Don't Fix What Isn't Broken

The “Hunger Games” movie opens this week and I have to admit that I am terrified to go see it.  I’m not terrified because it looks bad or because it was a bad book.  On the contrary, the trailers all make the film look great and the book was very entertaining.  I am terrified because I have been down this road before with good books that have been made into movies and am usually left disappointed.

A perfect example of this experience is the new movie “John Carter”.  I read “A Princess of Mars”, which is the basis for the film, a few weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  While not in the same class as “Dune”, its character development and the author’s ability to create an alien world reminded me of Frank Herbert’s classic.

Then I saw the trailers for the Disney film and was crushed.  The characters and environment all looked drastically different from how they were described in the book.  A quick check of Wikipedia then confirmed what I had dreaded.  The plot had been drastically altered to down play the story and play up the action.  Needless to say, I no longer want to go anywhere near this film.

It has been said before and will probably be said again, but why can’t movie producers just leave well enough alone?  Great books naturally lend themselves to becoming great feature films as long as the producers, writers, and directors just tell the story as it was written by the author.  The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which is my all-time favorite set of books, is a perfect example of this.  The director stayed true to the books and produced three of my favorite movies of all time.

I cannot avoid seeing the film since my sister would disown me if I didn’t go see it with her to see it.  I can only hope that the creators of the Hunger Games film follow the path set out by the Lord of the Rings.  If they didn’t then it will just become another addition to the already long list of books that became movies I wish I had never seen.