Think About It: No Thanks, I'll Wait For the Book
Recently, a friend of mine asked me if I planned on seeing The DaVinci Code, that new Tom Hanks/Ron Howard flick that people seem to be talking about. I was undecided, I told him, because as I always try to do, I read the book first and I didn’t particularly care for it. Actually, this is being generous. The truth is, I thought it stunk.
Now if you’re either of the people who have been trapped in a mountaineering accident in the Eastern Himalayas for the last five years, let me briefly explain what the book is about. Robert Langdon (who in the book is explicitly mentioned as resembling Harrison Ford, making Hanks a casting faux pas), an expert in symbols and codes, is called to a murder scene in the Louvre museum where a series of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo DaVinci sends him on a hunt for the truth about the Holy Grail .The book has created a lot of controversy because of some of the accusations it makes about the early Church and its teachings. However, the reason I didn’t like it has nothing to do with the content or my own Catholicism. I disliked it for the reason men have disliked books since Gutenberg (with the help of Danson and Sellick) invented movable type: it sucked.
I love symbols, I love codes and I love a good treasure hunt, all of which were significant elements in my decision to read the book in the first place. (I’m confident enough in my faith that I’m not worried about some potboiler wrecking it.) However, half the book is written like a textbook, and in 20,000 years of human civilization mankind has yet to discover a way to make a textbook entertaining. The characters frequently lapse into dry explanations of a code, a word or a work of art, killing the story’s momentum. Sometimes they do this with elements that have nothing to do with the plot. Imagine a scene in a movie where Indiana Jones is being chased through ancient ruins only to stop and explain to the rampaging Nazis the significance of the third glyph from the bottom over there in the corner next to the stone yak with the alligator feet. Then he starts running again. That’s what reading The DaVinci Code was like.
A far greater sin than being boring, however, is that the author often cheats his readers when it comes to solving the puzzles. Many, many times he refrains from giving us the whole clue until after the characters have solved the puzzle. They then explain how they reached their conclusion and congratulate each other on being so clever. I, on the other hand, was left thinking, “Well if you’d given us the whole verse instead of just the first two lines, I could have figured it out too. And I don’t even need a PhD.”
Half the fun of reading this kind of story is testing yourself against the characters to see if you can beat them at solving the mystery. But if they have the clues and you don’t, the fun is gone.
"Knock knock."
"Who’s there?"
"Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?"
Uproarious laughter.
Same thing.
Now my friend has not read the book at all and, in fact, tells me he doesn’t like reading a book that has been made into a movie because one is bound to be better than the other. This is true. But personally, I consider the author’s intent to be paramount, and I judge the movies by how well they translate. Some movie fans I know say that isn’t fair, that I should treat the book and movie as separate entities. I say these are people who have never written a book.
If someone made a movie out of my first book (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT), Other People’s Heroes - available at Amazon.com - and it ended with Josh Corwood killing Doc Noble and running off with Annie to live like bunnies, I’d be pretty ticked off. That would in no way resemble my story and - dammit - it is my story. So shouldn’t I feel just as passionately about Stanley Kubrick totally changing the ending of The Shining into something Stephen King never intended? I know lots of people who consider it one of the best horror movies ever made, but having read the book, I just can’t get over how badly the story was mangled.
This is not to say there should never be any changes. Truth is, most stories simply could not survive an exact translation from page to screen. If Peter Jackson had adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s work word-for-word, why, those Lord of the Rings movies may actually have been long. Can you imagine? But although Jackson left out Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire, although he moved the death of Boromir from the beginning of part two to the end of part one, although he did all manner of storytelling gymnastics with the encounter with Shelob, I still feel he captured the spirit and intent of Tolkien’s words, and so I can judge those films as a success. Plus they are responsible for my longstanding crush on Miranda Otto.
I am steadfast in my belief that books are the greatest thing ever invented, with the possible exception of the bacon cheeseburger. But it’s so easy to contort them on their way to the big screen that I get scared sometimes. Is it possible that The DaVinci Code could go the other way, turn a mediocre book into a good movie? Anything’s possible. But I still may just hold out for the film adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible. That man wrote a lot of books.
