Adaptation and the Hobbit

My last post on The Hobbit got me thinking. The process of adaptation is a tricky one, isn't it? While the existence of a novel, say, gives some advantages in terms of "prepared" characters and plot, in other ways adaptation is probably a more difficult task than writing your own material. Those difficulties arguably multiply if the book being adapted is a beloved and/or acclaimed title. For throughout the process of adaptation you must serve two masters -- doing justice to the book to avoid the pitchforks of angry fans, whilst at the same time crafting a film that is effective in the new medium for all viewers.

Those twin masters will occasionally make seemingly contradictory demands. How does the adaptor approach what might be considered narrative failures in the source material? Maintain them for fidelity's sake or correct them for the film's? The ideal of course is to find some middle way that improves the film experience for the majority whilst not pissing off the fan minority. That's no easy task.

Based on the evidence of the first film, in adapting The Hobbit, I think Peter Jackson's team erred too much on the side of respecting the source material. I remember from The Lord of the Rings DVD special features (I am a film geek), how the writers spoke about their more daring departures from the source text in earlier versions of the script and how as each iteration of the film developed, they moved closer to Tolkien. I wonder now whether that process was actually vital to the crafting of those films -- they first and foremost concentrated on writing them as films, before pulling back in places. Having gone through that process on the earlier films however, perhaps this time they didn't feel the need to pursue more radical surgery first.

That's pure supposition of course, but one does feel watching The Hobbit that the book's every comma has been considered for inclusion and that less attention has been given to the overall story experience. But perhaps that is always the danger when it comes to adapting beloved books that have had years to seep into the public conscience.

By contrast less established books do not offer such problems. Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, for instance, was optioned before it was even released and though a best-seller, it had hardly reached cult untouchable status by the time the film was released. It was in some ways perfect for adaptation, possessing a killer concept and some memorable set-pieces, but not so well-established that the many changes the film had to make would be greatly resisted.

I have read an earlier draft of Jurassic Park which stuck much more rigidly to the book's rather convoluted structure. The presence of this "additional" material however leaves the script feeling rushed as it jolts from plot point to plot point without any sense of the wonder that the novel and finished film conveyed so well. In sticking closely to the book that draft of the script in fact delivered an experience far removed from it.

True fidelity to source material, if that is your aim (some adaptations are more daring in this regard than others), comes in recreating the emotions and experiences felt reading the book, not in transliterating page by page to the screen. The exact mechanics of how those feelings are achieved -- the plot and cast composition etc -- can, and arguably must, change to suit the different media. Ironically enough, when an adaptation fails the audience often blames it on the film's divergence from source material -- I would argue that often the reverse is true, that not enough has been changed.