Why do so many movies/tv series based off of books change so much of the original story?

[King of Memes]

Like, I feel like this wouldn't be a good idea for them to do. A lot of the people who would want to watch these would be people who like the original story. So, why do they do that?

 

One reason I can think of is maybe to shorten it. Some books are really long, and maybe a movie can't show the whole book. 

[Blue4130]

48 minutes ago, King of Memes said:

Like, I feel like this wouldn't be a good idea for them to do. A lot of the people who would want to watch these would be people who like the original story. So, why do they do that?

 

One reason I can think of is maybe to shorten it. Some books are really long, and maybe a movie can't show the whole book. 

Words and written descriptions often don't translate well into a visual medium. Hence the change to original content. 

[Vishera]

It all depends on how the director and writers envision the story and execute their roles.

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, King of Memes said:

Like, I feel like this wouldn't be a good idea for them to do. A lot of the people who would want to watch these would be people who like the original story. So, why do they do that?

 

One reason I can think of is maybe to shorten it. Some books are really long, and maybe a movie can't show the whole book. 

There are lots of reasons for those. Some good, some bad. 
 

Generally speaking, the mediums just don’t translate directly very well. 
 

Many many books have internal dialogue, but that’s super hard to do well on screen, for example. And conversations on paper often feel fake when people say them out loud. 
 

A good adaptation will take the spirit of the source while taking advantage of the new medium. 
 

Good examples of this include Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, among others. 
 

An example that started very strong was Game of Thrones. However, the ending of that is way too divisive to outright claim it’s also a good example. 

[ARikozuM]

Movie goers barely have the attention span for the actual books. If they did, we'd finally have the 72-hour Lord of the Rings series. 

[Middcore]

Some of the storytelling-related reasons have already been mentioned. In a book, the author can communicate things to the audience by putting us in the characters' heads and describing what they're thinking and feeling. This isn't possible in movies/TV unless we use a voiceover representing the character's internal monologue or something, and even this is limited in what it can get across. 

 

 

Another factor is that the way people talk in books is different from how they talk in real life. Obviously some authors are better than others at writing believable, "realistic" conversation, but even the best-written book conversations might seem unnatural if they were translated verbatim to the screen. On the other hand, some movies and TV shows attempt "naturalistic" dialogue aimed at more "realistically" representing how people talk in real life: characters interrupt or talk over each other, repeat themselves, search for the right word or lose their train of thought with "ums" and "ahs," etc. In TV/movies this can be successful sometimes but it would mostly be tedious or downright infuriating to read in a book. 

 

Those are just a couple of the differences in how books and visual media have to present a story to an audience. We could go a lot deeper, and I'm sure there are essays or books or interviews with writers who have both written books and TV/movies, or people who specialize in adapting books to screenplays, that could cover a lot more. 

 

Even setting all that aside, though, the most obvious practical factor is length/time/budgetary constraints. A book can, within reason, be as long as it needs to be. This isn't to say that books don't get cut down in the editing process, or that people won't sometimes shy away from reading a book they think is too long. But people can and will read books or series of books that take up dozens of hours of their time. Let's imagine for example an epic fantasy series that takes 40 hours to read from start to finish. Even if we assume that a TV adaption could cover the same story in 40 hours of screen time without leaving anything out (doubtful due to practically necessary adaptions in the way the story has to be presented, as alluded to above), it costs astronomically more to produce 40 hours of TV than it does to print books that take 40 hours to read. We're comparing the cost of paper to the costs of actor and crew salaries, scouting and renting locations, equipment, costuming, transportation, and on and on. (All of that setting aside advertising and promotional costs which exist for both mediums to some extent but again are on a vastly grander and more expensive scale for movies and TV.) The networks, production companies, etc. have to be convinced that they will make enough money off of commercials and new streaming subscriptions and merchandise or whatever to cover that budget and still make a profit. Now let's say instead of a 40-hour TV series we're adapting out fantasy novel series in a trilogy of 3-hour movies for a total of just 9 hours of runtime. Of necessity, we have to make sacrifices. "Extraneous" subplots get eliminated. Secondary characters get combined with each other into composites. Even fairly major character development plot points for the main protagonists or antagonists get cut or abbreviated. And this is assuming that the showrunners and executives and such involved don't make any changes to the story on purpose they think will make it appeal to a bigger audience and recoup more of that money they're shelling out. A book can appeal to a relatively small specific audience and still be successful from a business standpoint for the author and publisher. A movie or TV series, even niche ones, must cast their net a lot wider to be profitable. 

 

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Middcore said:

Some of the storytelling-related reasons have already been mentioned. In a book, the author can communicate things to the audience by putting us in the characters' heads and describing what they're thinking and feeling. This isn't possible in movies/TV unless we use a voiceover representing the character's internal monologue or something, and even this is limited in what it can get across. 