Blake M. Petit just got a call from his movie buddy. He’s going to see it, unless he can make a convincing case for Over the Hedge. Contact him with comments, suggestions or to guess the few books that are surpassed by the film adaptation at BlakePT@cox.net, visit him on the web at Evertime Realms and view the Evertime Realms Livejournal,
blakemp
Now if you’re either of the people who have been trapped in a mountaineering accident in the Eastern Himalayas for the last five years, let me briefly explain what the book is about. Robert Langdon (who in the book is explicitly mentioned as resembling Harrison Ford, making Hanks a casting faux pas), an expert in symbols and codes, is called to a murder scene in the Louvre museum where a series of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo DaVinci sends him on a hunt for the truth about the Holy Grail .The book has created a lot of controversy because of some of the accusations it makes about the early Church and its teachings. However, the reason I didn’t like it has nothing to do with the content or my own Catholicism. I disliked it for the reason men have disliked books since Gutenberg (with the help of Danson and Sellick) invented movable type: it sucked.
I love symbols, I love codes and I love a good treasure hunt, all of which were significant elements in my decision to read the book in the first place. (I’m confident enough in my faith that I’m not worried about some potboiler wrecking it.) However, half the book is written like a textbook, and in 20,000 years of human civilization mankind has yet to discover a way to make a textbook entertaining. The characters frequently lapse into dry explanations of a code, a word or a work of art, killing the story’s momentum. Sometimes they do this with elements that have nothing to do with the plot. Imagine a scene in a movie where Indiana Jones is being chased through ancient ruins only to stop and explain to the rampaging Nazis the significance of the third glyph from the bottom over there in the corner next to the stone yak with the alligator feet. Then he starts running again. That’s what reading The DaVinci Code was like.
A far greater sin than being boring, however, is that the author often cheats his readers when it comes to solving the puzzles. Many, many times he refrains from giving us the whole clue until after the characters have solved the puzzle. They then explain how they reached their conclusion and congratulate each other on being so clever. I, on the other hand, was left thinking, “Well if you’d given us the whole verse instead of just the first two lines, I could have figured it out too. And I don’t even need a PhD.”
Half the fun of reading this kind of story is testing yourself against the characters to see if you can beat them at solving the mystery. But if they have the clues and you don’t, the fun is gone.
"Knock knock."
"Who’s there?"
"Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?"
Uproarious laughter.
Same thing.
Now my friend has not read the book at all and, in fact, tells me he doesn’t like reading a book that has been made into a movie because one is bound to be better than the other. This is true. But personally, I consider the author’s intent to be paramount, and I judge the movies by how well they translate. Some movie fans I know say that isn’t fair, that I should treat the book and movie as separate entities. I say these are people who have never written a book.
If someone made a movie out of my first book (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT), Other People’s Heroes - available at Amazon.com - and it ended with Josh Corwood killing Doc Noble and running off with Annie to live like bunnies, I’d be pretty ticked off. That would in no way resemble my story and - dammit - it is my story. So shouldn’t I feel just as passionately about Stanley Kubrick totally changing the ending of The Shining into something Stephen King never intended? I know lots of people who consider it one of the best horror movies ever made, but having read the book, I just can’t get over how badly the story was mangled.
This is not to say there should never be any changes. Truth is, most stories simply could not survive an exact translation from page to screen. If Peter Jackson had adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s work word-for-word, why, those Lord of the Rings movies may actually have been long. Can you imagine? But although Jackson left out Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire, although he moved the death of Boromir from the beginning of part two to the end of part one, although he did all manner of storytelling gymnastics with the encounter with Shelob, I still feel he captured the spirit and intent of Tolkien’s words, and so I can judge those films as a success. Plus they are responsible for my longstanding crush on Miranda Otto.
I am steadfast in my belief that books are the greatest thing ever invented, with the possible exception of the bacon cheeseburger. But it’s so easy to contort them on their way to the big screen that I get scared sometimes. Is it possible that The DaVinci Code could go the other way, turn a mediocre book into a good movie? Anything’s possible. But I still may just hold out for the film adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible. That man wrote a lot of books.
Blake M. Petit just got a call from his movie buddy. He’s going to see it, unless he can make a convincing case for Over the Hedge. Contact him with comments, suggestions or to guess the few books that are surpassed by the film adaptation at BlakePT@cox.net, visit him on the web at Evertime Realms and view the Evertime Realms Livejournal,
blakemp