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When the Book is Better than the Movie (Feat. Lindsay Ellis) | It's Lit!
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- čas přidán 14. 08. 2024
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It's an age-old debate: The Book vs. The Movie
Since the dawn of cinema, film has been sort of the little brother of the more heady, intellectual medium of novels. And many film adaptations of literature leave viewers and critics saying… “The book was better.” But why do adaptations of beloved stories tend not to live up to the source material?
Interested in using this video as a teaching resource? Check it out on PBS LearningMedia: to.pbs.org/33D...
Hosted by Lindsay Ellis
Written by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan
Directed & animated by Andrew Matthews
Produced by Amanda Fox
Executive in Charge (PBS): Adam Dylewski
Music and Sound Design: Eric Friend
Hand Model: Katie Graham
Imaged by Shutterstock
![The 15 Best Sci-Fi Books I've Ever Read [Updated]](/img/n.gif)
Looking for more It's Lit? You can find the latest season on Storied, PBS's home for arts and humanities content here on CZcams. Subscribe to Storied for the latest episodes of It's Lit and get your folklore fix with Monstrum while you're there! czcams.com/channels/O6nDCimkF79NZRRb8YiDcA.html
Don't you mean when the movie is better than the book? Because that is more unexpected than the reverse.
Pssst... PBS.... More Lindsay.
Entertainer13 yes please. I love her analysis stuff
I FELT THIS
@@LOSTLEAD8Rfffffffcizhsjshddjdjdndnndnnrrjjhrn
Lindsay Ellis and PBS? That's a match made in Heaven.
That One Guy photo of lindsays mug shot www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=u-MYW9rgCOrP5gLR4qSgBg&q=lindsay+ellis+arrested&oq=lindsay+ellis+arrested&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-img.12...4597.8577..9400...0....440.3139.0j9j3j1j2......0....1.........0j35i39j0i24.JpQq4m%2BZhX4%3D#imgrc=XyN2jDsUv8KseM:
Den Gigantiske
People drink alcohol. People may choose to walk home because they're too inebriated to drive. Sometimes the police are overprotective. And arrest them for their safety. It happens, boyo.
Fuck off Den.
@@DenGigantiske I know you're a weird stalker so I'm not gonna convince you, but mate, most people get drunk. It's weird to NOT have ever been drunk in your adult life. Anyway keep on with the creepy behavior i guess
right???
So cool to see an Internet celeb you've been following since she started transcend into stuff like this on the big network-affiliated sites. And the topic of the video itself is pretty interesting especially in this age where we seemingly have gone back to a culture of not reading books. It's also great to see this sort of topic be discussed more analytically instead of just hand-weaving away that "movie studios and Hollywood stink".
That's not a point to be dismissed though. Movies cost a lot of money so there's way more of an incentive to "play it safe".
Oh I agree that it's a point to consider, and I'm in no way saying that it's OK for Hollywood to sacrifice artistic integrity for the sake of money. Just that more often than not, rather than finding a reason why these things happen, people just off-handedly blame Hollywood just because it's easy.
There's multiple layers to this than just the hippie mentality of evil greedy corporations bad.
R0DisG0D - Movies costing a lot of money is a tactic studios use to monopolize the medium. They try to cultivate a popular taste for something that they are in a unique position to deliver. For example, compare popular music now with massively overdubbed analog prog in the 1970s, or popular orchestral music. The indie music revolution would never have happened if people still expected those things.
Making or consuming mainly tens-of-millions of dollar spectacles is not a given, it is a choice with many underlying factors.
Honestly, with how popular ebook readers are I find it hard to believe that we, as a culture, don't read books. Media is now more readily accessible than it ever has before, I think it's incredibly unlikely that we're not reading.
Pio Nepomuceno
More people read books now than in the 1950's.
Yo Lindsay has transcended all her contemporaries at channel awesome, it's pretty dope.
Lindsay has risen far beyond even being mentioned in the same sentence as "channel awesome" if you ask me. (Is that sentence paradoxical? Okay maybe)
she left channel awesome years ago and by doing so already transcended channel awesome by miles and leaps.
It's *very* cool.
As much as I liked Nostalgia Critic's earlier content.... man.... that guy just keeps doubling down on the unfunny skits. #feelsbadman
Shes really talented and evolved a lot from what she used to do back then.
Film adaptations tend not to live up to the book.....but tie in novels are rarely as good as the film.
