Liturature and film Comparison and Contrast Essay

[dr_fumbles_mcstupid]

 

Last semester I took a literature and Film class at Pima community college. It was one of the best writing classes I have ever taken. We read The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the wardrobe, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Frankenstein and Dracula and compared them to the movies. It was fun to look at the different ways directors turned the book into a movie. One of the fields I am looking at going into is the Film industry and when I read a good book I always think “how could this be turned into a movie?” It was a little annoying in the class because there were so many people saying “This was missing or different!” In some cases I could see it was important but for the most part a book can’t be translated directly into a movie. There are a lot of things that wouldn’t work. We had many debates in that class and I cherished crushing my opponents with my infallible logic! Anyways For the final we had to write a comparison and contrast essay about one book and a film adaptation. I chose to do Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I chose to do the forbidden Forest Scene. I think I brought up a lot of good points and it was a fun essay to write.

Editing and Imagery:

The Key to a Good Movie Adaptation

 

When going to see a movie based on a book there is a saying that always comes to mind. “The book is always better than the movie.”  In my case this saying has almost always been true.  When taking a book and turning it in into a movie you can’t include everything, if you took the book and used it word for word as a script you would get a six hour long movie.  Not only would people not sit through a movie that long, some things don’t translate well from book to film.  So what is needed to take a book and make a good film adaptation?  The key to making a good film adaptation of a book is editing and imagery.  The screenwriter and the director have to decide what parts aren’t needed to tell the story and what parts can be moved around to make the film flow in a more fluid way. The director also has to find a way to take descriptions in the book and make images out of them.  Without good editing and imagery you can still get a good film, it just won’t be a film that is true to the book.

One example of a good film adaptation is Chris Columbus’ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  This movie is an adaptation of the first book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.  The movie was released in 2001 and J.K. Rowling had finished the fourth book in the series and was working on the fifth.  

The scene I will be examining in this essay is the forbidden forest scene. In the book it starts on page 242 and runs until page 261, while the movie adaptation starts 1:42:29 at and ends at 1:48:59.  I will be examining what was changed from the book, what has stayed the same, and how things were portrayed visually.

The set up for this scene in the movie is that Ron Harry and Hermione are caught at Hagrid’s hut by Draco.  Draco on finding this out immediately runs to tells Professor McGonagall that the golden trio was out. Professor McGonagall gives all four of them, including Draco detention for being out of their quarters at night.  The scene then changes to Filch takin the children to Hagrid to find a unicorn in the forbidden forest.  Harry and Draco split up into one team while Hermione and Hagrid make up the other.

There are many key differences in the film from the Novel.  To start off Harry and Hermione are out of their quarters at night because they are bringing Norbert (Hagrid’s dragon) to the top of the astronomy tower for Charlie (Ron’s older brother) to take to Romania.  They are caught by Filch on their way down the stairs after succesfuly getting rid of Norbert.  Ron is not there to get any detention, instead Nevile is out because he is trying to warn Harry and Hermione that Draco is trying to get them in trouble.

Although the Movie adaptation is different, it is not a bad thing,it was actualy a very smart move.  The trio are caught at Hagrid’s Hut with the dragon so the whole subplot of smuggling the dragon out from the castle is taken away.  Why Norbert is gone is instead explained in one line said by Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) at 1:42:13 “Norbert’s gone, Dumbledore sent him off to Romania to live in a colony.” So even though they took out a whole sub-plot from the book, they still end up at the same place.

In The book Norbert stays with Hagrid for a longer ammount of time than he does in the movie, but the love that Hagrid has for the dragon is succusfully portrayed in just a couple of lines.  Emma Watson (Hermione) stars off the conversation at 1:42:19 by saying “Well that’s good isn’t it?  He’ll be with his own kind.” and Hagrid responds with “Yeah, but what if he don't like Romania?  What if the other dragons are mean to him? He's only a baby after all”. This line combined with the emotion and acting of Robbie Coltrane succesfuly portray in three lines what took pages of the book to show.

Nevile is also taken out of this scene and replaced with Ron.  In the book Ron is layed up with a nasty dragon bite so he could’t go with Harry and Hermione to get rid of Norbert.  By changing the third character who has to go into the forest from Nevile to Ron we get more face time with a main character. In books we are used to having many supporting characters who are only in one or two scenes throughout the book, but in a movie it is harder to do that.  The audience expects a clear main hero with one or two supporting charaters, there are a cst of other charchters who have more minor roles, but the main and supporting characters are the people who nee the most face time.  In books you get hundreds of pages to know a character, but in a movie you only have two to three hours.  Therefore the more time you get with the main cast the better.

In the movie after Hagrid leads the kids into the forbidden forest he leans over to examine some shiny liquid on the ground.  The liquid is unicorn’s blood. This little scene is a good example of interperatation and imagry.  In the book the only description we get of unicorn’s blood is “ “Look there,” said Hagrid, “see that stuff shinin’ on the ground? [That]Silvery stuff? That’s unicorn blood” (Rowling 250).  From that short sentence we gat a shiny liquid that looks almost metalic (Figure1) and that runs through Hagrid’s hands like paint(figure2).

Another good example of imagry is in the scene reight after Hagrid shows the unicorn’s blood.  In the book on page 252 there is a line that describes a noise “Something was slithering over dead lead leaves nearby: it sounded like a cloak trailing along the ground. Hagrid was squinting up the path, but after a few seconds, the sound faded away”.  In a movie the sound of a slithering cloak wouldn’t be effective as a visual image.  Instead of hearing a cloak harry hears the wind and looks to the left (Figure 3). While he looks to the left the audience sees a mysterious hooded figure walk through the fog(Figure 4).  Actualy seeing the cloaked person has a lot more powerful effect than just hearing a sound.

