The Good, the Bad and the Inbetween Book Adaptations
Books to film adaptations have got a bit of a bad rap and that’s mostly justified; too many times have we been burned by bad adaptations that we were all so excited for. Here is our list of the good, the bad and the inbetween movies. We’ve tried to judge them based on how close they are to the books.
The Good
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
The movies are a perfect depiction of the fuzzy warm feeling felt whilst reading the books. Such feel good films that can be watched over and over again.
Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Netflix show embraces the silliness from the books and the wordplay that is prevalent in the books. The cast is great and each character is given the time to be fully fleshed out and all seem to have some great lines.
Love, Simon
The film embraces the acceptance and friendship whilst still giving ample time and attention to the emails. The casting choices were spot on and they managed to full encapsulate the awkward high school years whilst still being enjoyable to watch.
His Dark Materials
An amazing show for one. The cast and soundtrack is phenomenal. It gives time to explore the universe and the lore and time to forge relationships between the characters. Whilst it has brought some developments and characters in earlier than in the books, it also lifts some dialogue straight from the page.
A Monster Calls
A film that perfectly captures the raw, heart-wrenching emotion of the story. It easily could have become a film that focused on the monster, but instead it developed the emotions and captured the grief and the pain of losing a relative. To top it all off, the lighting and monster are also incredibly well designed.
The Bad:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
This movie left out all the rawest parts of the book and seemed to not treat some of the issues discussed as seriously as the book did. The fact that Stephen Chbosky wrote the screenplay is baffling.
13 Reasons Why
The fact that they have managed to make four seasons out of one book is just too much. They have taken it too far. Season one was a good depiction of Jay Asher’s book but it could have easily been left there. They ended up trying to cover important topics but in the wrong ways.
The Golden Compass
Unlike the tv series, the Golden Compass is not a good adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel. It focused too much on Lyra’s part in the story and didn’t flesh out any of the other characters or the universe well enough for the audience to fully understand the consequences.
Artemis Fowl
There aren’t enough words to cover how bad if an adaptation this movie is. It’s a film that rushes through the world-building but still manages to be quite long and doesn’t cover and half the stuff that made the book good in the first place. Disney turned criminal genius Artemis Fowl into a naive boy with morals. None of the characters were even remotely likable.
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Despite doing a sequel that somehow managed to be even worse, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief combined elements from the first few books. It skipped a lot of important details that fleshed out the world and the lore. It also revealed to the audience details far too early instead of letting them try and work it out.
The Inbetween
YOU
The book by Caroline Kepnes is well-loved and both seasons of the Netflix adaptation are thoroughly enjoyable, however the audience reaction to the show and the way they have over romanticised the character of Joe is alittle uncomfortable. The show fell short of really showing that Joe is meant to be a villain and not this misunderstood nice guy.
Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby
Luhrmann’s adaptation of Gatsby is by far the best but it still doesn’t encapsulate Fitzgerald pure talent of storytelling. However, it does manage to portray the glitz and glamour of the era.
Ready Player One
On its own, Ready Player One is an enjoyable sci-fi film, however it’s not the best book adaptation. As one of our favourite books here at A World In Pages, we were a little disappointed with how much the film missed that was in the book. The Oasis is not as fleshed out as in the book but still looks really cool.
