I have a confession to make. Up until about a week ago, I never liked Jane Austen.
The gasps of horror are echoing in my ears. I know! And it's not like I didn't try. I read Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility (twice), Pride and Prejudice. They just left me cold, you know? Northanger Abbey was clever and all, and I identified a bit with Eleanor in S&S, but I just couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about. I mean, people worship this woman! There's a whole Austen culture! It is a truth universally acknowledge that her books are pure undiluted awesomesauce and anyone who disagrees is a godless heathen!
Somehow I trundled along for years, bereft of the understanding of the Austen, a little puzzled, but complacent.
And then I happened to stumble across a link to Jane Austen's letters. I'm terminally nosy - not so much with people alive right now, but absolutely with people long since dead - so I thought, well, what the heck? Might as well check them out.
It took me about five minutes to read, "I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal," and I was lost.
Something just clicked in my head, and I just got it. This woman was hilarious and sassy and smart and I wanted to have her over for tea to cackle about Mr. Next Door's antics. She had things to say, dammit, and now I wanted to hear all of them.
It was away to Gutenberg, and I plowed through all those novels I'd neglected. And this time I got it - Jane Austen's novels are so timeless not because they necessarily draw staggering conclusions or even are fantastic romances, but because of their unerringly poignant observations on human nature. All these people in her novels are people we know, doing things that we've seen. She takes a scene, dials it up to 11, and then draws arrows pointing to everyone's inconsistencies.
“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
Well said, Ms. Austen. I'm glad that I'm finally able to appreciate you as you deserve at last.
What about you guys? Have you ever grown into a book?
I think that we can all agree that when you adapt something, you don't want the adaptation to be identical. That would be purposeless. You want to make slight changes in order to further explore the source material (the different interpretation of the central relationship in The Eagle book and movie) or open understanding of the material to a wider audience (Lord of the Rings).
It's really difficult to succeed at this in a way that will both delight fans of the source material and draw in new fans of your adaptation. Luckily, there's thousands of ways to fail!
Most books or movies have a few key themes or ideas. For instance, The Chronicles of Narnia = Jesus is Awesome and His Dark Materials = Atheism is Awesome.
Hello, boring children. I think I'd rather just sit through
a sermon than have to follow you lot.
Both of these movies fail in similar ways. Love it or hate it, both of these books are all about their respective messages, and both of their movie adaptations were afraid of treading too heavily. So they softened the messages, focused on the characters, and thereby weakened the story. In a story that's all about a theme or idea, the characters tend to be more symbols than actual personalities. If you try to tread lightly on the message, then you darn well better beef up the characters.
If Narnia had tried to give its characters personalities past "young and nice", "older and nice", "boy and nice", "sulking wonder", it might have worked. But they chose to stick with the book "personalities", when those characters are basically symbols. Susan is simply not as nuanced or interesting as a crownless king who spends 80 years playing in the mud rather than trying to get his throne back.
Then there's movies that try to explore different aspects of the source material, like Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Yeah... this poster is pretty accurate.
While the book and the 1971 movie are Charlie's story, the 2005 movie focuses on Willy Wonka himself. Rather than being an entertainingly vicious morality tale about the boy equivalent of Cinderella, the 2005 movie focuses on... Willy Wonka's daddy issues.
(P.S. Tim Burton, you should get those looked at.)
It's too bad, because it's clear that a lot of time and money and love went into the 2005 movie - the sets are gorgeous, the actors are carefully directed, and there's a lot of neat twists like having each musical number come from a different decade. But unfortunately, the film fails, because the movie simply does not work as Willy Wonka's story.
Part of the problem is that Johnny Depp's stammering, serial-killer-grin performance just isn't all that likable. But a bigger issue is that the mechanism for the story is Charlie going through all these tests to see if he's worthy. So now we've divided our focus for the movie - we've got a saintly kid going through tests to determine his worthiness, and a cheshire smile weirdo freaking out over his daddy issues. The tension in the movie is divided in half: will Charlie prevail, and will Wonka spank his inner muppet? This wouldn't necessarily be a huge problem if we liked or cared about both characters; unfortunately, we care about neither.