One scene that they cut out entirely is the first meeting of the Centaurs.  In the book it takes place between pages 252 through 254.  The introduction of the centaurs is not a huge plot point of the story but it was an interesting one.  Throughout the two pages of dialouge we learn a lot about the centaur culture and there is foreshadowing of the future of this book and the books that are yet to come that is missed.  Since the movie only runs two hours and thirty-eight minutes they could have spared ten extra minutes for the centaurs, but taking this scene out didn’t take away from the story. Sometimes taking out a scene isn’t a good or a bad thing, it’s just the directors decesion.

One difference from the book that comes from taking Nevile out of the scene is that instead of pairning Draco off with one of the other characters first, he is immediately paired up with Harry.  In the book Draco is paired up with Nevile first.  Draco scares Nevile into throwing up red sparks (the signal Hagrid told them to use if they were in trouble) and Hagrid brings them back to the group and takes Nevile with him and Hermione and sticks Draco with Harry.  By immidiatly pairing Harry with Draco we eliminate that short scene and give more time to important things in the movie.

One very good example or editing imagry is found at 01:46:46 in the movie.  In the book it describes the hooded creature as “Crawling” (Rowling 256) but in film a creature crawling towards you at a fast pace would look like a spider.  Instead of having the creature crawling towards Harry they have it glide (figure 6) towards him.  Visualy in this case it is a better choice than crawling.  The gliding makes the figure seem more mysterious and powerful, while the close up of the creature’s face with unicorn’s blood adds horror to the scene. If it the director kept the creature crawling   it would have still been horrifying, but in a more horror film type of way.

But not all changes in the movie were good.  The forbidden forest was changed to the dark forest in the movie.  It was probaly changed to make the forest sound more foreboding but the name just didn’t work in the movie. To change the name of a major landmark in a story is something that you should just not do.  Instead of giving the forest a more foreboding feel it just succeeding in making the fans angry.

One nice thing about this movie is that a lot of the lines come directly from the book itself.  On page 248 in Harry Potter and the Sorcerers stone in the third paragraph Filch says “It’s a pity they let the old punishments die out… hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days, I’ve got the chains still in my office, Keem ‘em well oiled in case they’re ever needed…”.  While in the movie at 1:42:36 Filch says “A pity they let the old punishments die. There was a time detention would find you hangning by your thumbs in the dungeons. God I miss the screaming”.  The two lines are not exactly the same but they are almost.  The way they changed the line in the movie is good.  Filch is in the movie for a relativly short ammount of time and this line realy helps get his personality across.  In the movie they change “hanging by your wrists” to “hanging by your thumbs”.  This change from wrist to thumbs makes the punishment more brutal and shows what a cruel man Filch is.  By adding the line “God I miss the screaming.” It not only shows Filch’s character but adds a little humor as well.

The Filch scene is not the only scene where they use almost the same line, Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) also has a line that almost exactly as it is in the book. On page 249 Draco says  “The Forest?  He repeated, and he didn’t sound quite as cool as usual. “We can’t go in there at night – there’s all sorts of things in there – werewolves, I heard”.  While in the movie Draco says “ The forest? I thought that was a joke. We Can’t go in there.  Students aren’t allowed. And there are – werewolves”.  The lines are different but you can eailsy see that the one from the movie came from the book. The line in the movie has three purposes. The first purpose is that Draco reminds us that the students aren’t allowed into the forest.  In the book this is repeated two or three times, but in the movie it is only mentioned once at the opening feast when Dumbledore announces that students are not to go into the Dark forest.  The second purpose is to show us more of Draco’s character.  In the movie Draco only has a few scenes, where in the book we have a lot more time to learn his character. The line shows that Draco only has a front of courage, and combined with the lines later on in thisscene, these lines realy gives the viewer a sense of Draco’s character. The last purpose is to build tension. Right after Tom felton delivers the line “there are all sorts of things in there” we hear a wolf howling off in the distance.  This sets the tone for the rest of the scene.

One of the other lines that is taken almost word for word from the book comes from page 251 of the novel.  After finding out that he is going to be paired up with Nevile Draco says “I want Fang.” said Malfoy quickly, looking at Fang’s long teeth . “’All right, but I warn yeh, he’s a coward,”. In the movie only a couple words are changed.  Draco says “Okay, then I get fang!” and Hagrid replys with “Fine.  Just so you know he’s a bloody coward”.  Only a few words from that line are changed, but the lines that are changed make this a more humourous moment, if you add in the seriousness of Hagrid’s face when he says his line and the close up of Fang whining (Figure 5) it adds a huge sense of comedy to the scene.

The lines that Steve Kloves (the writer of the Scrrenplay) decided to keep from the book realy help to make this a good book adaptation.  Some of the lines have one or two words that are different, but if you were to read the book and then watch the movie you could still pick out the lines that were taken from the book.  This is a smart move for any screenwriter because it is throwing the fans a bone to gnaw on. So many fans will hate a movie for straying from the book even just a little, so throwing in lines like these will give the movie reedeming qualities in the fan’s eyes.

One of the best things about this movie is the attention that is paid to detail.  On page 256 Firenze is introduced and he is described as having “white-blonde hair and a palomino body”.  It is hard to see in the lighting of the movie but Firenze clearly has a palomino body(Figure 7).  This sort of attention to detail shows just how much the director loved the book he was working with.

When turning a book into a movie you have to be aware of many things.  You have to know which scenes are crucial to the plotline, which characters need more face-time, what thing need to be changed to work on the big screen, how to move scenes around to create a fluid exciting veiwing experience that is true to the book, and how to throw in small detail that will keep the rabid fans from disliking your film.  Chris Columbus took Steve Kloves’ script and turned it into not only a movie that would sell well, but also a movie that was true to the book.