Recently me and my husband saw The Hobbit. I heard mixed reviews about it with some of the most angered being about the inability to discern between so many dwarves with like sounding names. While I agree to some extent (Kili was the "hot" dwarf >:), another part of the argument was, "does this really need to be three movies?"
My question is this: at what point does a movie based upon a book become a director's vision and less one of the author's, and do we have any right to compare the two mediums?
Really, "based on" can mean anything. I once watched The Strangers, and that was "inspired by true events." I read up on it, and it had less to do with the actual plot than one might think. Also, "based on" and "inspired by" are two completely different terms. But I digress.
I know how easy it is to sit in a theatre and compare the movie that's unfolding in front of you with the book that you adore, which is why I have vowed to not read the book before seeing the movie version if I can help it. I loved Memoirs of a Geisha, but detested the movie. Upon watching the film a few years later, I decided that it's really not that bad, but I hadn't just finished reading the book for handy comparison.
I enjoyed The Hobbit, the movie, probably because I have not read the book. I have since read The Lord of the Rings, but at the time of the saga I hadn't. Thus, I enjoyed all three films.
This is why I'm debating whether I should see Life of Pi - I don't want to ruin it for myself.
The one exception to this rule, I've found, was Silent Hill. Yes, I know it didn't start off as a book, but the film version didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was, which was scary and disturbing. Did it have a disappointing and hard to understand ending? Yay! That's exactly what the game was like! By the way, Silent Hill was also "based on actual events," and is actually pretty interesting if you look up Centralia, Pennsylvania, and their mine fires.
Getting back to the point, is it just that a director (for example) is automatically hindered when they try to take someone else's artistic vision, something that already has a fan base, and turn it out in a visual manner, or should we be learning to separate the two?
Anyway, that's as deep as I can get at lunch hour. Later!
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