When an author hates the film adaptation of their book, it is mostly because the film missed what made the book so special. While it only makes sense for an author to want to defend his/her own book, does that make the film adaptation automatically bad? While Stephen King may be open on how he disliked The Shining, a lot of film fans would say that the movie is a masterpiece, regardless of King’s disapproval. Should hate a film based on what the author says, or should just judge the film on our own?
This is a very good question. Whoever takes this up, I would suggest writing about the controversy between not only Stephen King but Percy Jackson, whose author reportedly does not like the movies (need a source, however can't verify this.) The author, E.B. White did not like the animated musical version of the film Charlotte's Web simply because of the songs (my source is Wikipedia though so you might want Wikipedia's source). There are plenty of times where the film is good on its own and plenty where the author goes against it and splits the fan down the middle. And in the case of Harry Potter, the author supports the films and the fans are still split down the middle. – SpectreWriter9 years ago
I think this topic could be elaborated on throughout numerous decades and different genres all the way back to the film adaptions of both Mary Poppins and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While the modern film Saving Mr. Banks will tell you Travers eventually came to like the films made by Disney, in reality she detested what they had done to her characters. – cdenomme969 years ago
I think a major distinction to be made is those films which have the authors on as creative directors or, they themselves wrote or co-wrote the script, i.e. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Gone Girl. I think this is a very interesting topic which goes into areas of who owns a story, should a story only be told once and left alone for the rest of time and so on. – Matthew Sims9 years ago
Alan Moore notoriously hates all the adaptations of his comics that have been made into movies, but he hates most of the creative people he's worked with, too. And maybe movies in general, hard to say. But certainly the factors include how difficult some authors are to work with. – Monique9 years ago
A film adaptation is really nothing more than a reinterpretation of the original text. Take Inherent Vice for instance, based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon (2009) and later adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson (2014). Never having read any of Pynchon's novels, but having seen all of PTA's films, what from I can gather is that Pynchon loves life like Value loves the Spy. "He is a puzzle, wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in riddles, lovingly sprinkled with intrigue, express mailed to Mystery, Alaska, and LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! but it is too late. You're dead. For he is the Spy - globetrotting rogue, lady killer (metaphorically) and mankiller (for real)." I say 'gather' rather than 'get' because it's my least favorite (by default since I still love it) of Anderson's films because it has the biggest disregard for its audience. As an adaptation, it works, or at least that's what the critics and book-readers tell me; but as a film... not so much. The camera work and the editing tend to service Anderson and Pynchon more than they do me, which is bad since I haven't read a single word of the original text. This means that despite how great the film is, and it really is a damn-fine film if I do say so myself, it can't stand on it's own two feet. If you have to have someone say, "You should read the book to understand the movie"... you failed as a movie. At the end of the day, if I had to choose between Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski to watch with my friends... "The dude abides." – Reggie "Rusty" Farrakhan9 years ago
