Far too often a good book, or even a good series is ruined by the big screen, but occasionally the producers get it right.
In recent years we have seen more books, particularly YA novels, that have been taken to Hollywood. From the Hunger Games to Mortal Instruments, we have seen success and bitter failure.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are an amazing trio of books, and when converted to the screen I was overjoyed to find that the films are so close to the novels there is little to complain about.
This is the kind of success which is so rarely seen. The Maze Runner series for example has, in my opinion, been ruined by it's movie counter parts, with characters and scenes twisted beyond recognition and the actual storyline being brutally butchered in the second film adaptation The Scorch Trials.
I find that a lot of the time when a book is taken to screen poorly, it is because the producers behind the Hollywood production have taken out the slower scenes, the ones which set out the storyline and create the atmosphere of the book. In The Scorch Trials film for example, we were introduced to a huge number of 'maze survivors' when in fact in the books there were only two maze groups, and they didn't meet till mid-way through the book.
The Mortal Instruments, a film adaptation of Casandra Clares too long-a-book series, was more of a joke than the novels themselves had been. Taking the only credible parts of the storyline and throwing them to the wind. While Divergent sits on the cusp between getting it wrong and getting it right. The film adaptations stick to the core storyline and have even cast the characters well, but the first film took action beyond passion in many of the main scenes leaving the following film series on delicate foundations.
It is an awful shame to see novels which we have loved and enjoyed torn apart by the big-shots of Hollywood and, far to often, by poorly cast celebrities. Which is why when movies such as The Hunger Games arrive in the cinema's, and are so exact to the novels themselves, I can not be anything but overjoyed, electing to rave about the film all the more due to it's closeness to the books I had loved.