 

 

Another factor is that the way people talk in books is different from how they talk in real life. Obviously some authors are better than others at writing believable, "realistic" conversation, but even the best-written book conversations might seem unnatural if they were translated verbatim to the screen. On the other hand, some movies and TV shows attempt "naturalistic" dialogue aimed at more "realistically" representing how people talk in real life: characters interrupt or talk over each other, repeat themselves, search for the right word or lose their train of thought with "ums' and "ahs," etc. In TV/movies this can be successful sometimes but it would mostly be tedious or downright infuriating to read in a book. 

 

Finally, the most obvious practical factor is length/time/budgetary constraints. A book can, within reason, be as long as it needs to be. This isn't to say that books don't get cut down in the editing process, or that people won't sometimes shy away from reading a book they think is too long. But people can and will read books or series of books that take up dozens of hours of their time. Let's imagine for example an epic fantasy series that takes 40 hours to read from start to finish. Even if we assume that a TV adaption could cover the same story in 40 hours of screen time without leaving anything out (doubtful due to practically necessary adaptions in the way the story has to be presented, as alluded to above), it costs astronomically more to produce 40 hours of TV than it does to print books that take 40 hours to read. Tthe networks, production companies, etc. have to be convinced that they will make enough money off of commercials and new streaming subscriptions and merchandise or whatever to cover that budget and still make a profit. Now let's say instead of a 40-hour TV series we're adapting out fantasy novel series in a trilogy of 3-hour movies for a total of just 9 hours of runtime. Of necessity, we have to make sacrifices. "Extraneous" subplots get eliminated. Secondary characters get combined with each other into composites. Even fairly major character development plot points for the main protagonists or antagonists get cut or abbreviated. And this is assuming that the showrunners and executives and such involved don't make any changes to the story on purpose they think will make it appeal to a bigger audience and recoup more of that money they're shelling out. 

 

Excellent points. 
 

The Wheel of Time show coming up on Amazon soon is going through this process. Their budget is massive (we don’t have any exact figures but $50-100 Million for Season One), but even they need to cut back massively on the minor subplots and things like that. 
 

Fortunately the Showrunner is a massive fan, as are the writers. They’ve also employed a community specialist (mega fan basically) as a lore expert for them. They’ve also had Brandon Sanderson review all the scripts for his input. I’m personally super excited and can’t wait. 
 

Some shows are just doing it for the money, because they think they can quickly capitalize on a popular franchise. 
 

Other shows and movies are made by people who love the source material. It generally is obvious if it’s the latter. 

[Avocado Diaboli]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

An example that started very strong was Game of Thrones. However, the ending of that is way too divisive to outright claim it’s also a good example. 

Well to be fair, the last two seasons also aren't adaptations of anything since the books haven't been finished, they're fan fiction at best. And the books aren't too great to begin with, because in large parts they almost read like Martin is already envisioning the eventual adaptation, given the many, oh so many scenes where he spends entire paragraphs describing how the room looks, what clothes the people are wearing, what food is on their table and what they're drinking. It just gets so tedious after a while.

 

 

Anyway, the reason adaptations change things lies in the meaning of the word "adaptation": They are (or should be) playing to the strengths of the target medium. A bad adaptation wallows in what the original was about and solely attempts to translate every piece of it. This is why many video games based on movies suffer, they painstakingly try to recreate the narrative of a film instead of using the setting of a movie to explore what kind of gameplay it would permit. Or as another example, take the Sin City movies. I really like the first one. But Robert Rodriguez used the original comics as storyboards on how to create the shots for the movie. Some work phenomenally well, others look weirdly staged and lifeless, i.e. they don't play to the strengths of film as a medium, because the original comic panels weren't drawn with a film camera and real actors in mind.

[dalekphalm]

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Well to be fair, the last two seasons also aren't adaptations of anything since the books haven't been finished, they're fan fiction at best.

I'll give you that.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

And the books aren't too great to begin with, because in large parts they almost read like Martin is already envisioning the eventual adaptation, given the many, oh so many scenes where he spends entire paragraphs describing how the room looks, what clothes the people are wearing, what food is on their table and what they're drinking. It just gets so tedious after a while.

That's an artistic distinction - a choice by the author. Being extremely descriptive is the Robert Jordan style of writing (an entire page describing a dress or the way a particular meadow looks, etc - I am exaggerating, but not by much).

 

It can be tedious, yes. But if you're doing a re-read you tend to breeze over those details.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Anyway, the reason adaptations change things lies in the meaning of the word "adaptation": They are (or should be) playing to the strengths of the target medium.

