It’s not as good as the book …
Some thoughts on film adaptations of books
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5/17/20265 min read
I visited our local community cinema at the weekend with a group of friends to watch Hamnet, the 2025 film version (directed by Chloé Zhao) of the 2020 novel (written by Maggie O’Farrell). Centred on a dramatised account of the family life of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes Hathaway and how they cope with the death of their eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, the film was a moving and compelling account of grief, and how this particular instance informed and shaped one of the greatest plays ever written, Hamlet. While I could easily use this blog to wax lyrical about the film, that’s for another time, as I’d rather focus on one aspect of our group of friends’ post-film discussion.
Not having yet read the book, I had nothing to compare the film to, so could only call it as I saw it, so to speak. However, a number of my companions had read the novel and the conversation soon fell to some of the inevitable differences between the two media. For example, the film apparently spent less time on young Will’s dalliances and affairs while in London on theatre business, nor did it feature so much of the witchery and sorcery of Agnes (although there is a fair smattering of this) or of her extended personal grieving for Hamnet. Similarly there was less film time spent on the domineering nature of Will’s father (although there was of course some there), but there was more focus in the film on the links between Hamnet’s death and its influence on the writing and performance of Hamlet (this latter aspect being for me the highlight of the film, without which the disparate elements of an engaging story may not have been brought together, in the same way that a troupe of players brings a play to life).
At some point in our conversation, someone said something to the effect that, “but then the film versions are never as good as the original book”. My initial thought was, yes, that’s probably right, and generally our group seemed to concur, but the contrarian in me quickly began to turn this assertion over in my mind. Putting aside the obvious “all comparisons are odious” point, and, anyway, films and novels are two different media and have to tell their stories in different ways (novels are generally internal narratives or at least represent the disjunct between the internal and the external, while films on the whole have to concentrate on the external or what can be seen), I wondered if it really was true, or at least true enough, to the extent that most books were better than the film versions.
As I said, I hadn’t read Hamnet, so couldn’t make the call on that one, but I wracked my memory to think of examples that didn’t fit the bill. A couple immediately came to mind. The first was Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott’s film version of Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Knowing both well, and despite being an admirer of Philip K Dick’s inventive and creative books, the film version creates a world, narrative and style that outstrips and enhances its source material, in my view. As a second example, something similar can be said of The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s film of Stephen King’s novel. While the film, its performances and the tension and menace throughout live in the memory, by contrast the book reads, to me anyway, as slightly pedestrian and conventional, despite the recognised story-telling prowess and success of Stephen King.
But beyond that, I’ve struggled to think of other examples where the film surpasses the book, but there are many more that fit with the received wisdom (ie, the book is better than the film). I did wonder whether my two examples are linked with the fact that the two authors are well-known as writers who produce very filmable books or stories. Both have had their work extensively adapted for film or TV. Philip K Dick came up with so many amazing concepts and ideas, lots of them acting as springboards for other people, other visualisations, but his writing wasn’t always that great. And Stephen King is simply a great story-teller and the ones I’ve read are quite filmic in how they’re told, so maybe it’s no surprise that in the right hands (and Kubrick would definitely fit the definition of the “right hands”) his stories might be capable of a transformation beyond that of the original?
There are plenty of films that come close to challenging their source book. No Country for Old Men is one, partly because it sticks so closely to the book, but the Coen Brothers’ film still can’t quite match the power, majesty and language of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. And there are certainly films that are great adaptations of their source texts, but I’m not sure they are better than the originals. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, based on JRR Tolkien’s works, probably fits that bill, as does Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films, based on Frank Herbert’s series of books, or maybe the first or second film of The Hunger Games series (the films directed by Gary Ross and Francis Lawrence, respectively, based on Suzanne Collins’ book series).
My examples and views are of course limited by the fact that I have not watched and read all the film/book adaptations that have been made, nor could I ever hope to. So there are some examples that might be contenders, but I can’t reference them properly, due to not having read the book, or possibly even vice versa. For instance, I wonder if Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II surpass Mario Puzo’s novel? The films are certainly great and they clearly have a legion of ardent fans and admirers (although I know they also have their detractors, as do most literary and film works). And to take another Coppola example, of which I know well both versions: Apocalypse Now as a filmic interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I would be hard-pushed to say which is better, if that is even indeed a fair comparison, being a lover of both works. Perhaps there’s too much of a gulf between the two to make them a fair comparison, or maybe that’s the point, and that’s what needs to be done to break the connection between the original material and the new media interpretation. Rather than forcing a comparison, create something new, something different, in the mould of Blade Runner or The Shining.
Which, in a way, is the same as the reason often cited as to why films are never as good as the books. When you read the book, you create something new, you visualise your own world, based on what the author is putting in front of you, but also, importantly you fill in the gaps that are inevitably there in the book. Some of those gaps are put there deliberately so, although most of them are because a book can’t possibly describe every aspect of its world for you, nor does it want to, nor should it. In that sense, your imagination has already created its own film adaptation for you, which will vary from person to person. So when someone else makes a film version, it will already be up against some tough competition – your mind’s own film version – unless they do something very different.
I’m aware that I’ve only scratched the surface here, so let me know if you have any thoughts and other examples that support or challenge the supremacy of the book version.