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Moonday the Adaptation Thief
Jul. 5th, 2010 07:04 pmI forget where I read it, but some fantastic author had made the days of the week into a different form, with Moonday, Sunday, Starday, amongst others. That explains most of the title. Going to Disneyland on Friday and needing the weekend to recover explains my lack of presence here. I still need at least another day to get a post together for Disneyland. I've put some photos on my twitter today but different ones will be here and facebook eventually.
I wanted to talk about Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief after seeing it last night on Blu-Ray. It's not bad but the changes they made are drastic enough that it feels like they weren't expecting to make a franchise out of the film to parallel the book series. It reminds me a lot of the Eragon movie, the material is changed to make an entertaining film but the changes make it impossible to continue and disenchant book fans from the films which to me makes it obvious to respect the source material. But here we are. I was expecting since Chris Columbus was the director that the film would be very loyal to the book but I wonder if the negative criticism he got for being too exact with the Harry Potter films that he lashed in this direction of tweaking things here and there. I compare it to if the Harry Potter films started with Cuaron's Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, the changes are jarring and major pieces of the lore is left out but the movie is thematic and entertaining - just a terrible adaptation of the book. And it shows that part is important because Prisoner of Azkaban is the least successful Potter movie in the box office. Had it been the first, there might not have been a complete series of films made especially in the current state of the industry.
I think this is a genuine fear that faithful adaptations are going to be rare and even adaptations in general, The Golden Compass was a great production was successful in theatres and the studios shut down productions on future films on the other books. The Chronicles of Narnia adaptations barely are getting the third film made, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader after another studio picked it up and I have big doubt there will be a fourth film.
( Talking Percy Jackson, not technically spoiler-filled but cut for length )
I wanted to talk about Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief after seeing it last night on Blu-Ray. It's not bad but the changes they made are drastic enough that it feels like they weren't expecting to make a franchise out of the film to parallel the book series. It reminds me a lot of the Eragon movie, the material is changed to make an entertaining film but the changes make it impossible to continue and disenchant book fans from the films which to me makes it obvious to respect the source material. But here we are. I was expecting since Chris Columbus was the director that the film would be very loyal to the book but I wonder if the negative criticism he got for being too exact with the Harry Potter films that he lashed in this direction of tweaking things here and there. I compare it to if the Harry Potter films started with Cuaron's Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, the changes are jarring and major pieces of the lore is left out but the movie is thematic and entertaining - just a terrible adaptation of the book. And it shows that part is important because Prisoner of Azkaban is the least successful Potter movie in the box office. Had it been the first, there might not have been a complete series of films made especially in the current state of the industry.
I think this is a genuine fear that faithful adaptations are going to be rare and even adaptations in general, The Golden Compass was a great production was successful in theatres and the studios shut down productions on future films on the other books. The Chronicles of Narnia adaptations barely are getting the third film made, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader after another studio picked it up and I have big doubt there will be a fourth film.
( Talking Percy Jackson, not technically spoiler-filled but cut for length )
