Movie makers: you can do better.
Sometimes a good book makes a bad movie. However, when you go and completely change the plot of the movie to suit the script writer's style, you can wind up with a good movie. Look at lord of the rings, and how much it differs between the book and the movie. Yes, the movie is true to the essence of the plot of the book, but it's left out some characters and added others in (Arwen was not that important, and where the hell did the rest of the Rangers wander off to while their leader was in dire need of help, hmm?) But here's the thing: you don't need to have read the book to get what's going on in the movie. But still Peter Jackson, the ending. Good god man, you could have made a fourth movie just for the ending.
Hayao Miyazaki understands this perfectly. Look at Howl's Moving Castle, based on a book by the same title by... um... what's her face...Dianna Wynne Jones. It changes so radically from the plot of the book, and becomes it's own thing that you just can't compare to the book. The plot is the same skeleton, but it's different in every other way. For even more radical comparison, look at Nausicaa, of the Valley of the wind! Hayao Miyazaki WROTE and drew those graphic novels, but in his movie he had a completely different ending because it worked better as a movie format. That's the thing with his movies. They're children's movies but they are full of such detail and life, but you only get the glimpses of everyone's life that the main character receives. In the novels, you didn't just follow the main character, but several different ones, and the novels were much longer and probably wouldn't have made that great of a movie because they would have been so complex. Miyazaki understands that it's okay to leave your audience in the dark, as long as the main character is there in the dark with them.
However, this doesn't work all the time. Maybe you just have to be magic to make it work.
And I'm not even going to discuss the Harry Potter movies, because I've only ever seen the first and third, and I hate them on principle (Damn it, my cousin's were READING until those movies came along! With those movies out they no longer see a point to read! "Because those popular books are movies now")
Hayao Miyazaki understands this perfectly. Look at Howl's Moving Castle, based on a book by the same title by... um... what's her face...Dianna Wynne Jones. It changes so radically from the plot of the book, and becomes it's own thing that you just can't compare to the book. The plot is the same skeleton, but it's different in every other way. For even more radical comparison, look at Nausicaa, of the Valley of the wind! Hayao Miyazaki WROTE and drew those graphic novels, but in his movie he had a completely different ending because it worked better as a movie format. That's the thing with his movies. They're children's movies but they are full of such detail and life, but you only get the glimpses of everyone's life that the main character receives. In the novels, you didn't just follow the main character, but several different ones, and the novels were much longer and probably wouldn't have made that great of a movie because they would have been so complex. Miyazaki understands that it's okay to leave your audience in the dark, as long as the main character is there in the dark with them.
However, this doesn't work all the time. Maybe you just have to be magic to make it work.
And I'm not even going to discuss the Harry Potter movies, because I've only ever seen the first and third, and I hate them on principle (Damn it, my cousin's were READING until those movies came along! With those movies out they no longer see a point to read! "Because those popular books are movies now")