When walking into the movie theater, the smell of popcorn and dimming of the lights make you feel immediate excitement, knowing for the next few hours you can watch a story come to life on the screen. Seeing a book on screen is a magical experience that can either enhance the story, or ruin it. Students at WJ have varying opinions on whether or not their favorite book to movie adaptations changed the value of the story.
“My favorite book to movie adaptation is “The Hunger Games” because I think it is a really cool story as a whole. I like the characters and the flow of the story,” junior Nazarwit Tefera said.
When done well, film adaptations can attract a broader audience and lead to more fan interaction. With “The Hunger Games,” the books were very popular even before movies were made out of them. But once the stories became movies, they gained even more popularity, and many who had seen the movies then went and read the books.
“‘Little Women” [is my favorite book to movie adaptation] because I really like the way Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet act in the movie,” sophomore Karolina Fredriksson-Lidman said.
Many book to movie adaptations, if casted right, can bring what you imagined as you read to life. A book being transformed into a movie can also give people an opportunity to experience the story in a different way. Whether they didn’t want to read the book or weren’t able to, they can still have a similar impact from the story.
“Movies can be easier to follow and you can multitask while watching a movie. You can’t really multitask while reading a book,” senior Andy Marks said.
People with busy lives may not have the time to sit down for hours and read an entire book. In contrast, they might be able to set aside a couple hours to watch a movie. While watching the movie, they are still absorbing the story and can take away its message.
“Logistically, not all books can be turned into movies because it is expensive,” Marks said.
The process of creating a movie out of a book can be very costly and difficult. For example, it took $7.7 billion to make all eight of the Harry Potter movies. Without a lot of money to spend, the quality of the movie can start to decrease. A lot of times, people who were die hard fans of the book are disappointed in the movie because parts were left out or portrayed differently. But, companies don’t always have the funds to spend on making the movie longer or extending it into multiple movies.
“I don’t think all books should be turned into movies. I think it’s okay if some books are adapted to a different story line or different plot line and maybe the movie is inspired by a book. But sometimes I feel like turning a book into a movie ruins what the author’s true intentions were,” English teacher Alexis Phares said.
When turning a book into a movie there is always the risk of the book finding that the movie doesn’t live up to their expectations. Still, it is the risk many are willing to take with the hope of gaining the population’s approval and profiting off the adaptation.
