One of the last classes I did in my degree was a Literary Studies unit revolving around Popular Fiction. Like all my classes, I thoroughly enjoyed it and for two years, it was the highest scoring unit in my degree. A lot of the unit covered various aspects of modern Popular Fiction, and the final essay was the culmination of what I learned over the course of the twelve week unit.
The prime focus of the essay was to show that it is not fair to compare two different mediums for the same body of work by comparing a select few adaptations and showing why, critically, adaptations should not be compared to their source material.
The following essay is an investigation suggesting that it is not fair to compare two different versions of a given work in the mediums of novel and film. First, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes will provide evidence that the original text far exceeds the film version in regards to plot structure, narrative technique and the way characters find themselves presented. To contrast with the evidence and ideas presented by the Sherlock Holmes argument, the galaxy of Star Wars will serve the purpose of showing the source material is better because of originality. Some novels and film adaptations go hand in hand as plainly bad. Fifty Shades of Grey is one such example. The purpose of using those three stories is to show that, no matter how good (or bad) it might be the important part is storytelling. It is a very broad idea to tackle storytelling, since film and written text both possess their own unique qualities that complement the media in which a text, written or shown, is available to a public audience.
Robert Downey Jr is known to audiences as Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes in the modern film adaptations of the same name. As Benjamin Poore says of the casting of Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes, the two are similar. Poore says that Holmes favours the “seven-percent-solution,” which Downey Jr, being a ‘resurrection man with his own relationship’ (to the aforementioned solution) (Poore, 2012). Of course, purists would argue that the film versions with Downey Jr stray from the source material. Kamilla Elliott may place these adaptations under the “Ventriloquist Concept of Adaptation,” wherein it ‘blatantly empties the novel’s signs and fills them with filmic spirits’ (Elliott, 2004). The way I perceive this is that the film auteur chooses what enters their screenplay, thus making the source material play second fiddle. Sherlock Holmes (2009) forsakes most the source material to tell a visual story. Action sequences replace important drama scenes that reveal character and help build tension. Now, one needs to understand that the 2009 film version is meant to forsake these scenes to appeal to a broader audience. An example of this comes from Sherlock Holmes 2009 where the audience learns more about Holmes through this fight sequence than in other scenes. Some storytellers of film do adaptation very well. Peter Jackson has made a career of this with The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and King Kong (2005). His films are not without their criticisms though, and many relate to criticism of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.
Adaptation is a divisive topic when talking about storytelling. On one side, there are those purists who believe adapting existing works is derivative and not true art. What they fail to realise is that every story already has been told, but the way they are told is what makes each story unique. Sherlock Holmes, as a character, might serve as the detective archetype, but by no means was he the first detective to use a deductive method of solving crime. In the case of Sherlock Holmes (2009) versus Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the way in which Doyle writes both Holmes and Watson gives the book version of these characters an edge, proving that, in this case, the book is better than the film. Yet, the opposite can also be true.
Star Wars, created by George Lucas, is the definitive space opera of cinema that spawned, in my opinion, a rabid and vile series of non-canon novels and books. That opinion is not without proof. Like book purists, the films of Star Wars built a literary canon in a visual story. Thus, any books that may be included in said extended universe are mere adaptations, and purists of film can say that any Star Wars novel is a derivative work that is not true art. Per Elliott, this is a form of the “Genetic Concept of Adaptation,” and to show her point, she uses Brian McFarlane’s definition of narrative. McFarlane calls narrative ‘a series of events, causally linked, involving a continuing set of characters which influence and are influenced by the course of events’ (Elliott, 2004). There is truth in those words. Star Wars tells two stories over the six-film saga. The first is Vader’s fall into darkness and subsequent path to redemption. The second story is the standard Hero’s Journey of Luke Skywalker. This story itself transcends cultures, being a part of our daily lives. I propose each day is like the Hero’s Journey, yet firmly believe this is what the Star Wars extended universe novels lack. Most of them opt to take away from the simplistic Hero’s Journey for an overly complex version that proves nothing, choosing to focus on one-upmanship. The issue with these authors is what they write is not official canon yet many fans take it as word of god. Taking nothing away from these authors, Lida Wu posits that though ‘a delocalized narrative forces viewer/reader participation’ (Wu, 2016), the distinct media should be celebrated and not concealed. It is true not everyone feels this way.
It is possible many fans can feel disconnected due to the product changing, but their own views on the matter remaining the same. World Wrestling Entertainment LTD is a recent, modern example that relates directly to this disconnect between original Star Wars trilogy fans and the prequel trilogy. The fans have expectations of nothing changing, yet writing changes so much in a few decades, the audience protest what can be amazing ideas. This protest forces a change in plans. That means the difficulty of going from film to book lies in avoiding the ventriloquist concept of adaptation. The Star Wars prequels suffered from incarnational adaptation, acting as sacrilege to the originals. The same can be said of all novels and texts written in the Star Wars universe. The difference between the novels and prequels? George Lucas wrote the prequels.