PavarottiAardvark preach!
Yeah i think the overall theme is whether or not the second thing (be it book or movie) is a shameless cash grab :)
SO TRUE!!!
Yess
I had to read the English Patient for a collage class and was surprised when I watched the movie to see how much they changed it, especially the ending.
I love how well-researched and well-sourced all of Linday's stuff is.
Me after watching a bad movie movie adaptation:
WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH!
Sudev Sen because it was real
BECAUSE IT WAS R E A L
See how I g l i t t e r
lik if you cri everytim ;_;
Nice call back!
Wha-wha-what?! THE Lindsay Ellis?! It's a great day for America, everybody!
Your Craig Ferguson reference will not go unappreciated.
I also got that reference. Love.
Trump was a great day for America
@@daustin8888 Hilarious.
@@micahadamson4309 Not really. But seeing her despair after election night was hilarious
IM LOSING TO A BIRD!!!
They are fine.
See how I glitter!
I ate the whole plate. The WHOLE plate!
See... he's fine.
It's fine
Oh what! Will this be a series with Lindsay? Cuz she is my fav and i am here for this.
It will be
Hoorayyyyy! Lindsey Ellis you wonderful lady! I'm glad PBS has recognized your talent
Lindsay should have her own PBS CZcams channel!
Yay! After watching Lindsay's most recent video essay, now there's this! Thank you. One example I love to use for this argument is Stardust. I enjoy both the film and the book, and both are so different from each other, that it works in both mediums' favor. Gaiman, the author, went on record to gush about some of the changes that occurred for the movie.
YES! I love Lindsay Ellis!! One of my favorite CZcamsrs :D
Lindsay is the best
PBS and Ellis together?, this is the chocolate and peanut-butter of CZcams.
OOMMMMM nom nom nom nom!
Awesome Lindsay!! Glad you're able to provide your well researched expose on PBS.
Two of my favorites together: Lindsay and PBS.
Makes me wonder what a Dan Olson or Contra collab with PBS would look like.
Beyond that, maybe Rachel Bloom would partner with you guys to do a series on music in film/TV or how musicals tell stories. Bagels After Midnight/Harrison Chute is also a great writer.
You have impeccable taste. These are good ideas and you should feel good about them.
I want to see Contra doing one of those random unexpected 2AM Adult Swim shorts. She's got a bit of that Tim & Eric editing/post-production-driven surrealist sensibility... (as does HBomberguy)
God what I wouldn't give for Harrison Chute to write a PBS series for Rachel Bloom to narrate. I miss his videos and I'm certain he'd be overjoyed to work with Rachel.
Right?? I just need more CEGF analysis. There's still so much to unpack from season three.
I would pay money to watch a reaction series for CEGF.
I coul listen to Lindsay talk intellectual musings about literature all day.
Great to hear Linsday on here! However, I wish she had more specifically explained what para-text was not accounted for in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film that "made it fail to capture the spirit of the book to so many people."
This is largely the same issue that plagues pretty much all of Lindsay's movies...
...they just aren't _long_ enough!
Arthur Dent was a dull everyman with a lack of self-awareness. He was hard to like or dislike. The movie didn't understand that his personality was necessary to the tone of the movie.
Will Lindsay be writing future episodes? If so, I shall sub now. If not, I'll give it a few more episodes to see how it pans out.
EDIT: Confirmed for more Lindsay. Subbed!
My favorite adaptation has to be the Shawshank Redemption, simply because it takes a very underdeveloped novella and manages to make it into one of those most heart warming and inspiring stories ever put to screen.
I love how the animation like flows and it makes it hard to not understand what's happening omfg i love it so much
Very nicely done, really glad Lindsey is getting recognised.
Once Doug Walker struck her down, she became more powerful than he could possibly imagine!
Was she fired, or did she quit? Or would it be more accurate to say, "escaped"?
There's also the fact that when making a movie, there's a LOT more components desperately trying to work itself out. I forget his name, but I saw an interview a while back where the author explained how in the process of changing it over to a film something like "What most authors struggle with during adaptation is that when you're writing the book, it's just you. All the characters and designs and symbols and stuff is how you put it. The book has a lot of red, it means something, it's very important to you. Then you end up with a studio head who hates red and thinks orange will show better. So they go with orange and there's not much you can say about it."
