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Here's a piece from 2018 by James Harold from Oxford University Press's blog mentioning how some movie adaptations may not quite match the source materials; he cites The House with a Clock in its Walls in his opening as one such adaptation:The 2018 movies Crazy Rich Asians, It, Black Panther, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Mary Poppins Returns, and Beautiful Boy have very little in common with one another, except the fact that all are based on popular books. More than half of the top 20 highest grossing films in the UK from 2007-2016 were based on books or comic books. The Publishers Association estimated that movies based on books make 43% more than movies based on original screenplays. However, for moviegoers who have read the source material, there is often the risk of disappointment in going to see such adaptations. What if the film fails to live up to the book? It is quite natural to want the movie to be true to the book, and surely it is not unreasonable to judge the film in part on how well it meets those expectations.On the other hand, people often say one should judge a movie on its own merits, and pay no attention to matters of faithfulness to the book. The best movies are not necessarily the ones that follow the source material most closely. Careful attention to the source material can make a movie plodding or dull. Sometimes what works on the page simply does not work on the screen.It is possible, however, to reconcile these two lines of thought. To do so, we need to think about some of the different ways that a film can be (or fail to be) faithful to its source. A film can be true to the story of the book; a film can capture some or all of the main characters accurately; a film can realize fully the book’s tone or mood; and a film can be true to the themes of the book. Some of these kinds of faithfulness are good and important in judging the movie; others are not.
How by-the-book do you prefer your big screen adaptations?
I understand that you will very seldom see a movie that follows the book word for word. Although "The Princess Bride" is pretty close. But I do expect the book and the movie to both be basically the same. I remember one Stephen King story based movie that was so far from the story that they basically had nothing in common. In fact King sued to have his name removed from the project. It seems that the movie producer just bought the rights to the story so that he could call his movie a Stephen King movie to boost sales. I can't say that the movie made from "The House With a Clock in Its Walls" is to that point, but much of the story line has been changed. It is to the point that it is hard to say how much is really John Bellairs. It is almost as if a story writer just plagiarized a few bits from John's work. I guess I am from the group of people that hate to go to movies made from books that they like. I know that I will be disappointed with the result.
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