This insinuates that Nick needs this, that he was so fragile and traumatized from the events of the summer that he couldn't handle himself any longer, something that Fitzgerald does not allude to in the book. Nick is supposedly writing down the story at the doctor's suggestion, in order to cope. Luhrmann also does these horrible "write overs" on some of the scenes, serving to be even more distracting from the actual story. 

In all fairness, there were some positives. The set designers who created the Gatsby and Buchanan estates did a wonderful job- they're beautiful. There are also a few scenes that were relatively well-done, one with Gatsby giving Nick and Daisy a tour of his home, and then also most of the scene in which the truth comes out about the relationship at the Plaza. 

It blows me away how something so true to the original dialogue can be so far away from the intended essence of the story.