The Best and Worst Book to Screen Adaptations Part II

When great stories hit the screen, sometimes you get magic, and sometimes you don't

Last week, we wrapped up Season 5 of The Novel Tea podcast with an episode discussing all things adaptations, including adaptation theory, how our views on book-to-screen adaptations have changed over the season, and common themes in the texts we analyzed over this year so far.

Adapting any text to the screen is a monumental challenge. By nature, novels generally focus on interiority, emotion, and subtext, whereas their respective adaptations have to incorporate this through an entirely different toolset. Cinematography uses lighting, sound, visuals, settings, performance, and movement to tell their story, which can sometimes better and build on the original text, but sometimes it can diminish it as well.

Here are six adaptations that left a mark on me - three that were brought to life beautifully, and three that missed the mark.

The Best

The Princess Bride (1987)

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to die.”

I actually watched this movie before I read it. I was very young and I absolutely loved it. The adventure, romance, sword fights, and ridiculous one-liners (which I am sure most of them went over my head the first couple times I watched this) all hit perfectly. The 1987 movie leans into the absurdity of the story without ever breaking the illusion of it. The set is theatrical, the costumes are borderline wacky, and the choreography of the fights has a ballet-esque movement to them that makes them extremely enjoyable to watch.

Cary Elwes as Westley was everything for me: heroic, hilarious, and just over the top enough that it kept me hooked to the screen. Westley, for all his charm, was hilariously disillusioned and had the same comic intensity and dramatics as Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story, which kept his character light but also endearing. Even as an adult, this performance by Cary Elwes is by far one of my favorite character adaptations. He is constantly walking the line of sincerity and satire, and it totally works for this kind of screenplay.

Reading the book later only deepened my love of this tale. William Goldman’s idea of a story within a story was incredibly fun and brought out a youthful element that I could feel in the screen adaptation. The breaking of the fourth wall allows this idea to be as outrageous and deep as it is, and lets us, as viewers/readers, react and respond to these outbursts in a way that adds to the experience.

The Princess Bride is an example of a perfect adaptation. As a novel, it is enthusiastic, romantic, hilarious, and self-aware. The movie brings out these elements convincingly, and its themes of love, friendship, and revenge are powerful and simple enough to carry it on its own.

Dune (2021 & 2024)

Fear is the mind-killer.

I’ll be honest, I did not love reading Dune by Frank Herbert. This book was so long, the story was meandering, and the writing was dense. The world-building was overcrowded with unfamiliar terminology, and staying focused on the page started to take more effort than I had to offer. I finished the book feeling more relieved than satisfied and tucked it away in the back corner of my bookshelf, never to be revisited again.

Therefore, in 2021, when the first installment of the movie franchise was released, I did not rush to the theater to watch it. In fact, it was months later when I finally got around to throwing it on in the background when I was folding laundry, and surprisingly, I was hooked. Against all odds, Denise Villeneuve made me care.

Immediately, the cinematography felt vast, sprawling, quiet, and full of tension. The character mapping was structured but felt organic and accessible enough for me to keep track of names and faces. Every shot felt intentional, and the desert scenes gave me a sense of overwhelming fear of the unknown.

Visually, the movie captured a sense of awe that the book never did for me. The sound and score (of course, Hans Zimmer will never fail) gave every scene the weight and mood that the words on the page never could. In the book, the story never felt strong enough for me to understand or become invested in, so I never really got around to letting myself love or root for the characters involved. The movie’s star-studded cast gave incredible performances that created an experience I cannot wait to experience in theaters again soon.

Holes (2003)

I can fix that.

Holes was the book that made me fall in love with reading. Louis Sachar’s writing pulled me straight into the desert detention of Camp Green Lake, and for the first time, I was transported.

The movie sticks incredibly close to the book, and at such a young age, I don’t know if I would have been able to comprehend and appreciate any creative liberties that an adaptation can extend itself to do, so later, I really thought my love for this movie may have come from the fact that I didn’t know any better.

However, rewatching this as an adult, I was just as stunned. The movie pays respect to the original story and holds it close to something that almost feels sacred. The camaraderie, friendships, anger, and mystery share the same spirit and essence that the original story told. The pacing, tone, and emotions hold the same weight, and the visuals of this vast, empty desert make you feel lonely and trapped.

