It seems these days there are no original stories. Every movie is either a remake, sequel or adaptation of another story. While these are tolerable, the movie industry needs to leave the books alone.
The most recent book-to-movie adaptation was “People We Meet on Vacation,” based on Emily Henry’s novel of the same name. Starring Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, the movie had high expectations but ultimately fell flat as major plot points were changed and characters were superficially developed. It was an objectively good romantic comedy, but it was not as good as the book.
This sentiment isn’t new. Almost every book-to-movie adaptation feels stale because it’s impossible to condense a 360-page book into a sub-two-hour runtime while also keeping every scene and fully developing each of the characters. If the changes these movies made were just because of runtime issues, the problem could be forgiven — but it’s not just that.
In “People We Meet On Vacation,” for example, they changed the main character’s school from the University of Chicago to Boston College, switched the location of their final trip from Palm Springs to Barcelona and rewrote the girlfriend of Tom Blyth’s character as a high school sweetheart when they met as adults in the book, among other details.
Not one of these changes impacted the length of the movie, but they infuriated book readers, probably causing them to yell at their televisions “THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN IN THE BOOK!”
Comparing this adaptation to the recent success of “Heated Rivalry,” based on the book by Rachel Reid, the difference a series can make is evident. With six 40-to-50-minute episodes, the show covered more ideas in detail than would have been possible in movie format. With fully fleshed-out characters and even a whole episode dedicated to another couple whose narrative later impacted the main characters, the development in the storyline of “Heated Rivalry” greatly surpasses that of “People We Meet On Vacation.”
Another popular book-to-series adaptation that just finished airing its second season is “Percy Jackson and the Olympians.” While this series has received its fair share of criticism from book faithfuls as it made some changes of its own — all of which were notably approved by author Rick Riordan — there’s a consensus that the show is still far superior to the early 2010s movie adaptations because of its elongated runtime and willingness to create a holistic story.
While there are good movies adapted from books, just because a movie is good doesn’t make it a good adaptation. The 2019 version of “Little Women” is one of the most beautiful and touching movies one can watch and a close contender for that “good” adaptation status, but it still has its faults.
From “Hunger Games” to “Twilight,” these extremely popular adaptations are objectively good movies — although the jury is still out on whether “Twilight” is good in either format, literary or cinematic — but with ever-growing fanbases, these franchises still aren’t faithful to their source material.
Not every movie adaptation is bad, but marketing movies with entirely new and different plot points as these massively popular, important books just because they have the same characters with similar outcomes is misleading and a glaringly obvious cash grab that takes advantage of these books and the authors’ fanbases. If a book is adapted into a movie, it becomes almost a necessity for the two formats to be judged as unrelated media to keep its loyal readers sane, and that should never have to be the case.
To prevent this descent into madness from book fans, a novel should be adapted into a television series, whether it’s one with multiple seasons or a mini-series, rather than a movie; this ensures its storylines are accurately depicted and not rushed.
Four more of Henry’s books have been greenlit to become movies, with her 2023 novel “Happy Place” recently undergoing a formatting switch from a series to a film adaptation. Her 2024 novel “Funny Story” is being adapted by Netflix as well and is the furthest along in its pre-production.
It’s unrealistic to think this next adaptation will be any good. We just have to hope they don’t butcher the one true pairing of Daphne Vincent and Miles Nowak. Oh, and cast Joe Keery as the latter.
Bethany Mann is a history freshman and opinion writer for The Battalion.