{"id":339,"date":"2009-04-29T23:01:48","date_gmt":"2009-04-30T06:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=339"},"modified":"2009-04-29T23:01:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-30T06:01:48","slug":"movie-adaptations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"Movie Adaptations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jim-carrey-grinch\"I’ve recently been thinking about what makes a good feature-length movie adaptation of a picture book, and what doesn’t.\u00a0 I’ve decided that I don’t think picture books can be directly<\/em> adapted for feature films.\u00a0 At least, not in the sense that a novel can.\u00a0 Picture books are an art form altogether different from other types of literature.\u00a0 For me, they are an alchemy of story, poetry, and image, almost impressionistic works.\u00a0 Filmmakers attempting to adapt them have a couple of pretty big obstacles to overcome.<\/p>\n

First, while novels aren’t necessarily easy<\/em> to adapt to the big screen, the challenge for filmmakers is usually to decide what to leave out<\/em>.\u00a0 The opposite is true of the best picture books, where the essence of the story is so refined, so distilled, so compressed, it’s like looking at a diamond.\u00a0 There is nothing to leave out, and nothing\u00a0 to add.\u00a0 So to reach the hour-and-a-half of a feature length film, directors and screenwriters adapting a picture book have no choice but to “fill” the space between the words and images on the page with something else, and usually that something else is a lot of meaningless fluff.\u00a0 Like a runaway train<\/span><\/a> or an extended song and dance number about hot chocolate<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 In other words, that’s how you get the Polar Express<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"polar_express\"The second pitfall I see is a tendency to rely on a cinematic “re-creation” of all the pictures from the book.\u00a0 The train coming out of the fog on Christmas Eve, or the Grinch’s lip-curling grin.\u00a0 We expect to see these iconic images, and the stories wouldn’t be complete without them.\u00a0 But there is so much more to a picture book than the pictures.\u00a0 A filmmaker who simply transposes the familiar images to celluloid, thinking that<\/em> is an adaptation, will ultimately produce something cold and lifeless (again, I direct you to the Polar Express<\/em>).\u00a0 For a picture book to be adapted, the filmmaker must get at the heart of the story.\u00a0 They have to understand the intent and sensibility of the book’s writer and artist, and enter that world.\u00a0 A striped hat alone does not make the cat.<\/p>\n

\"wherethewildthingsareposter5\"<\/a>All of that being said, I’m really excited about the new Where the Wild Things Are<\/span><\/a> movie precisely because it appears to have avoided the problems I mentioned above.\u00a0 There will certainly be added content (the trailer shows a male figure kissing Max’s mother, which was never in the book) but it appears that Spike Jonze<\/span><\/a> has stayed true to the theme of growing up found in the story.\u00a0 He has taken Sendak’s tale (arguably one of the greatest children’s books of all time, and one of my personal favorites) and made something uniquely his own that is still true to the original.\u00a0\u00a0 Jonze has created a new story, inspired by Sendak, but with his own unique vision.\u00a0 Ron Howard attempted this with the Grinch, and almost pulled it off.\u00a0 And while Jonze has captured many of the images from the picture book, it looks as though he has given his Wild Things a lot more personality than simply matching their costumes to Sendak’s illustrations.\u00a0 These reasons are why I think this movie might succeed where other attempts to bring a picture book to the screen have not.\u00a0 It’s not actually a strict adaptation.<\/p>\n

On a side note, I’m thrilled that it seems the filmmakers have elected to keep the effects CGI-less.\u00a0 The Wild Things remind me of the best Jim Henson creations in The Dark Crystal<\/span><\/a> and Labyrinth<\/a><\/span>, and I think that’s a very bold, very smart choice.<\/p>\n

This is all based on the trailer, of course, and trailers often turn out to be better than the movies themselves.\u00a0 When Wild Things comes out I could find myself very disappointed.\u00a0 But for right now, I am cautiously optimistic.\u00a0 You can watch the trailer below, and see what you think.<\/p>\n

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I’ve recently been thinking about what makes a good feature-length movie adaptation of a picture book, and what doesn’t.\u00a0 I’ve decided that I don’t think picture books can be directly adapted for feature films.\u00a0 At least, not in the sense that a novel can.\u00a0 Picture books are an art form altogether different from other types […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-miscellaneous"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-5t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}