Film Adaptations - Do They Work?

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Film adaptations are transfers of novels, comic books, theatrical parts, video-games and books
into movie scripts in order to produce films. Since nineteenth century, when first movies were directed,
film adaptations play a great role in cinematography. Although some authors are not satisfied how their
written works were turned into movies, there is a great number of film adaptations still being directed
and produced.
Often, film adaptations are not as good as the original books. For example, when Nathaniel
Hawthorne's great book The Scarlet Letter was turned into a movie, it did not have much success. Demi
Moore as Heather Pryne and Garry Oldman as minister Arthur Dimmesdale were not the best choice of
the director Roland Joffe. The movie does not manage to describe the real gist of the novel: sin,
forgiveness and psychological torment. It is more a romantic movie than a real life drama.
On the other hand, there are movies that can be described as better than the books. Hitchcock's 1960s
movie The Psycho was based on Robert Bloch's novel of the same name from 1959. Although the novel
was not very popular, Hitchcock's adaptation of the same became popular as soon as it came to the
theaters. What made it better that the novel was Hitchcock's Norman Bates, who is a handsome boy
with personality. In contrast to Hitchcock's Bates, Bloch's character was just a degenerated boy who
liked killing. Hitchcock brought a few more ideas to the movie, so it became more interesting and it is
not wrong to say that more people watched the movie than red the book.
Apart from the books, some of the games were also used to direct movies. For example famous
movie Tomb Raider that that earned more than 48 milion dollars is adaptation of the Thomb Rider
video game series. Directed by Simon West, it was one of the movies that made Angelina Jolie (Lara
Croft) famous. Although Angelina Jolie earned critic's praise, the whole movie did not receive good
marks. Despite the fact that this movie has great special effects and a lot of action, this thriller lacks the
most important element-emotions. There is no tension in action scenes and characters look as if they
are bored while performing. Lara Croft shows no emotions, her face is always serious and it looks like
that she has no other facial expressions than the one we can almost follow throught the movie.
The same case is with the movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time that is based on the video game
of the same name. Although it was very popular and earned more than Tomb Rider in cinemas around
the world, this movie was a movie that viewers watched and forgot in a few days. Again, the special
effects were great, but the plot did not reveal the real story. Movie is full of action scenes that come one
after another and the real love story is not portrayed properly.
It is often said that film adaptations are never as good as the books. Most popular classics are
turned into movies almost every day but the book lovers who watched movie adaptations of the classics
claim that no movie can be better than the book itself.
Despite that,there were cases where people did not even read the book but enjoyed watching the movie.
Some games and theater plays became great films while on the other hand some of them became the
greatest disaster. It can not be said that the film adaptations do not work, they are particularly useful for
elementary and high-school children for whom reading becomes boring in the era of technology.

Glossary:
1. Adaptation, n.- something produced by adapting: an adaptation of a play for television.
- adjustment
- adaptacija, prilagodba

2. Script, n.- the manuscript or one of various copies of the written text of a play, motion
picture, or radio or television broadcast.
1. - scenario
-skript, scenarij
3. Cinematography, n.- the art or technique of motion-picture photography.
- kinematografija
4. Scarlet, adj.- something colored in scarlet color.
- crimson, dark red
- grimizno
5. Gist, n.-the main or essential part of a matter.
-essence, point,
-bit, sustina

Bibliography :
Books:
1. Marciniak, Malgorzata. The Appeal of Literature to Film Adaptations. N.p.: Lingua Ac
Communitas, 2007. PDF.
Movies:
2. Prince of Persia the Sands of Time. Dir. Mike Newell. Perf. Jake Gzllenhaal and Gemma
Arterton. WaltDisney, 2010. Film.
3. Tomb Rider. Dir. Simon West. Perf. Angelina Jolie. 2001. DVD.
4. Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Anthony Perkins. Released by Paramount Pictures Corp.,
1960. TV.
5. The Scarlet Letter. Dir. Roland Joffe. Perf. Demi Moore and Garry Oldman. 1995. DVD.