In the past i quite often had discussions about whether a film adaption of a book is as good as the book itself, or even better, that a film could never come near the book.
In my opinion comparing a book with a movie is just as absurd as comparing a book with a theater play, a tv series with a movie or even comparing a novel with a poem – it just does not work. All of those are completely different media, each with it´s own rules and restrictions, each with a completely different basis.

Books
When reading a book you develop your own imagination of how the characters would look like, how they move, react and in which world they live in, you imagine the general look of the story. Another important aspect of books is the way it is written, the specific grammar of the book, so a book transports the story with words that inspire you to create your own perspective of things.

Films
A movie works completely different, a movie shows, a movie tells a story with its own language, in fact there are several different levels how a movie tells a story:

• » Filmlook
• » Acting
• » Staging
• » Camera Work
• » Editing
• » Sound & Music

All these are different layers that work together and affect the movie on the whole, all these different layers take effect on the audience, so as a movie maker you have loads of possibilities how to tell a story.

Comparing books and movies
So if you watch a movie and you also read the book you could judge each media by itself, “it is a good / bad book” and “it is a good / bad movie”, but it´s nonsense to say “the book is better than the movie”, the movie is just a small part of the story adapted for a movie.

If you watch a movie with the intention that it perfectly imitates your own imagination you had from the book, the movie won´t work for you. Of course it depends on how detailed the descriptions in the book have been, but in most cases don´t expect the movie to bring your phantasy on the screen, in almost every case you´ll be disappointed.

Instead try to give both media a chance, if you liked the book don´t expect the movie to contain every detail of the book, try to put aside everything from the book and let the movie work. Even if just a quintessence from the story from the book has made it into the movie, and the movie works for you, it´s a good movie.

Adapting a book to a movie

The job of the movie as far as i am concerned, the novelist, is to take the minimum intention of the novel and illustrate it with the maxiumum of freedom, in movie language, in movie grammar.

This is a cite from John le Carré, author of the novel “The Constant Gardener”. I think that cite says everything, a book is just too different from a movie, so just taking the very basic idea from the story and not try to imitate the book – that´s how a book adaption can work.

There is hardly a line left, there is hardly a scene intact in this movie, that comes from my novel. Yet i don´t know of a better translation from novel to film, than this one.

John le Carré about “The Constant Gardener”

As in a previous post mentioned i´m really into complex characters. While in movies you follow a character about two hours, in a series you spend hours and hours with the same characters, see how they struggle and try to bring the(ir) world back to order.

I really learned to love series, espacially those where every episode is just one little part of the whole storyline, so if you miss one episode you´re screwed

Here are some of my favourite series (without any particular order):

24 (website)

Probably everyone has heard of it, Kiefer Sutherland aka Jack Bauer saving Los Angeles for the fifth time now, and season six is in production. He works for the CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) as a field agent (at least in season one), and his methods are often not the right ones.
What i especially like is (you know, besides the characters) the look and the idea to show things in real time, so every episode (which is about 50 minutes) show 50 minutes of the life from the protagonists.

Lost (website)

A plane crashes on a mysterious island, a handicapped person is able to walk again and almost each of the passangers has got a dark history – thats Lost.
The variety of different characters, the beautiful setting and the cinema-like look are the impressive aspects of this series.

Battlestar Galactica (website)

A revival of the very old cult-series. The cylons (androids, some with human appearance) destroy caprica, the planet where the humans live. Just a fleet of about 50.000 people are able to escape, led by Commander (Admiral) Adama and the new President.
This series has got some really huge twists, espaciall at the end of the second season. Another thing to mention is that the writers are really really cruel to their characters, not only in a physical way, especially on the emotional side.

Dexter (website)

(The official homepage is only accessible from within the United States.. i mean, hello?)
Wow, the main character, Dexter, is really a weird one – he is unable to have have emotions (at least he pretends, sometimes you might think that he´s on his way to change) and already killed dogs as a child. His stepfather teached him how to “fit in” the society, pretend to be normal, and it works most of the time. But there´s this other obsession Dexter has, he just loves to kill people, so the only solution not to be a “bad person” is to kill only people that deserve it – criminals that got away without punishment.

Prison Break (website)

Michael Scofield´s brother is sentenced to death but is innocent, so he gets himself into prison to help his brother to break out. I haven´t seen that much episodes of Prison Break, but it´s another great series.

So what is it that makes me like those series so much? They all play in quite different genres, whereas i like each of them, but that´s not really the thing – to say it just once more: it´s all about the characters. What those series have in common is that the main characters are very complex, each one far away from beeing a perfect person, each one affected by his history, and each one with his own weaknesses and problems. It is just understandable that each of them makes mistakes, but all in all they try to bring back order to their lifes and their environment.

I don´t want to forget to mention that these series have an excellent storyline, sometimes they overstrech it a little bit, but in general they are beautifully constructed.

Yesterday at university we had a little discussion about Aristoteles and how he divides the plot from the characters, and that in a play there are certain rules a character has to follow, or that the plot itself is more important than the characters in it.
This is of course just a simple abstraction of his thoughts, and don´t get me wrong, i´m far far away of calling me an Aristoteles expert, i don´t even scratch the surface, but in my opinion it is the exact opposite: it´s all about the characters.

I think the most important part of a story (be it in a movie, a theater play or a novel) are the characters. A deeply complex character, with all his problems and weaknesses, that has to face difficult situations, has to make choices that could drive his life in a different direction (not between good and evil, that wouldn´t be a choice), that´s what stories are about.

While Aristoteles describes the very basics of dramaturgy that are absolutely true even in modern dramaturgy, in my opinion some of his thoughts are a little bit too “easy” for me, it´s not really possible to divide a character from the plot, the plot just exists because of the character, it evolves out of the choices a character makes.

I want to give you a little example why characters are more important for me than the plot itself: i´d rather watch a movie with excellent characters in a crappy plot than boring characters in a brilliant story, simple because plain and boring characters would ruin every story, but a boring story isn´t able to ruin a character. So even in a boring plot a well designed character is quite exciting to watch, and if the character is really good, his actions and choices are more complex and exciting, so the story itself gets more interesting. What i´m trying to say is that the plot strongly depends on the characters, if they are good the basis for a good story is created, so in my opinion in the beginning of every well designed story there are the well designed and complex characters.