The original movie/book worked so well because we had interestingly awful characters failing the tests around Charlie while Wonka was fascinatingly menacing in the background. The 2005 movie zooms the lens in on Wonka, but strips him of his interest by making him quirky instead of menacing, and delving into a past in a way we never wanted to. Less is more, filmmakers, when are ya gonna learn that? After you've remade every horror movie ever, I'm guessing.
And then there's movies that try hard, but completely miss the boat in every direction. So how about that John Carter? Aka, the biggest box office disaster since Cutthroat Island (another movie you've likely never heard of, that looks like a Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off but was made almost a decade earlier).
John Carter is interesting, because it doesn't fail so much as an adaptation as it just fails as a movie.
How interesting. A dude on a thing.
There's definitely a marketing element to the "where did we go wrong" - - John Carter? Who? Release a show named Sherlock and we get it, but John Carter doesn't have the same cultural resonance that it had 60 years ago, and Disney, you should have known that. I know that non-horror science fiction movies are generally about as successful as The Host, but at least John Carter of Mars TELLS us something. Hell, you couldn't go with A Confederate on Mars? Something, anything!
But I think the real problem is that A Princess of Mars (the book this movie was adapted from) simply was never a very compelling story to begin with. It got popular because it was in the right place at the right time. It was one of the first planetary romances (that term, uh, doesn't mean exactly what it sounds like) and had the proper "swashbuckling":"cool space shit" ratio to keep audiences happy. It didn't get famous for being good, it got famous for being first-ish. So as a movie, well, it's another "white guy stumbles into a war and wins it for the natives" story. And, uh, we have a lot of those.
And then there's movies that fail completely to have any understanding at all of their source material. Let's look at Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, an adaptation of a YA novel. Here's a quote from the source material:
“Looking out of the window at the infinite sky, I prayed out, 'Dear Baby Jesus, I am sorry for my sin, even though I do not know what they are, which seems a bit unfair if it is going to be held against me. But that is your way. And I am not questioning your wisdomosity. In future, however, would it be possible for my life to be not so entirely crap? Thank you.”
Now here's a scene from the movie:
Oh. Oh, wow. Oh... ow, actually.That was physically painful.
The book barely has a plot; it's the diary entries of a boy-crazy and completely self-centered teen girl. It follows her for a year... and that's pretty much it. The book's strength is in its absolutely hysterical prose. The main character's observations on life are hilarious and memorable.
The main characters do fairly closely
resemble their literary counterparts.
That's about the highest praise
I'm able to give this movie.
The movie is... I don't even know what this is. It's like a Disney made-for-TV movie where even Disney said, "We have too much shame to air this." The movie is true to the plot of the book (such as it is), but instead of expanding on or even using the hilarious source material, attempts to amuse us through humiliation. The girls in the books embarrass themselves occasionally, yes, but the humor comes from what they learn (or choose not to learn) from their experiences.
Love can't always win the day, and it certainly doesn't always make a good movie. (Try again, Tim Burton, there's always Alice in Wonder... oh.) Complete disinterest towards your source material probably won't, either. The thing is, it's always easier to fail than it is to succeed.
I think the key may be in understanding what makes the source material work. We love endless incarnations of Sherlock Holmes because that relationship between a cold, brilliant man and his loyal companion is so very compelling. You can interpret this any number of ways and we'll be interested. Sherlock Holmes is a fairly easy hook to get right, and so you see a lot of at least decent interpretations of it. But then there's movies like The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen that overload on empty plot and CGI rather than delving into our characters, which were the whole hook to begin with!
Adaptations are like any art: you have to understand the rules in order to break them. Understand how a story works, and you'll be able to rearrange it into something captivating. Fail to understand that, and you get...
If a story is good, why re-tell it? We've already read the story of Jane Eyre: why make not just one, but literally dozens of movies re-telling the same story?
