Hey ya'll, it's Marie here. I've been thinking about doing discussion posts for a while now, and I've finally decided to start doing it.
So, because I just saw the VAMPIRE ACADEMY movie, I want to talk about book to movie adaptations. The good...and the bad.
To be completely honest, I
really liked this movie. Zoey Deutch was the perfect Rose, and while wasn't crazy about Lucy Fry as Lissa at first, I really grew to like her. Zoey and Lucy's chemistry together really captured Rose and Lissa's. And the male supporting cast was not bad either.
And yet, only a whopping 10% of critics on
Rotten Tomatoes actually liked it. I didn't know why so many people hated it, but when I got to thinking about it, it made sense. I feel like the way they marketed it was wrong. They made it sound like it was supposed to be a mash-up of Mean Girls and Twilight, but it is really something totally separate from both of those movies. Sure, it has a Mean Girls vibe to it, but I think people went into it expecting something totally different than what they got.
Divergent, on the other hand, I really didn't like all that much. I loved the books (the first two, anyways), and I was impressed that they stayed close to the story, but I feel that this one failed with the actors and the set.
First, the actors for Peter, Will, and Al all looked way too similar. I kept getting confused on who was who. Second, I feel like they tried to make Shailene Woodley a Jennifer Lawrence, when she's not. Don't get me wrong, she's still a great actress, but the way they shot the camera angles and put so much focus on her face reminded me too much of what they did with Jennifer Lawrence in the Hunger Games. (But I still love them both.)
The other issue I had was the set. It was just so....plain. I understood Abnegation being plain, but I was disappointed with how boring the Dauntless compound was. It just looked like a basement in a warehouse. They could have done more to make it look really badass and less plain.
There are other adaptions though that, for me, hit everything spot on such as....
Aragorn *swoon*
These movies were almost perfect. Even though they left some characters out and changed things around a bit, the whole essence of these movies captured the books perfectly. THIS IS HOW ADAPTIONS SHOULD BE DONE. YOU GO PETER JACKSON!!
The Hunger Games did a great job of this too. I had doubts about Jennifer Lawrence at first, but her performance blew me away. The rest of the cast is great, AND it stayed true to the story. DOUBLE WIN!
Of course, there is also the amazing-ness that is Harry Potter. For EIGHT WHOLE MOVIES they stayed true to the story, and had a perfect cast, who all aged very well. *cough* Neville *cough*
Then you have those that didn't work out so well, like Percy Jackson, but we're not even going to get into those, or else this would turn into a rant.
What do you all think? What were some adaptions that you thought were good or bad? COMMENT AWAY!!
