Clockwise from top left: Battle Royale (Vudu); Silence Of The Lambs (YouTube); Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (New Line Cinema); Election (YouTube)
When a well-known piece of pop culture finally hits the screen, a lot of the time there’s a familiar response: “Hey, this movie messed up [X or Y] compared to the book.” Sometimes it’s hard for fans of the original to accept an adaptation on its own terms; sometimes the Hollywood version just sort of stinks. But there are cases where a new take can go in a different direction, fixing storytelling problems or making the most of its medium to the point where it becomes something great in its own right. Associate Editor Elijah Gonzalez asks: What’s an adaptation you like better than its source material?
As always, we invite you to contribute your own responses in the comments—and send in some prompts of your own! If you have a pop culture question you’d like us and fellow readers to answer, please email it to [email protected].
Jaws
It might be an obvious choice, but it’s always fun (and shocking!) to remember how much of an upgrade 1975’s Jaws was to the Peter Benchley novel. The credit goes to visionary director Steven Spielberg, who realized early in the process that some of the book’s meandering subplots—like the ill-fated romantic decisions of Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper—could derail the adaptation, and decided to focus his film on the true, terrifying Amity Island showstoppers: The freaking sharks! Not to mention, and as a product of its time, the novel was also marred by racist stereotypes and misogyny. However, with Benchley’s initial work and thanks to script co-writer Carl Gottlieb, the film turns into a tightly focused adventure while still exploring the community and the trio of men who set off to kill a dangerous sea creature. At the time, it was loyal to the book’s memorable parts while being a new visual treat for audiences (despite the technical limitations). It’s also why, unlike the book (sorry, not sorry), Jaws remains timeless, exhilarating, and just a whole lot of fun. [Saloni Gajjar]
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy being so good was an industry-shifting phenomenon that not only led to tons of bad decisions from Hollywood but bad decisions from Peter Jackson (those Hobbit movies are a perfect, explicit example of the LOTR films’ improbable greatness). And yes, I’m going so far as to say that the trilogy is even better than J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, because it pares down and focuses his sprawling fantasy world without losing the passion behind the author’s obsessive love of language, song, and history. The films include way more from Arwen and Eowyn, who are far more fleshed-out than in Tolkien’s work, as well as refine the Fellowship’s characters into more palatable versions of their literary selves. It’s a total masterclass in adaptation through script, casting, and performance, and the work of Jackson and Wētā Workshop solidify it all in images that still stand as the fantasy standard. And hey, Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo even found a home on TV, where his status as the world’s chillest god didn’t sideline more pressing matters. [Jacob Oller]
Battle Royale
As the movie that kicked off an entire sub-genre, the cult classic Battle Royale had an impact way beyond the first few little freaks who managed to smuggle copies past censors and reluctant distributors. It isn’t hard to see why. While Koushun Takami’s novel of the same name is a page turner in its own right, there’s something irreplaceable about seeing these acts of brutality in technicolor red, as a fascist Japanese government forces 15-year-olds to murder each other until there’s only one left standing. Part shlock masterpiece full of gory explosions and murderous femme fatales, part full-throated critique of cultural conservatism and Japan’s imperial past—its director, Kinji Fukasaku, apparently drew on the rage he felt against his government after his classmates were killed during World War II—the movie understands that picking the right target matters as much as nailing the execution. There are a few casualties in condensing the book to a 120-minute thriller, like how Shuya’s relationship with his best friend ended up on the cutting room floor, but there are just as many smart choices that escalate towards its final standoff with a Uzi-wielding sociopath. Everything from rating boards to popular video games (where bananas can do the Carlton) have done their best to sanitize this ultraviolent piece of political commentary, but that hasn’t changed how each blood-gurgling death hits you right in the stomach. [Elijah Gonzalez]
Election
Interestingly, the adaptation of Election was optioned, written, greenlit, and shot before the book itself was even published. The original by Tom Perrotta, who was on quite a run at the start of his career with this, The Wishbones, the great Joe College, and Little Children (his masterpiece to date), is a very enjoyable, funny read about a beloved teacher who tries to destroy an ambitious student’s chances at high-school president. That setup fuels the screenplay by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, who move the action from suburban New Jersey to Omaha, as does the book’s first-person narration from key players post-scandal. But this film feels decidedly meaner and more incisive, delighting in spotlighting the pathetic and embarrassing, be it the words (captured in close-up) that immediately follow “Oh, there’s one more thing about Tracy I think you should know” or the shot of Matthew Broderick’s teacher washing his groin in a motel before a rendezvous with his wife’s best friend. And then there’s the film’s different, far pettier (and funnier) ending, which finds the disgraced educator spotting Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy in D.C. and thinking, “Who the fuck does she think she is?” before throwing a milkshake at her limo and scurrying away from security. [Tim Lowery]