In the modern era of cinema, a trend is extremely prevalent: adaptation. Not just adaptation of older texts either. Twilight, The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent. These are post-2000 novels, and all have received mainstream cinema adaptations since 2008. One of the biggest offenders of book/film adaptations is Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, a fan fiction writer of Twilight. Looking at critical impressions of both book and film, there is universal disdain for sloppy writing and glaring plot holes. This, however, is not due to the heavy involvement of James in developing the screenplay version. Certainly, it feels impossible to label which category of adaptation concept Fifty Shades belongs to, so the best thing to do is to decree it an amalgamation of the Trump Concept, the Incarnational Concept and the Psychic Concept. The film of the book wants to prove it is the better presentation of James’ work while still being an incarnation that strictly adheres to its source material. Shilo McClean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology says filmmakers are ‘first and foremost, storytellers’ (McClean, 2007: 147). Her argument is that ‘any technical craft of filmmaking (including cinematography, sound, and music) – requires a deep understanding of the story being told’ (McClean, 2007: 147). Relating this to Fifty Shades might not make much sense, but the story goes much deeper than what the words suggest. A good story is one that invokes a feeling of understanding and emotion in a reader or viewer. A student of writing myself, I firmly believe a well-structured and researched story will trounce a novel doing the same topic without research. For all the disdain Fifty Shades gets, the adaptation of book-to-film is surprisingly faithful to the source material. The audience for both novel and book per Thomas Leitch are part of a popular genre ‘whose success depends on their audience’s knowledge of the genre’s rules and their expectation that a given text will both invoke those rules and play with them’ (Leitch, 2008). That is expected of any popular genre, no matter the medium. A text that follows the rules is worth very little in the grand scheme of things.
Knowing what constitutes storytelling in the mediums of novelisation and filmography, there are certain ideas that do not seem to resonate terribly well. The issue with screenwriting as a whole is many would-be screenwriters fail with the storytelling aspect. Many are of the belief that everything needs to be written out in full. There is some amazing advice given to not just screenwriters but writers in general by William Akers where he advices a writer to ‘choose your words with extreme care and use only the exact precise ones.’ (Akers, 2008: 185) This is where films such as Alien and Star Wars prove that the original material far exceeds what came after. The simplistic nature of the screenplay allows directors, cinematographers, sound editors and various other technicians to interpret the words in a way that makes them pop on screen. For novelists, the same principle applies, though there is a lot more freedom one can employ to describe certain events and character. It is for this reason, the differences in the way stories are written, that I feel it is not right or fair to say that the book is always better than the film. The difference of the medium and ideas behind the storytelling means that criticism cannot come from a critic of a different medium. Suffice to say, it would not be right for someone like Roger Ebert to critique a novel as that is not his area of expertise. A book serves its own qualities such as in depth character and expansive worldbuilding demonstrated in something like The Lord of the Rings. Film offers a psychological insight into what happens and why it happens, sacrificing in-depth character for routine stereotypes. From this angle, a film should be judged on the effectiveness of how it tells the story, especially if it is an adaptation. That is the important part of all writing: to tell a story. Star Wars does it. Sherlock Holmes does it. Fifty Shades of Grey does it. Purists fail to realise that it is not about which is better.
Storytelling is a complex topic, and there are those who claim that the book will always be better than the film of the book. Yet, there is no such thing as being ‘better.’ Sherlock Holmes is largely a better book than film in contrast to Star Wars. One was book first; the other was film first. The idea often ignored by critics of adaptation is originality. Storytelling is taking an existing idea and weaving a new perspective on that idea. Film does this visually; novels do it narratively. Critics of adaptation refuse to believe the film is better than the book, but the critiquing of each medium is different. To conclude, it does not matter which medium an adaptation occurs in. What matters is that people care about the storytelling.
References (because I do my research like a good person)
Akers, W. M. (2008) Your Screenplay Sucks: 100 ways to make it great. Michael Wiese Productions: USA.
Elliot, K. (2004). Literary Film Adaptation and the Form/Content Dilemma. Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. University of Nebraska: USA, pp 220-243.
Leitch, T. (2008) Adaptation Studies at a Crossroads. Adaptation, 1(1), pp 63-77.
McClean, S. T. (2007) Digital Storytelling: The Narrative Power of Visual Effects in Film. MIT Press: USA, pp 133-148
McFarlane, B. (1996) Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nebesio, B. Y. (1994). Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Storytelling in the novel and the film. Literature Film Quarterly, 22(1), 42.
Poore, B. (2012). Sherlock Holmes and the Leap of Faith: The Forces of Fandom and Convergence in the Adaptations of the Holmes and Watson Stories. Adaptation, 6(2), pp 158-171.
Silver, J. (Producer). & Ritchie, G. (Director). Sherlock Holmes [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Brothers Pictures.
Wu, L. W. (2016) Transmedia Adaptation in Scott Pilgrim. Adaptation, 11 pages
As always, my book is available at https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0795TB37R
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