For that matter, why take a concept and move it around in space or time so that you can re-tell it that way, a la the zillion and one Pride and Prejudice re-tellings? Why not just tell your own story, if you're going to change things anyway? Why tread old ground, when people could just read the original?
This is a gross generalization (as all generalizations are), but I think we can generally group adaptations into one of three groups:
1) Did it for the love - Wanted to explore different aspects of the story, or wanted to help it reach a broader audience.
2) Did it for the money - MAKE IT RAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN
3) I love money, and I... money love? This thing I love is fantastic, but I'm willing to futz with it a bit to get butts in seats. I'll get this thing out there, and they can go read the source material later.
Is there anything wrong with wanting to make money off an endeavor? Of course not! Some really fantastic books and movies and art have come out of somebody who really wants to make a buck and happens to have a story to tell.
But when it comes to adaptation, the intent of the creator is going to necessarily transform the approach that creator takes. Lord of the Rings is a perfect example - while everyone involved with the project clearly loved the material, they were willing to make changes to adapt the material to the perceived needs of the audience, rather than stay as faithful as possible and expect the audience to keep up. The story sprang from a desire to put Tolkien's work on film, but a number of issues that the creators struggled with had nothing at all to do with the source material - look at Arwen, Warrior Princess getting put in... taken out... put in again... taken out...
We almost had this instead of Fainting Couch Arwen.
The focus of your storytelling matters, which is why we're looking at them this way. But these aren't judgments. Passion is no guarantee of a good movie.
Oh Will, you and your
questionable career
choices.
During this little miniseries I'm going to refer mainly to movies as examples because any given movie I mention is going to have been seen by more of you than any one book I want to talk about. So! What should I start with - the good, the bad, or alien robots from outer space with inexplicable bodily functions? Tell me in the comments!
I'm kicking off a mini-series about adaptations: why they work, how they work, and some more why, because that's how I roll. Overalyzedly.
Just for funsies, these are the top three films that I would love to see made.
1. The Persian Boy
I know, I'm not hard to guess. But I absolutely adore Alexander the Great (I have an entire bookshelf devoted to him, and back in high school I wrote an ill-advised romance novel starring him. Let us never speak of this again) and although I actually own three different copies of Oliver Stone's Alexander (The Movie. Yeah, That Kind of Sucked, Here's the Actual Movie. No, Really This Time!), the thing is a travesty. Alexander may have had some interesting love life shennanigans, but the majority of his time was spent leading. Not crying.
Even Colin Farrell looks doubtful
about this.
2. Dragon
When I was a kid, YA wasn't what it is now, and I never really got into children's books. Between the ages of about idk young and 16, the majority of what I read was either scifi or fantasy. And I learned quickly that books with "dragon" in the title A) were almost never about dragons, and B) almost uniformly sucked.
This book did not suck.
This book is a horribly subtle and clever blend of scifi and fantasy with a truly nasty but delightful protagonist. Vlad is an assassin and mafia member by trade. He enforces a district. The text doesn't shy away from how brutal he is, and yet he's so singular and charming that we can't help but like him anyway.
I don't even know how this worked on paper; I can't see it working well on film. You would need to take the witty intelligence of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and dial it up to 11.
Still, want.
3. Protector of the Small
This is an accurate cover, but not a
very attractive cover.
I love Tamora Pierce's stories of Tortall. Her best known works center around Alanna (a girl who hides her identity to become a knight and bring glory to the kingdom single-handedly) and Daine (a girl with wild magic who can speak to and transform into animals). And while those are wonderful books, their protagonists are... em... Well, they have a lot going for them. Good looks, magical powers, strong in battle, everyone loves them...
Enter Kel.
Kel is plain and stocky and distinctly unmagical. She's not charming; in fact, her taciturn stoicism tends to make people dislike her. She wants to become a knight, and now the system allows for it. And yet the system goes out of its way to make everything near impossible for her. She's stuck in the middle - there's no cause for dramatic gestures like Alanna, and yet her situation is horribly unfair. All she can do is either give up or stick it out.