Like how endings get changed all the time either to wrap things up due to things being cut, or because test audiences had a bad reaction to it so they feel the wider audience won't take well to it. Not to mention things like how elaborate a scene may be to try to rebuild or issues with the actors or something came up with the filming location or who knows what all can happen behind the scenes.
They should use Lindsay in more of these. Her extensive knowledge of film provides an interesting perspective on lit.
Lindsay and PBS: what a fantastic combination!
newwavejunkie Mug shot of lindsay www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=u-MYW9rgCOrP5gLR4qSgBg&q=lindsay+ellis+arrested&oq=lindsay+ellis+arrested&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-img.12...4597.8577..9400...0....440.3139.0j9j3j1j2......0....1.........0j35i39j0i24.JpQq4m%2BZhX4%3D#imgrc=XyN2jDsUv8KseM:
Den Gigantiske Sometimes peple get drunk. Get over it
Mia Summers It’s clearly so newsworthy it’s worth taking the time to post it on everybody’s comment 🤣
YEAH LINDSAY GETTING THAT SWEET PBS MONEY.
ITS TIME TO ELEVATE LINDSAY TO THE LEVEL OF IRL CELEBRITY
What I've learned:
* First of all literature and filmography are almost completely different languages, so getting things missed in translation should be expected.
* Film adaptations can bring new and valuable things to the story.
* Paratext: personal features of the audience that influence how they experience the content.
* Sometimes it's possible getting more using less, so it could be the case that cutting stuff from the text is the best.
* Lindsay Ellis is just awesome.
Dang how do they make these videos? they’re so fun and well edited
0:27 my thoughts exactly when I saw the trailer for it. The Giver is one my favorites and I’ve always wanted to see an adaptation of it, I’ll wait to see if they’ll make a better one...
I was so excited for the Giver to come out 😞
GO Linsay! So happy for you
Regarding the Jaws/Spielberg adaptation, wasn't Coppola's Godfather a similar treatment? They took a mostly pulpy crime novel and turned it into (some say elevated the content) into a highly regarded classic film. A sort of reversal of the book vs. movie adaptation debate. It would be interesting to see film adaptations that transcend their source material.
Richard Becker every invasion of the body snatchers adaptation ever (there’s so many at this point) is so so so much better than that book.
Anything that tones down the author's inner monologue in Ready Player One is a win. Plus, every challenge the character has in the books is basically solved with exposition about how he knows all of X, because blah blah blah. He was already great at Joust, because he'd just spent the summer playing it against his friends. The success seems to be more based on it being 80s nostlagia the book.
@@VaultBoy13 I'm guessing the story wanted to paint Wade as being worthy of OASIS, mainly because Wade is the parallel of Halliday. Not much of a hero's journey, but moreso a quest of destiny.
I am so excited to see Lindsay partnered with PBS. I have been following her video essays and reviews for years. She is intelligent and breaks down information about media in a clear and understandable way.
I'm so happy to see Lindsay's work outside of her channel. A great video! Excited for this contest
Excellent job! I've loved seeing Lindsay's online persona grow over the last several years. I find her videos more interesting, informative, and entertaining than ever!
ready player one: you tried.
pretty hard to make a diamond from a turd though
OMG, finally somebody agrees...
Sometimes, the film exceeds the source material if the source material is trash. ;)
Paul T Sjordal and sometimes you can polish a turd, but it's still a piece of crap.
@@geensloth911 Like 50 shades. Still trash, and all the 'good bits' are creations of the director rather than the author.
This video's definition of "paratext" isn't one I'm familiar with. It may be just wrong.
Traditionally, "paratext" is NOT a blanket term for all the experiences and ideas the audience bring to a text. Rather, it is the set of frames or attached items (cover design; illustrations; introductions; dedications; blurbs; even the author's name) that go into the creation and distribution of a text as a readable object. Paratexts offer the initial entryways into a work. As critic Gérard Genette put it, "The paratext is for us the means by which a text makes a book of itself."
I guess it'll have to be stacked on the pile of culturally-degraded nomenclature, along with "MacGuffin" and "Mary Sue".
I haven't read or seen Ready Player One, but I was surprised by the apparent favor given to the book in this video. I've just been fascinated by how people react to it, and I got the impression the book was horribly written, while the movie managed to make it more coherent and less neckbeardy.
