Huge letdowns. Major mistakes. Should be a crime. And yet they still rack up millions of dollars in disappointment. Why can’t Hollywood ever get it right? Each month there seems to be another movie coming out on an extremely popular young adult book. All the fans get hyped up, pre-order their tickets, and have nervous-breakdowns in anticipation of the midnight premier.
But every year, the same thing happens. Hollywood botches it. They destroy parts of the plot-line, take out the best scenes, and add in useless violence scenes that only make everything worse. So why do we bother?
Well, every once in a while, a producer comes along who can actually get at least some of right. Were all hoping on that 1-in-10 chance that our favorite book will get that producer. And there’s no real way to tell which producer is which. Our minds become wrapped around that shred of hope, refusing all the bad reviews in the Newspapers, not googling whether its worth-while to watch or not because we want to be surprised when we watch it. We don’t want everything that was wrong to be spoiled for us, we want to be the ones who feel agonized or delighted through each step of the movie.
SPOILER ALERT: If you have not yet seen Ender’s Game the movie, skip over the next paragraph.
With the recent release of Ender’s Game, and the release of Catching Fire on its way, we’re 1-for-1 so far this November. In huge failures. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to watch Ender’s Game, but it was agonizing watching all the small and big things that the messed up on, left out, or changed. First of all, Bean did not come on the same shuttle launch as Ender. Second, there was not nearly enough scenes in the battle room. They did a tremendous job with their rendition of the battle room, but I think they could have added a lot more battles, or maybe a montage of incredible and valiant wins. They also left out a whole bunch of other components and shrunk the whole movie down. If there was ever a movie that needed to be divided into two parts, that was the one. Hopefully Catching Fire, will be the 1-in-10 movie. They did a pretty good job making the original Hunger Games book a movie, so enthusiasts will be looking forward to the next movie.
Gone With The Wind is to this day has the highest inflation-adjusted worldwide gross in the movie-into-book industry with a whopping $6.25 billion. That’s more than double the $2.25 billion that the next best movie, The Exorcist, has. An average 36 movies based on books come out every year, with this year only having 19. Last years numbers were also unusually low with only 26 movies. The average rating for movies based on books is only 3 out of 5 stars on average. Life of Pi and The Lorax are considered among some of the worst movie adaptations of books ever.

Some books would have great movies. Others would make crappy movies. When you look at it, the casting does not make much of a difference during film adaptations of movies, its how the plot is arrainged. Everyone always makes a big deal over the actors and gives them all the credit if the movie is marvelous, and places the blame on them if it is horrendous. Most credit should go to the director and producer. Little credit should go to the actors and costume designers. Little credit should go to the graphic designers and animators (although they deserve more than the actors).

I don’t see how the producers could botch a film so badly. I don’t see how the producers could get the plot so wrong. I don’t see how the producers could expect to make more money by altering the book. The sole reason that someone would go to watch the movie, is to see their favorite book come to life on the big screen, not some lousy spin-off that can’t even get the characters hair color right. If the producers wanted money, then why not try and keep the movie as close to the beloved book as possible, that way fans will want to buy the movie afterwards. I can understand editing a little to make it more understandable for people who haven’t read the book, but come on now.

Who would see a movie if it was rated poorly? Few people.

Who would see a movie if the producer and the director were horrible? Almost nobody.

Who would see a movie if it left out key plot points from the book it was based on? Is that even a question?

I have a dream that one day, Hollywood will get it right, and it will become a 9-in-10 chance of being a good movie adaptation. May dreams may be far off, but if I could write a letter to everyone who makes movies, I would. And if they didn’t follow my suggestions, I would personally fire Hollywood and rehire a whole new set of people.
I, on behalf of all movie and book fans out there, am saying: “Come on Hollywood, you’re given a plotline, with characters and everything. You don’t have to create anything, you don’t even need a huge sense of imagination. JUST GET IT R-I-G-H-T ALREADY. Thank you.”