When it comes to the section of cinema that is inspired by literary works, you’ll find that there is incredible polarization. Some people are satisfied and pleased with a film made from a book while others are angered by the details, which they loved dearly in the book, that are excluded from the final cut. In fact, you’ll find the general consensus of any audience seeing a movie based on a book is, “It was good, but the book was much better!” Why is this?

Probably, the obvious reason is that every reader has an intimate, private relationship with the book they are reading. They visualize this fictional world they’re in so vividly, as well as the characters they’re on this journey with. They visualize it so clearly and see the characters in their own way that they’ve already made movies of their own in their own minds before even seeing the actual films made. The readers will even cast actors who they would like to see play the roles, and when an actor is chosen for the role, whom they did not visualize while reading the book, there is a negative reaction. The most recent and famous example of this is Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen in the Twilight films and the scathing fan reception he got after it was announced that he had booked the role.

Books are all internal, with many stories being told from the main protagonist’s internal thoughts. This increases the difficulty of adapting a novel into a movie, when it’s all based from somebody’s thoughts, while films are all visual and external. Filmmakers must transfer every thought on the paper into moments on screen or descriptions into actions that are to be seen, not read.

One of the only few filmmakers who has managed to become successful in this field is Frank Darabont, the famed writer/director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, two films that are both based on stories by author, Stephen King. And both films have been extremely well-received by critics and audiences alike ever since their inceptions. In fact, both are frequently ranked among the greatest films of all time with even some readers saying that these films are actually BETTER than their literary counterparts. Darabont manages to adapt these films so faithfully, even to the most difficult  details, and emphasizes beautiful moments in King’s works, bringing a life to it that we as readers couldn’t even get while reading these books.

Another, more recent example of this would be Spike Jonze and his feature length adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. It is remarkable already that Jonze was able to create a full-length picture out of a children’s story that is only ten sentences long. This gave him the ability to flesh out all of the characters more and add much further depth and complexity to them and the world they inhabit. This is especially the case with the so-called Wild Things.

Authors, such as Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Philip Pullman have continuously expressed their support for film adaptations of their work and for the creative changes the filmmakers take with them.

So, even though films may deviate from the source material quite a bit, what we as fans of the story must ask ourselves is if these decisions in the films have benefited the adaptation of that story or not. If they have, then the director has done his or her job correctly.

So, as a reader, we can certainly read a book and leave whatever happens within its pages there for us to revisit as many times as we want and visualize the same things. But upon seeing a film adaptation of a book, you must go into the theater being aware that the finished film is not going to be a word-for-word adaptation, but it will be a close translation. So, we readers must know when to let go of certain inconvenient details and just judge the film on the big picture of whether or not it was faithful to the spirit of the book and its characters and took them in the right direction, despite its flaws. We can’t let a few minor changes determine our views on an entire picture.