This pick is a very personal choice for me because both the book and the movie hold deep emotions and nostalgia that I will never forget, but I hope there are others out there who agree with this choice!

The Worst

The Giver (2014)

Similar to Holes, The Giver holds a special place in my heart. It is one of the first books I read that opened me up to what an imagined world can do for a child’s mind. When I first read this book, it was an amazing experience to be able to conjure up scenes in my mind of how a person would first experience the color blue, or the coldness of snow, or the feeling of love. I read this book over and over, and loved that it made me ask myself questions about life, pain, and the real world.

It seemed that the 2014 movie adaptation didn’t understand the quietness of this dystopian world, but decided to go full Hunger Games and ramp up the action in a way that did not belong. I was baffled at Meryl Streep presenting as the Chief Elder because it felt like a weird attempt to name-drop prestige into a movie that clearly didn’t have the budget or gravitas to back it up. The production design looked cheap, the world-building was hollow, and Streep’s performance just highlighted how out of place the whole movie felt.

Subtlety and subtext were what made the book feel so strong and impactful, but the movie overexplained the world in a way that just makes viewers feel inadequate. This was a story that really could have leaned on beautiful cinematography and visuals to back up the experience of seeing color or feeling emotions for the first time, but these scenes felt short, abrupt, and ultimately flat.

The Polar Express (2004)

The original picture book was calm, quiet, and immersive. It’s all about belief, not just in Santa, but in child-like wonder and awe. This adaptation took a beautiful, subtle story and turned it into a loud rollercoaster of a thrill ride that felt untrue to the original text.

When I read this book at a young age, it felt like a bedtime story. A calming, intimate tale that is almost whispered as you trail off into a dream. The sound of the bells and the train was described to be delicate and almost spiritual, and the characters’ friendships and conflicts were youthful and tender.

The sound design of the movie was terribly obnoxious and made me feel like I had multiple alarms going off at the same time. Let’s put aside the weird, creepy CGI decisions they made in this movie adaptation, because I think we can all agree that it was not great. But not only was it creepy, the expressionless faces and robotic movements distracted the audience from feeling any emotion for the story.

Despite its good intentions and large budget, this movie did not hold the spirit of the picture book, and ultimately failed as an adaptation.

Live Action Anime Movies (All of Them)

At this point, I feel like it is safe to say that any popular anime or manga that is set out to become a live-action movie will be a disaster. There have been a few somewhat decent live-action movies that have come out of the anime world, but none of them have been to the standard of the anime itself. They flatten the characters, strip the story of emotion, speed up the plot to fit within 2 hours, and the wigs are always horribly distracting.

The energy, pacing, dialogue, and character representation do not translate well to a live-action movie. Unless the adaptation decides to go on an entirely different path and use the original story as a loose guideline to build the story, I do not think we will ever see a good version of this. No amount of CGI can fix these issues, but still, every year I see an old anime I love be dipped in Hollywood glamor and come out ruined forever.

Some stories are meant to stay animated… and that’s okay.

—Neha

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Shruti began this season by discussing her favorite and least favorite book-to-screen adaptations in another newsletter. Check it out here!

The Best and Worst Book to Screen Adaptations

Links We Love

• Where are Lucy's friends in Materialists? by

  Soaliha
  - last week, Shruti watched Materialists and had lots of thoughts. This essay perfectly dissects all the problems that this film is riddled with (there was a resounding ‘omg, YES!’ after each paragraph) and offers thoughtful criticism on one of the year’s hottest movies.

• Jane Austen’s Boldest Novel Is Also Her Least Understood [NYT, gift link] - in this essay, Lauren Groff describes the complexities of Austen’s least beloved novel, Mansfield Park. She draws connections between the church and slavery, demonstrating how Austen was cleverly denouncing them both, as she shares her thoughts on what makes Mansfield Park a singular work of fiction.

• Whatever Happened to the Semicolon? by

  Joel J Miller
  - a fascinating account of the semicolon as a punctuation mark, its rise and fall in history, and how language changes with time.