Please don't read the book. It's been six months, and I'm still angry about its stupidity. Better to be blissfully ignorant, because it can't be forgotten.
The Unicorn I suppose it's at least safe to extrapolate that PBS isn't trying to push an agenda with their videos, but if anything is a symbol of toxic gamer mentality that is hostile and unwelcoming towards women and minorities, Ready Player One sounds like it would be the work to point to.
I hope you keep doing more of these videos, Lindsay. They're amazing!
I love how clear and concise this is! Really effective and cool host VO! I dig it. definitely watching more.
Always good to see more Lindsay.
Now then, I feel that the reason the movie is typically less satisfying than the book is not only because the movie has to adapt something from it's native medium and remake it to fit a new container... but also because movies are short. Even a short novel will far outpace a movie, and so drastic and deep cuts must be made. You can really only capture the gist of the thing, and often for a book that means missing out on so much of the depth that made it worthwhile.
One adaptation I thought was superb, though it still had to drop some things, was The Green Mile. Oh, yes, it's "mini series" which really just translates to "a long-form movie with built in intermissions". And I think there's a reason TV (i.e. Netflix, Amazon) has entered a golden age, because you can make these long-form movies and it's easy for audiences to access them. And at their leisure!
The problem with movies is that the film industry keeps telling itself that movies must be short. Part of this problem is with the whole theater system. Typically people don't want to lose a giant part of their day to sitting in some dark room with a hundred or more strangers, unable to attend to things that might pop up. See, a book doesn't need to be consumed in a single sitting. Because it's a one-on-one experience you can pause at any point, pick it back up at any point, etc. The same goes for online streaming. And I think this is why movies have gotten the false notion that they need to be about an hour and half to two hours long.
Interestingly, I suspect that if movie technology had come along earlier -- when industrialization hadn't yet stolen people's free time -- very long movies probably would have been the norm and there would have been all sorts of commentaries about trying to enjoy the classic long-form film in an age when people no longer had the time and patience to sit through a 6 or 8 hour story.
Meanwhile, yes it is true that because movies are a very different medium that forces showing rather than telling, even much of that is simply a matter of "this is how it's always been done." It's not that bizarre to have a narrator, it needs to be done with skill and artistry, but this is just as true with writing. But I think the ultimate issue is that movies, especially today, are typically only created by large companies (global corporations now) and they don't usually like trying new things. They find something that works and often refuse to stray from that formula. Unless someone else shows them another way to do things that actually makes _more_ money.
But my point is, that for me, when I read there's usually a very strong visual in my head of what I'm reading that all too often feels like it would translate very well to a movie format. It may not be perfect, that's what revision and pre-production are for, but it's always made me doubt the validity of the excuse "well, movies are audio visual and books aren't." I believe it's a false dichotomy because in both you're attempting to simulate human (or maybe alien?) experiences and you necessarily overcome the obstacles of the medium to do that. Books can't make sound, but they can describe them. Books can't show you what's happening, but they can describe them. All too often I think the problem originates from _why_ a book is made into a movie: profit. Those in charge may try to wrangle up someone who has some artistic interest in it, but that person was recruited, they weren't driven by interest to originate the project. And in that sense, if you've ever read a book that was adapted from a movie you may realize have thought "wow, that wasn't very good. Glad I saw the movie first." It's rare, books tend to be less lucrative, but you can wind up with these sort of contracted adaptations to fill a niche. They're good enough, but that's usually it.
What you need is a someone who is a fan of the work they are creating. They need to be critical too, but they need to genuinely care. If you're a writer/director making an original film, you're a fan of what you're making. If you're an author writing an original story, you're a fan of what you're making. Otherwise (unless you're being paid a disgusting amount of money) you wouldn't have the interest to make it. And even then it might not turn out very good... at the end of the day it still takes talent. And a book that was crafted by a talented artist doesn't have great odds of being transcribed into a movie by an equally talented artist. It might, but usually such talented people want to work on their own thing.
And that's why movies often are as good as the book.
Anyway, my rambling aside, still happy to watch your videos Lindsay even if I'm all contrarian.
