Mia: Book to Screen Adaptations

I was thinking recently about book to screen adaptations. One of my favorite book series, The Raven Cycle, is becoming a TV series. I follow the author on Twitter and she's mentioned that she is going to be apart of the script writing team. To be honest, even so, I'm terrified.

Why are book to screen adaptations notoriously so bad? I think it has a large part to do with the fact that we all probably have perfect versions of what the story should be like played out in our minds. We imagine characters in our heads and when they don't meet those expectations, we get upset (side note: I dislike when covers have pictures of the characters). On top of that, the medium of TV or movie is way different than a book. Simply writing a script is a different process from writing a book. Plus, if they were to follow everything exactly as it was written, it would probably take much longer than the time allotted.

More on the side of books, I wonder how authors view their adaptations - do they hate them? Find them funny? Regretful? Love them? Like... Rick Riordan can't be happy with those movie adaptations... Although, the money was probably good (HOWEVER, Logan Lerman is cute and pretty much exactly how I pictured Percy, so that was cool). (Also, as I'm writing this, I realized I've never looked up interviews. I'm sure they exist. I'm gonna look them up later. Anyway.) I'm sure there's a lot to do with legal and contract work, but I'm always curious as to how much every author is allowed to be in the process. How much power or say do they have? Again, I'm sure it varies from production to production, but sometimes I feel like the scripts veer so wildly off the course of the book that it can't be considered the same thing.

Book to screen adaptations are a blessing and a curse. There have always been times where I thought, "Man, I'd love to see this in movie/TV form" - hell, I've thought that about The Raven Cycle. But I have so many things I want it to get right: the atmosphere, the small town magic, the way Blue's house looks in my mind, how all of the characters dress, Blue's hair clips. And I know that my expectations can't possibly be met. Also, you know they're going to stop before they get to the fourth book and I'm sad just thinking about it. Henry Cheng deserves better. But that being said, I don't want them to introduce him before he's supposed to be in the story... And this is exactly why book to screen adaptations are hard.

Right now, I can't really think of many book to screen adaptations that I've thought were accurate. None really come to mind. It's easy to hate on them, but it's hard work converting books to movies. Personally, I like to view them as two separate entities because they are two different mediums and to be honest, it makes me enjoy it more. And just cause I'm talking about it, I prefer TV series because I think they allow for more time and detail work... Anyway... Apparently I had a lot more to say than I thought I did. I really never know how to end these posts. Enjoy the long weekend!