Silence Of The Lambs
Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels are as advertised: Chilling, suspenseful, and shockingly detailed. However, the best adaptations of his work, and there are quite a few, tend to be a bit more vague. Harris has an answer for each bit of psychology that can be exhaustive and exhausting. This provides a firm foundation for adaptation, hence why his work attracts such brilliant creators and Brett Ratner. But none capture the horror and depravity of his novels better than Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Oscar winner. The book goes deep into the politics of the FBI and Clarice’s relationships with Jack Crawford and her father. Demme allows his actors to subtly express that richness without drowning the thrills in exposition. Instead, Demme’s hard close-ups and rug-pull editing can build suspense and deepen character with a look, an angle, or a gracenote. To say nothing of the chemistry between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, who make their bizarrely respectful quid pro is simply lightning in a bottle. Lecter especially benefits on film, where his murders can be displayed as art works, a change from the novel that inspired Bryan Fuller’s brilliant Hannibal series. Demme’s economic storytelling provides all the richness of a nice Chianti. [Matt Schimkowitz]
The Princess Bride
I’m actually a pretty big fan of William Goldman’s 1973 novel The Princess Bride, which is as clever as it is romantic and exciting, with lots of meta-commentary about the familial bonds of storytelling nestled within some deceptively stock fairytale trappings. It’s just that I consider Rob Reiner’s 1987 adaptation to be something close to the perfect film treatment for a beloved tale. Having been told more than once that his book was unadaptable, Goldman ultimately brought his own careful eye to the film’s screenplay, excising bits of fluff, and even managing the Herculean task of translating its more daunting structural elements into a framing device featuring a perfectly cast Peter Falk. From start to twinkle-eyed finish, though, Reiner’s film is a prime exemplar for why fans of a novel might pine for a great adaptation: Dialogue that demands to be spoken placed in mouths that were born to speak it; action sequences that sang on the page erupting into full chorus on the screen; and all of it in the shockingly confident hands of a filmmaker who was in on all the author’s jokes, without ever treating the resulting story as anything less than beautifully serious. [William Hughes]
Legally Blonde: The Musical
There’s a lot of very fair skepticism whenever a beloved movie is adapted for the stage, and it’s hard to predict which ones will really pan out. But Legally Blonde succeeded where Mean Girls, Back To The Future, Tarzan, and likely dozens of others have failed. Instead of merely trying to produce a beat-for-beat recreation of the 2001 movie, the show actually expands on its source material, deepening character motivations and using music as a storytelling tool rather than a gimmick. What was a montage in the film is now a nearly-10-minute musical scene showing Elle get the idea to go to Harvard, the hard work and sacrifices she makes to get it, and ultimately her acceptance to law school. Lots of movie-to-musical adaptations can feel padded out to reach two-and-a-half hours, but much of Legally Blonde: The Musical‘s runtime is devoted to fleshing out the relationship between Elle and Emmitt, which always felt rushed and tacked-on in the film. Paulette, who’s played by Jennifer Coolidge in the film, also gets more time to share her point of view. The musical keeps the energy and fun of the movie, but makes it so much easier to root for its characters. [Drew Gillis]
Tron: Legacy pinball
Disney’s been trying with these Tron movies for over 40 years, and they never pan out. That’s because the Tron movies have all been pretty bad—style-over-substance inanities that want to capitalize on the rise of technology without saying anything interesting about it. It’s not that surprising that the games based on Tron movies are almost always better than the movies themselves; that was true of the original 1982 arcade game, which stripped away all the fat of the movie—those pesky, boring humans—and streamlined a few pivotal scenes into tough but compulsive minigames. It’s even more true of 2011’s Tron: Legacy pinball machine, released by Stern the year after that failed revival. It captures everything genuinely cool about Tron: Legacy—its slick visual style, Daft Punk’s propulsive score, Jeff Bridges’ old-guy charm, Michael Sheen’s manic reading of the line “libations for everybody!”—and sticks it in a flashy, well-designed pinball game that, at its best, confers an unusually potent synesthetic high. Disney needs to knock it off with these Tron movies and just focus on pinball machines instead. [Garrett Martin]
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