I'm glad The Hitchhiker movie got brought up because it means I can mention Movies with Mikey and his excellent episode on that movie. Basically his point is yes all the adaptations were different, but don't feel the need to rank them, just try and enjoy each on their own merits
But why, if the movie simply STUNK? I really can't think of one "merit" about the movie. I can kind of go eh about Zoe Deschanel (if you must go with an American actress to make it more appealing to the US audience - I think a South Asian woman would have been great, given how Trillian is described in the books). Mos Def was simply wrong. I don't care about his colour - it is the fact that Ford Prefect is like a manic unhinged hipster dude. And actually funny - Mos Def was like a petrified forest of woodenness. Eddie Redmayne could maybe do it - he's perfect in looks - if he managed to summon up more "cool dude" and less "puppy dog eyes". Sam Rockwell was not right as Zaphod. Yes, an American is right on, but those heads flipping around was a stupid effect. Part of the fun of the two heads being visible at the same time are when they're having two different reactions to what's going on. Or the same one. I admit I'm prejudiced against Martin Freeman, so I won't get into his annoying so-called "everyman". And Marvin was completely and utterly and stinkingly wrong in terms of looks - he's not supposed to be "cute". Was it an attempt at product placement for Sony? The plot (admittedly not an Adams strongpoint, but they hired a screenwriter precisely to *make* a plot) was crap. The effects were crap. And the directing was crap (stick to music videos, dudes). Some of the jokes were good, but that was in spite of the main cast (who had no discernible chemistry with each other), not because of it. I can't help thinking an earlier-proposed cast featuring Hugh Laurie, Jim Carrey as Zaphod (if he didn't do too much of the rubber face thing) and Nigel Hawthorne as Slartibartfast would have been about a zillion times better. As long as they had Alan Rickman doing Marvin's dialogue (at least THAT was perfect). And Stephen Fry was pretty good as The Book.
I enjoyed the film when it came about, when I watched it again a few years later I felt that it was a bit smug.
I'm a simple man. I see Lindsay Ellis, I subscribe.
Great point. Love your work.
Although, we must add «you can only translate what is inessential to the book» (I think that's a quote from Kundera), and the essential of a novel is that it's written. A movie is in itself a completely different work, unless you think that a movie or a novel can be reducted to its plot, which I hope, no one does.
Hooray Lindsey!! Also wonderful video
I will always brake for Lindsay Ellis projects!
First off, I love seeing more Lindsay and it's so cool to see her working with PBS! She has come a long way and I love hearing more of her thoughts!!!
I find this video interesting. I thought all of this though not sure how exactly to express this thought in a concise and thoughtful way. For me, watching a movie is difficulf just because I am focusing too much on what I would do differently or being distracted by something else. It is something I have been getting better at though for me the book is my preferred mode of entertainment. I love the idea of plotting the story for myself in my head. The movies seem only to be of use to me if there is a character I am not exactly sure would love like or a setting.
There are very few movies that I think actually help the book, mainly Harry Potter. Harry Potter has so much more going for it in the book though the movies are so well made and the cast is so believable, they work with the books. Almost like a companion. Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera also kinda works like this for me too.
The only movies I can say I honestly feel are better than the book is Frankenstein (along with Bride of Frankenstein) and The Wizard of Oz. Though even with Oz, while I have not read Baum's and the many other books in the Oz series unless you also count Wicked, there are many ideas I enjoy from the book. I just find the Judy Garland movie such as masterpiece that it is above the book in someways and acts as a companion as well.
I feel like I am rambling.
I am so happy to hear Lindsay talking books!
Hey PBS, great call on hiring Lindsay!
I only just discovered this video series. The world definitely needs more Lindsay Ellis. Great stuff!!!
Great commentary! I love Lindsay Ellis and think highly of PBS, and I'm all about literature, specifically talking about animation as literature. I have a lot of thoughts about how image and sound create meaning in a different way than words on a page, and... I'm really excited about this series, looking forward to seeing where it goes!
This is very interesting and a great way to bring these discussions to people who might not otherwise watch PBS material. I definitely would love to see you bring her back! And reach out to other youtubers!
YES! MORE LINDSAY!
My late, blessed grandma read Jaws before taking my uncle to see the theater release, and kept whispering "That didn't happen in the book!" to him all. Through. The movie.
Such useful contents are very rare in internet....great job
A great video, can't wait for more! Lindsay Ellis always has and continues to be one of the most insightful and interesting people on the face of the internet.
A small thing about the video itself though: I found it a little hard to focus on what was being said at times, because of the sound effects kept distracting me. It could definitely be just me, as I do seem to be more easily bothered by overlapping noises in general, but if maybe they could be at a tad lower volume in the future?
