Book Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier - The Book of the Film
Book of the Film. I’ve always had a soft spot for novelisations of films and TV programs that I’ve enjoyed. Back in my younger days when getting one’s hands on a VHS copy (and later, DVD) of said work to watch again was not something easily done, novelisations were my chance to relive the story. Frequently they would have the deleted scenes included in this era before ‘special features’ and expand on the characterisations because there wasn’t the time limit that came with a film or TV episode.
When I happened to see that there was a novelisation of Captain America: The Winter Soldierin the Scholastic Bookclub catalogue at school (perk of being a teacher!), to say I was a bit excited is somewhat of an understatement. There may have been some squeeing. I do have a serious case of Cap and Winter Soldier fangirlitis. It was also at a quite reasonable price and ordering books through Bookclub helps the schools I teach at get extra books for the library, so I ordered it.
I got it knowing full well it would be the Junior Novelisation; that doesn’t always put me off. There are some quite skilled novelisations of stories to make it more accessible to a younger reader whose reading skills aren’t quite at the same level as that of an adult like me. I understand that sometimes concepts need to be altered to be more ‘age appropriate’, depending on the age of the target reader. A good novelisation will do this.
This is not a good novelisation.
A good novelisation does not cut out huge chunks of the story. I’m not taking little things here and there. I could understand toning down some of the Captain’s snarky lines or some of the violence in the fight scenes - but cutting out the entire third act of the film? That was the first thing that got to me. One of my favourite scenes is right at the end of the line film and when I got the book, I turned to that straight away to see how the author had written it up and compare it to a version I had done myself for a tumblr writing challenge… and it wasn’t there. The entire Big Bad plot line is cut out of the junior novelisation. Scenes earlier in the book that are left in don’t make sense without this. Characters that are supposed to die have their plotline rewritten so they live. Other action scenes are rewritten out of almost whole cloth. The story stops almost suddenly, on a cliff hanger. I’ve yet to see if there’s a second book that deals with the third of the movie that’s been left out.
I’d be willing to put money on that at least half of the plot of the film is missing.
The target age group for book is upper primary school/lower high school (about Year 5 ~ 8). There’s a good chance that these kids have already seen the movie. If I were reading this book after seeing Winter Solider back when I was their age, I would be so insulted that so much of the story - most of the good parts, actually - was removed. Considering the older end of this target group is already reading books like The Hunger Games and The Hobbit/ The Lord of the Rings, it’s a bit demeaning to assume they can’t handle a bit of government conspiracy and that There Are Bad Things Out There.
Then there’ll be the kids who read this before they see the movie. I can see them now…
This is an ok book, if you haven’t seen the movie first. If you have… to quote the Captain: ‘son, just don’t’. This is a bad novelisation. It shouldn’t even have ‘book of the film’ on it, because it really isn’t.
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