Cha-cha-cha-changes [NOT 4/6/24]

4/6/24 brightersideoflife 8
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Hi, friends!

Do you like when book plots are changed for movies or TV shows? Does it vary based on what was done?

Normally I don’t care much if source material is changed. With Bridgerton season 3 though, ugh I’m so annoyed they changed the book plot!

Spoiler alert for the first half of season 3. In the book, he figures out her secret identity before asking her to marry him. So there’s act 3 drama in the book, but it’s not “oh if he finds out her secret, omg he’s not going to want to be with her!” In the Netflix series, he doesn’t know yet! Ugh!!!

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8 Comments

  1. My feeling is that adaptations either need to be extremely faithful or else make it clear from the beginning that they’re making radical changes.

    The last thing a director should do is be faithful much of the way through and then switch things up. Most books are too long and complicated to adapt faithfully anyway, so just lean into the changes.

  2. If I like a movie before reading the book I generally prefer the movie and vice versa. Same with live vs. studio versions of songs.

    I just…don’t like change?

  3. There have been a couple of movies that changed what was in the book and made it better.

    I get why film makers do that for sake of time or plotting a 2 hour movie but I hate when they change historical stuff to make it more “dramatic” like Braveheart and We Were Soldiers (made by the same director and star.)

  4. I’ve mentioned it before but I don’t like slavish recreations of source material. I can go to the source material. I’m looking for a different take on it. That’s particularly true for me if the source material is comic books. I don’t need a beat-by-beat recreation of Watchmen. I actually prefer adaptations.

    That said, some things are so iconic that you really can’t take liberties (Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Dune). In this situations I am willing to watch a slavish recreation.

  5. I almost always prefer the book version, because I almost always read the book before seeing the movie. I get cutting for time, but sometimes movies make inexplicable changes that don’t even add to the plot. Take Stephen King’s “The Stand” which was a 6+ hour made for tv extravaganza. There was no need to switch characters around or add stuff that wasn’t in the book. And I like the movie. I just don’t understand the choices they made.

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