A great example of when the movie far outshines the book is when Liev Shreiver adapted Johnathan Foer's Everything is Illuminated. The book is a hodgepodge of styles mimicking Jame's Joyce's Ulysses and failing badly - Shreiver picked out the best thematic moments, cast people who could carry those moments and edited out the Joyce-ian mimickry. The cinematography, framing, direction and editing were superb and we get a story we can follow, characters we can sympathize with, poignancy beyond the usual AND comic relief that works - I will forever love Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. in her role as official seeing eye bitch!!! The book isn't really bad but it is only an okay first attempt.
I'm an avid reader. After being disappointed in so many movie adaptations, I decided to treat the book and movie as two completely separate things. I realize that filmmakers cannot possibly be able to reflect my ideas about the story and the characters, can't possibly know what I wanted to see reflected in their finished product. Instead, they aim to tell a story, based on a book that movie goers want to see. Because of this, I can appreciate the extremely flawed retelling of Hitchhiker's Guide because it is someone's vision of something I love. And, I adore Howl's Moving Castle the movie and the book, individually, and as completely separate entities.. If you want to see a filmed version of your favorite book, it's usually better to find a mini-series, where the filmmakers can incorporate more of the plotlines that make up the stories you love.
No mention of the constraints of a 2-3hour film? The depth and length of many great books just can't handle the chop job. Sure, you can get the main storyline, but you lose the depth and development that hundreds of pages can relish.
That's a good point. I think novellas and short stories tend to be better suited to adaptation in film than books, as books have so much more breathing room to tell a long story.
Fittingly, there was no discussion of how compressing a deep, complex narrative into a 2-hour movie inevitably leaves things out because the discussion itself had to be compressed into a 5-minute CZcams video.
As well, a movie is constrained to a narrative that can only be told in the present tense. You watch a scene as it is happening. Past events must be framed as flashbacks. Sure, narrators are sometimes used but they're not particularly popular in movies. A writer can use all the tenses to tell stories, to describe characters, build themes, etc., or explain why a character is doing something, or share what he/she is thinking, where he/she is going. Movies can only use visuals and conversation. This is why the evil genius has to explain his entire plan to the hero at some point in a movie. And, why we viewers have to guess what a character is thinking when not talking. And, why so much movie/TV dialogue sounds unnatural -- because it's being used to move the story forward and/or explain a character's thinking or motivation. This creates an experience in which the viewer has very little to work with to understand what's going on -- just pictures and dialogue -- and makes a movie a more visceral, far less intellectual, experience. We're not being asked to think, just watch. And this is why so many movies are...shallow, forgettable, unresonant, and also why some are so deeply affecting. It's why we idolize movie stars not authors, too, because we come away from a movie feeling like we spent shared time with the actors -- we were right there watching when it all happened to them. Both novel and movie tell stories, but in one we have a story teller in the other we watch it happen.
Good point. Not to mention that films adapted from books are not only limited to time constraints, but also whether the film adaption itself would do well enough at the box office to warrant a sequel (which can be a risk if creative teams find the story needs more than one film to be resolved.)
A novel is written by one person. A movie is created by dozens, often hundreds, of people and is perhaps the most collaborative of art forms.
I clicked pretty fast when I saw: "Feat. Lindsay Ellis" in the title. Congrats to both Lindsay and PBS for this gig.
I do so enjoy your essays...here and on your own channel.
There Will Be Blood>>Oil!
The Thin Red Line (film)>>The Thin Red Line
I don't know if anybody is still reading these comments, but I just watched this series and I have to give a shout out to Andrew Matthews, who, I gather from the credits, is responsible for the animations in the early episodes. Absolutely brilliant stuff Andrew! I love it!
This was a great team up! Awesome!
Lindsay is so good, probably my favorite content creator in all CZcams.
i’m so excited for this series, love lindsay and also love the design/animation!
Even though I consider myself more of a writer and reader than a film buff or movie goer, I do just love the way cinematography can present a narrative so directly when a novel may take several paragraphs or pages to express what is seen in film.
Spielberg was a great example of that -- particularly in the case of Jurassic Park in how between the combination of the animatronics and CGI, it truly felt like one was seeing dinosaurs on the screen, and the expressions of Dr. Grant and Ellie was phenomenal, especially considering how they weren't even looking at something really alive.
