Yes...Another Rant Book (OLD discontinued)

Bad Movie Adaptations

If a director takes up making the movie adaptation of a book, comic book series, T.V show or any of the sort, they're already in a dangerous situation. But you know what? With proper actors, research on the source material, respect for the source material, time management, and good directing, this adaptation could be a success. Sadly, this doesn't happen often. 

Honestly, there's no excuse for failing on a movie adaptation. You already have a fanbase, you already have characters and a story, and you can even reference the source material. I just don't understand...it's an adaptation, not fan-fiction! Of course, very few directors can tell the difference. They just want to make the green stuff. They'll throw in any kind of convoluted bullshit under the delusion that it'll attract more viewers. Newsflash asshole, if the source is popular enough, you don't need to attract more viewers. Stay true to the story. Most of the time, people who don't know the source material will come check it out on their own. So how about focusing on not pissing off the people who do know the source material?

People have ranted about this movie countless times, but I'm going to rant about it anyway. Remember M Night Shyamalan's adaptation The Last Airbender? I'll give you a moment to cringe. Yeah, that heaping pile of horseshit failed on every conceivable level. Not only did it fail miserably at bringing the beloved T.V show to the big screen, it didn't even hold up as an independent movie. The acting sucked, the script sucked, and he butchered the story and characters. He didn't even let them pronounce their goddamn names right! His name is Aang, not Ong dipshit! The T.V show was beautiful. Exactly how could you fail so hard at making it a movie? People always give child actors shit, but I've seen some really badass child actors. Why didn't you take the time to find them? God..I just can't even...moving on. I needed to get that out. 

You know what's really annoying? When people tell me "oh you just have to read the book to get it". Why exactly? I know I said they really only need the people who know the source material, but the movie can also attract casual moviegoers. So that being said, don't just throw the story together and rely on the fact that people read the book and know what's going on. An adaptation should be efficient enough in its own storytelling so that the casual viewer can also know what's going on without having to refer to the source material. 

What gets me even more is when people defend the shit out of a bad adaptation. I saw the movie adaptation of Divergent. I didn't like it, not at all. The characters had no personality and the plot moved along sluggishly. So guess what everyone else told me? "Oh well they do the characters better in the book." Okay then, good for the book. But I came to see the movie. I shouldn't have to read the book to get attached to the characters in the movie. That means the adaptation sucked. I'm not saying anything about the Divergent series because I haven't read it. I'm just pointing out that the movie for it wasn't good. This goes along with efficient storytelling. 

Now, another common defense for this is "well they didn't have enough time". The characters are already made and developed for the directors in the book! You're telling me they just "didn't have time" for the characters? This is just an example of poor time management. If they include random unimportant events from the book cluttering up the movie, then yeah. They didn't have enough time. "But then it'll piss off the source material people when they don't include that one scene!" Personally, if I was going to watch an adaptation of my favorite book series, I'd want them to get characters and plot right. I'd gladly sacrifice the scene where Bob walks to his mailbox so that there's more time for good character development. It'd piss me off more if they had all the scenes but the adapation was shitty overall. See what I mean? But...I guess that's just me? Someone's getting pissed off either way, so at least have a good movie. 

You know what I really hate? I touched on this earlier but didn't go into detail. I hate when the directors change stuff. Now, they might change a little detail so that they can manage their time and that's fine. But when they completely change a scene for absolutely no reason that's just stupid. There's no particular reason for changing it, they just did because they wanted to. It makes no sense.