I really, really love Kel, and I wish I'd gotten to read about her growing up. I would have really related to her as a kid. Not only do I love Kel, but I absolutely adore the entire conceit behind these books. They're a deconstruction of the nominal vaguely European mystical King Arthurish fantasy world. Kel wants to be a lone heroic knight, but quickly learns that there's no real place for lone heroes in the world - what do they do? Ride around in circles until a quest appears? The world needs leaders, yes, but the kind that will attempt to train border patrols out of groups of unwilling ex-cons.
And a few honorable mentions...
4. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Snarky steampunk tragedy. Awesome.
5. The Odyssey. I'd really love to see a version of this that embraced the dangerous, fae feel of the journey he takes, and embraces Odysseus's cunning and intelligence. I could see Johnny Depp playing an excellent Odysseus.
6. The Hobbit.
Tell me what book you'd love to see get made into a movie!
When I was very, very young, my father handed me a copy of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. I looked at the relatively thick book in my hands, and then back at him.
"You cut up the cover," I said in mild horror. (It would take me until college to become halfways comfortable with marking my books.)
He nodded. "I want you to imagine the characters on your own. I don't want you to just look at the picture, I want you to do the work," he said, and left me to my reading.
I shrugged it off and carried on as kids do, but in a lot of ways that set the tone for my future as a reader.
From that time forward, my dad would give me books and expect me to discuss my thoughts with him. He gave me classics - Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Thoreau - but also more recent books from the likes of Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, and Madeleine L'Engle, just to name a few. After the first book, he never cut the cover out again. He set a high standard and expected me to reach it. So I did.
Because of the breadth of material I was exposed to, I developed a passion for material I most likely never would have picked up on my own. My opinions didn't always align with my dad's (I ate up Heinlein, Card, and Twain, but couldn't stand Dickens, Thoreau, or L'Engle). When I was a teenager he grumbled that the only real fantasy was Tolkien and everything else was just derivative as he got out his wallet to pay for my copies of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne Rice. We occasionally found common ground over books like Black Hawk Down and The Iliad.
So when I see a desperate attempt to keep scifi/fantasy as an old boys' club, I know the truth about what literary discourse can be. There's simply no reason that men can't choose to be considerate and welcoming of female science fiction fans. A Y chromosome doesn't imbue you with the analysis gene, and it's not a get out of jail free card. The men that endlessly defend their own sexism could choose not to defend it. They could choose to focus on women's opinions, rather than their appearances.
Today we're going to look at one of my favorite movies ever, Will Smith's neglected classic, 2004's I,Robot. Because in the Sci Fi world recently there's been a lot of, um. Fail? Regarding the ladies. So we're going to take a look at a movie where a lady is the co-star. Not the love interest. The co-star.
And yes, before y'all start in on me, let me assure you that I am well aware the movie has middling-to-nothing to do with Assimov's story.
One reason I, Robot didn't do very well is probably that, although it deals with huge themes about the nature of humanity, at its core it's quite a small movie. The main cast is comprised of three people with three secondary-ish characters, and only Will Smith has any arc to speak of. Big movies with casts of thousands (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean) tend to do better for a variety of reasons that we won't get into here.
But I think there's another reason it didn't do well, which can pretty much be summed up in one picture.
Look at that neckline. What were they thinking?!
Dr. Calvin is a robotics scientist working in the lab that Will Smith (Detective Spooner... whatevs, you know you're just thinking of him as Will Smith) investigates after the death of a famous robot inventor. She's fully invested in robots as the transformative Apple products of the new era, and needs the push from Will to start seeing them as something potentially sinister. Will has an illogical hatred of robots that blinkers him, and he doesn't understand them or the company they come from. The two of them cannot solve the case of the inventor's death without both of their perspectives and knowledge working together. She's invested because Inventor was her teacher. He's invested because Inventor fixed him after a horrific accident.