I believe there are times when cinematography excels in the presentation of such media.
I think the secret here is something that Lindsay says at the beginning: adaptations have to translate the story from one medium to another. Usually the bad movie adaptations are the ones who transcribe everything from the books without making any adjustments to fit the new medium.
Im so happy we're getting more Lindsay Ellis
Lindsay is the best! Also I truly lol-ed at the fact that this video series on books is called *It’s Lit!*
Damn didnt expect to see lindsay in a place like this. She's one of my all-time favorite content creators!
Good for you Lindsay for going on PBS. You're really moving up in the world.
Lindsay! I’m so excited! I love her video essays.
I was a bit annoyed that a video about a topic that I myself has given a lot of thought and therefor feel no need to watch a video on was suggested to me 6min ago. Then I saw that it had Lindsay and I could not be happier! Thank you CZcams for recognizing that I want to watch anything narrated by Lindsay, you can do things right sometimes!
Great idea for a video series, and major props for working with Lindsay Ellis! She’s been an excellent critic and video essayist for years, and has only gotten better this year.
This is a great video! It has an interesting visual style that's very informal, has a host that is very well educated in the the history of popular culture, and best of all: at no point do the visuals or the host ever talk down to the audience's intelligence. Great Job!
Awesome video! I always thought a good example of a movie elevating its source material was The Exorcist. I can't imagine anyone walking away from it thinking the book was better, because the book didn't come close to the movie in impact for me. Conversely, The Amityville Horror book I found legitimately more terrifying than the movie (any of them actually) ever was... regardless, thanks for the food for thought!
Lindsay and PBS. The Chick has come a long way. Congrats.
In regards to the subject matter...I feel it's all super subjective as to which books that are stifled by adaptation, which adaptations don't really have an impact one way or the other, and which books are actually IMPROVED by translation to film.
Jurassic Park, The Wizard of Oz, Disney's Huchback of Notre Dame, and the Secret of NIMH are all films I consider to be such improvements over the source material (well, except the gargoyles in Hunchback, but Disney gonna Disney). Similarly, Matilda is a movie that stays relatively close to the book, but makes one significant change that I feel dramatically improves the ending.
Others might hate these movies for the very reasons I love them, and that's fine. The beauty of adaptations is that they bring awareness of the source material and provide viewers the chance to find it and judge for themselves which they like better. A film adaptation of a booik, even a bad one, doesn't take the book away.
Now if only the video game community could learn this lesson about reboots and remakes...
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a mediocre movie and would be much more realistic if the story had feared a tragedy rather than a happy ending.
That ending is not believable at all.
Victor Hugo's book is more realistic. Cinema is inferior to classical books to literatyra,
The editing is so entertaining omg :))
Best possible choice. A network needs to hire Lindsay for a full-blown show. Kyle, too.
I really hope this will be a regular thing now with Lindsey!
I'm in love with this series.
Delighted to see Lindsay Ellis and PBS together. A great video.
So pleased you mentioned Hitch Hikers was a radio series
I would like to point out a bit of survivorship bias happening whenever you compare books to movies. There are a lot of books that DON'T get movie adaptations because the book is boring, nobody's heard of it, etc etc. While it's obviously not a hard and fast rule, things that get popular tend to have some relevance to people that make them resonate with the audience, and they're often pretty okay, if not good. The same can't always be said for the movie. There are simply way way way more books than there are movies, and when a film adaptation of a book gets green lit, it's usually a classic, or at the very least, a phenomenon. Often times when you see a film adaptation that's supposed to be better than the book, it's because that book wasn't very good, such as Starship Troopers or 50 Shades of Gray, or because they modify it so completely that there's very little of the original work left, and the new built story of the film adaptation says something that meshes better with contemporary audiences, such as all of the remakes of Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Interesting that you should mention Hunchback of Notre Dame -- Lindsay Ellis has a video about its different iterations: czcams.com/video/AIIWy3TZ1eI/video.html
A fantastic watch. Thank you for linking that. Subscribed.
You're welcome! It always make me happy when I can turn people on to the things I like!
There are exceptions to that rule. Sometimes an adaptation is greenlit simply because the studio bought the rights and it’s been shelved sometimes for a rainy day (1997’s mimic based on a Donald wollheim short from a defunct pulp magazine) sometimes to keep copyright claims fantastic fours entire film existence or 1966’s the hobbit (oh 66’s hobbit is sooo bad)
This is more or less the point I would have made if no-one else had.
