Book to Movie Adaptations

May 30, 2013

With all the YA novels coming out to movies I thought it would be a good idea to give my opinion on the topic.

The four big YA adaptations I am currently following from books to movies are The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, The Maze Runner by James Dashner, Divergent by Veronica, and The Fault in our Starts by John Green. I have been keeping track of who is playing each character and which characters and scenes are being left out of the film. I try to live by the following rule: don't judge a movie on its actors and directors.

It is hard sometimes to not judge a movie by the fact that the script writer is the same one who wrote the script for Twilight or an actor who looks nothing like what I pictures the character looking like. There are a lot of things that can be changed for a movie like makeup. I don't want to say a movie will be bad without even seeing the movie.

For the Mortal Instruments, which comes out August 23, 2013 I have been following that since it was only a rumour and I based on all I have seen now I think it will be a great movie. On the other hand for Divergent, comes out next spring some actors look nothing like I pictured the character and others are perfect. One of the characters I was hoping to see on the big screen is not going to come in until movie number two. There must be a good reason why the character is not in movie one and there is really no way to tell if the movie will be good or not until I see it in theatres.

Another thing is scenes. There are so many scenes that I am hoping to see on the big screen but I know that there is no way that every scene will end up in the films. I will still be disappointed if my favorite scene doesn't end up in the film. However if the scene is in the film it might not be how I picture it in my head.

Something else to know is that the movies are not replacing the books. The books will still be way better than the movie. Just don't read the book right before seeing the movie (I will do a separate post on that later).