In other words, this is a buddy cop movie. This is Sherlock Holmes. This is Men in Black. This is Point Break.
A great idea, right? Two great tastes that taste great together. A sci-fi buddy cop movie. But they made one fatal error.
The buddy cop is a lady.
Look at them, walking together like they're equals or something.
At no point in the movie is there even a hint of romantic tension between the two leads. Dr. Calvin doesn't want or expect to be saved, and Will Smith doesn't want to save her. On more than one occasion he leaves her to fend for herself while he runs ahead or stays behind. Sometimes he listens to her, sometimes they bicker, and both of them visibly become better people as a result of their interactions over the movie - Will drops the incessant bitching about his ex wife and general bitterness, and Dr. Calvin becomes more adaptive.
Moreover, the movie itself treats her - and us lady viewers - as an equal. Is there a shower scene with Dr. Calvin? Yeah. But there's also a shower scene with Will Smith, and my God if every single review doesn't mention that fact. Oh no! We were exposed to the female gaze for 35 seconds! The shock! The horror! Let me fetch my smelling salts!
Umm... I 'll fetch them in a minute.
We're so incredibly used to women having a "place" in movies as the "reward love interest" that I think people didn't know what to do with this movie when it came out.
Well. No. That's not true. They did know what to do with it - ignore it, mostly. Critics almost universally said "meh", or "stupid". And nobody mentioned Dr. Calvin at all, unless it was to say that her part was unbelievable. Because you know, attractive and competent female scientists? I can take your hyper-advanced robotics, but truly sir, this time you have gone too far!
During the same year critics fawned over Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that explores what our memories mean to us. Now, I'm not saying that I, Robot is as smart or well-directed as ESotSM. But on the other hand, this was a well-made action movie with heart that explored an extremely timely issue, aka what it means to give increasingly large parts of our lives over to machines. This is a movie that asks verbatim:
"I suppose you would have banned the internet to keep the libraries open?"
This movie's marketing, and its critics, flat-out refused to accept Dr. Calvin's relevancy in her own movie. Instead it billed itself inaccurately as a Blade-esque one man mission to blow up a bunch of robots. Which a) sounds stupid, and b) is not this movie.
One man does epic shit. That lady in the trailers? Uh, she's nobody. Shut up.
I can't help but wonder what the marketing for this movie - and its reception - would have looked like if it was about two men fighting against a futuristic doom.
A lot of the time, we tend to write narrators whose experiences roughly mirror our own. That's why there's so many "I thought I was ordinary but then found out I was THE CHOSEN ONE alllll along" narratives. It's intuitive to the point that sometimes we end up doing it by accident - lookin' at you, Ian Fleming, because James Bond is about as Scottish as a kangaroo.
But what happens when you want to write about someone whose experiences don't resemble yours in the slightest?
I actually think sometimes this isn't as big a deal in fantasy and sci-fi. Because, sure, your MC might be a bipedal green half-cat-half-human (or, more commonly, a nominally middle class human used to hanging out with bipedal green half-cat-half-humans). But you get to make up the whole of that world, so you can make up circumstances that feel right to you.
Then there's contemporary fiction with not even a hint of the speculative. And that, to me, is where things get really tricky.
Because I can yodel on all day about the malfunctioning magic of my half-sprite hero, but when you're talking about a person who has experiences that real people will relate to and be able to verify or dismiss as outrageous... that's scary.
I prefer to sit at the keyboard and smile as the words stream out of my fingers like those zoom lines in Tron.
But my last novel (coming soooooon...) has not been like that. It's been a lot more of sitting and agonizing over each. 500. Word. Increment. Because this heroine whose experiences and character are so different from mine, what would she think? What would she do?
There's nothing wrong with writing what you know. I'll be back to it shortly and gratefully. But, as difficult as this has been, I'm glad I did it. I think I'm a better writer for it.
P.S. The Hard and the Easy is also the name of an album by Great Big Sea! Have a song that iTunes tells me I have replayed an embarrassing amount of times.