If you adapt a great novel, then, in order for the movie to be better than the book, it has to be a great movie - which means everything has to go right. Having a good concept is only the first (and arguably least important) step in making a great movie, and there are so many ways things can go wrong on the way that starting from a great novel is, at best, only very marginally better than starting from a mediocre one - and the latter gives you a much better chance of improving on your source material.
The same's true of remakes - people tend not to remake the crappy thing no-one liked - they tend to remake the classics that have a loyal fanbase who are likely to be interested in your new version. So you get a Ghostbusters remake that can't make up its mind whether it wants to pay homage to the original or make a point of being new and different (while hitting many of the same beats, but in a new and different way) and ends up substituting slapstick for wit and hoping no-one notices...
Most of the time that an adaptation ends up being better than the original, it's because the original was significantly flawed - giving the adaptation an advantage...
And then there's the length issue - a standard novel has more story than a standard movie. There's a reason that each volume of Lord of the Rings turned into around 4 hours of Extended Edition (though that does raise the question of how the Hobbit, at very roughly half the length of a single volume of LotR ended up adapted as over twice as many hours of movies). Sometimes cutting stuff out improves a work (there's no question that Les Miserables comes to no harm when the detailed description of the Battle of Waterloo is excised, or the history of a certain convent, or the later renovation of the Paris Sewers, or any of the author's other digressions of varying lengths) but, in general, simplifying a rich story to get it into 2 hours or less is going to handicap your version.
But yeah, the quality of an adaptation is only very loosely, if at all, correlated with the quality of the original, so the better the original, the more likely the adaptation is to disappoint.
I’m gonna say it: Good Omens is the best adaptation of a book I’ve ever seen and the thing is, the script was written by one of the authors of the book so idk if it counts
I have never clicked so many likes in a comment section, expressing the great joy of getting Lindsay Ellis via PBS. Doppelplusgut!
Dang moving up in the world aren't we Lindsay
I feel like this needs to be about six times as long.
Loving these videos! Can't wait for more of them :)
When a reporter once asked James M Cain what he thought about Hollywood ruining his books he took the reporter into his library and said "my books are fine, they're right there on the shelf"
Thank you for noting that the movie can sometimes be better than the book. Fight Club is definitely an example of that, but another one, in my opinion, is the third Vampire Hunter D novel, Demon Death Chase. Blood Lust, as it's known in some parts of the world, made better connections among the characters over it's source material, and the ending is more bitter-sweet in the film, while the book was flat-out anticlimactic.
I'm loving this PBS series by the way. Great production, poignant analyses.
the Christmas Carol is truly the gift that keeps on giving with its many adaptations
Numberphile recently made a video explaining why it generally can seems like better books make worse movies and worse books make better movies even if there is absolutely no relationship between them.
Basically, assume there is no relationship between how good a movie is and how goos its film adaptation would be. The worst books on that list won't even get made unless someone sees a way to male them really good (like Adaptation or Planet of the Apes). So for bad books, they will mostly end up as good movies or not at all. Mediocre books that become bad movies also won't be widely seen and will be largely forgotten. Good books with adaptations are more likely to be watched, regardless of the film quality and so they tend to be, well, average. Some are great, some are terrible, but there is no predicting it.
So there may be some logic around the adaptation, but even if it was totally random, it would still look like a correlation.
Ma gal Lindsay! :)
One of the things I have become more and more aware of over the years is the way in which a movie which happens to be an adaptation of a book may overtake the book's popularity to the extent that nobody even thinks about the book version anymore; the movie has become the primary version of the story in pop culture. I get depressed when I think about how many people love The Wizard of Oz but have never read it or any of its many many delightful sequels. Two of my favorite characters from Oz (Tik-Tok and Ozma) aren't even in the fist book (or this one 1939 movie that everyone is familiar with instead of the books). People love Willy Wonka (or Charlie) and the Chocolate Factory, but how many people have read the book or the sequel? This has come to light again in recent days for me because of the new Mary Poppins film. I have ashamed to realize that I have never read any of the Mary Poppins novels. (And I probably won't read the Harry Potter books either, having watched the movies.) Occasionally, though, the movie may be better (as in the case of The Princess Bride, a book I read before it became a movie). But often there is so much that people miss out on by not reading books.