Should Directors Play God with Novels?

I may have been the last person to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and it got me thinking about artistic licence. Namely, how much should a director be allowed to change from the original source material? The Hobbit was a great film—don’t get me wrong— but it was very different from the book. It had a host of new characters and much of the action was created by the screenplay writers and not J.R.R Tolkien.

The film added layers of depth that weren’t in the book. For one, it connected The Hobbit with Lord of the Rings more directly, secondly, it characterized the Orcs more by giving them a back story, and thirdly it added more female characters and a hint of a love story. There could be arguments made for the inclusion or the exclusion of this material but the fact remains whatever Peter Jackson filmed, it wasn’t The Hobbit. Why he chose to add so much and change the story line can be forever debated, but there is one thing that Tolkien fans will point out: The Hobbit was perfectly fine the way it was and it didn’t need to be changed. I understand some books just aren’t made for the silver screen and therefore changes have to be made.

Films need to be visual and often they need to condense the story into two hours. Sometimes first person stories don’t work because a lot of the action is in the main character’s head.Stanley Kubrick had a habit of twisting the source material into a cinematic masterpiece. I found A Clockwork Orange a huge struggle to get through. Anthony Burgess used a large amount of made-up slang in his novel which made reading it a definite challenge. In contrast, Kubrick’s version is visually stunning with his beautiful tracking shots and perfect editing.However, Kubrick version of Lolita is one film that differs unnecessarily from the novel version. Although Vladimir Nabokov had a hand in writing the film, large parts of his screenplay weren’t used. Adrian Lyne proved in his 1997 version that Lolita could adhere much closer to the novel without any ill effects and indeed I consider it just as good of a film, if not better than the Stanley Kubrick—and this is coming from a huge admirer of Kubrick and Nabokov.

Richard Matheson who wrote I Am Legend has often been frustrated with his film versions of his book. He was quoted as saying, “I don’t know why Hollywood is fascinated with my story when they never care to film it as I wrote it.”He has a point. The book version doesn’t need to be changed. It’s cinematic and very filmable the way it is without any changes. Of course it’s not perfect but what’s the point of going through the trouble of adapting a book if the end result is completely different?In No Country for Old Men the Coen brothers basically shot the book written by the brilliant Cormac McCarthy and won several Oscars for it. Perhaps filmmakers would do well to adhere to novel versions a little more closer.

What do you think? Should film versions stay true to the novel? Or once the rights have been bought should the director have free licence to shoot whatever he or she wants?

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