Very much agreed.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

A bad adaptation wallows in what the original was about and solely attempts to translate every piece of it.

Yes this can be really obvious in some works.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

This is why many video games based on movies suffer, they painstakingly try to recreate the narrative of a film instead of using the setting of a movie to explore what kind of gameplay it would permit.

Yes that is often a downfall of video game movies.

10 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Or as another example, take the Sin City movies. I really like the first one. But Robert Rodriguez used the original comics as storyboards on how to create the shots for the movie. Some work phenomenally well, others look weirdly staged and lifeless, i.e. they don't play to the strengths of film as a medium, because the original comic panels weren't drawn with a film camera and real actors in mind.

The original Sin City works wonderfully. I never did see anything else from the franchise.

 

Comics are a bit easier to adapt because they're similar to a storyboard, but you're right, you still need to analyze the cells and see if they need to be adapted or not.

[TetraSky]

To better fit the hours of content from the book into something that has relatively good pacing and makes sense (most of the time), within whatever time constraint they've decided for their movie or series.
And also to fit whatever "creative vision" the director and writers have. This is usually the big deciding factor of whether a series or movie will stay true to the original or not.

[King of Memes]

On 6/28/2021 at 9:38 PM, dalekphalm said:

There are lots of reasons for those. Some good, some bad. 
 

Generally speaking, the mediums just don’t translate directly very well. 
 

Many many books have internal dialogue, but that’s super hard to do well on screen, for example. And conversations on paper often feel fake when people say them out loud. 
 

A good adaptation will take the spirit of the source while taking advantage of the new medium. 
 

Good examples of this include Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, among others. 
 

An example that started very strong was Game of Thrones. However, the ending of that is way too divisive to outright claim it’s also a good example. 

that makes a lot of sense. Thank You! What I really hate is when a movie changes to much. 

[dalekphalm]

On 6/30/2021 at 1:22 PM, King of Memes said:

that makes a lot of sense. Thank You! What I really hate is when a movie changes to much. 

Sometimes those changes are necessary because the author of the original book simply wrote it in a way that is not well suited to direct live action adaptation. Other times it's due to insufficient skill on the part of those making the live action version.

 

Sometimes you get a crew that *could* do better but are handicapped by the studio influencing things too much.

[divito]

Everyone has outlined it pretty well with many of the reasons.

 

Written word can shift perspectives often, but attempting to do that all on screen in "real-time" just muddies the product. While narration can work for those stories that contain it, some tend to be descriptive narration, which the visual medium can incorporate, but you end up losing some of the effect by its very nature. On top of that, narration in some areas is really heavy, which conflicts with the entire visual portion of a film.

 

Outside of that, trying to be "true" to a book or comic and have every scene, every piece of dialogue, and visually accurate based on descriptions would have a ridiculous runtime and budget. Maybe one day, someone will be ambitious to turn a book into a long form series as accurate as possible, there's very little incentive to do it that way. 

I think the biggest knock against some adaptations is outright changing dialogue, scenes or omitting certain ones. Harry Potter is a good example, but if you watch any interviews or behind the scenes, most of them are fairly justified in why they made the alterations they did. To a purist who loved the books, that might not be enough of a justification, but the Harry Potter series is a solid example of the core of one medium being brought to another to solid effect.

[NumLock21]

The reason for what's asked in the topic title is money. In a book you can let your imagination run wild, it will cost you brain power, but not a single cent was spent on it. Taking what's in the book into real life adaptation of it, money and other things comes into play, so the story has to be changed to adapt to those changes.

[SansVarnic]

On 6/28/2021 at 8:54 PM, ARikozuM said:

Movie goers barely have the attention span for the actual books. If they did, we'd finally have the 72-hour Lord of the Rings series. 

I have to admit, I would probably watch it.

[mr moose]

Books sometimes have concepts that just can't adequately be done on the screen even with the best CGI. 

Books have explained story lines that would require a narrator for the movie to be easily followed/understood. Not all movies lend themselves to narration.

 

 

Watch the making of documentaries,   like the making of harry potter etc,  they usually have tidbits about minor changes and why they felt it worked better than the book.

 

Most of the time it is about selling the movie to the audience and keeping the flow and feel right.  One change that springs to mind is the harry potter character luppin's wife, who had pink hair in the book but they gave her changing violet hair in the movie because they didn't want to to be linked or confused with delores umbridge.  Visual stimulation/association is more powerful than we give it credit for.

 

 

 

[HanZie82]

Besides the difference in medium as described above, they also think TV/movie watching people are completely without brains.
Altho if you look on most social media i totally understand thinking that.

[Zodiark1593]

I’d think books would translate better to games than as a movie.