A few weeks ago, I watched the entire first season of the new Amazon Prime show Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. For me, anything that I can binge through from one episode to the next--this works with movies too, if I can watch them mostly in a single sitting--I place in high regard.
Back in college, a Tom Clancy movie was adapted to the screen: Clear and Present Danger. I posted a blog back in 2012 where I delved into this movie. Although my review of it was based on another movie that had come out at the time, the analysis still holds true.
This brings up another point of contention: do books being adapted to film have to follow the book exactly? My quick answer is: no.
Let me try explain. Books are simply ideas in written form. Movies and TV shows are ideas in theatrical form. There are things that can be done in books that can't be done in movies, and vice versa. And if books were ever made into video games, that opens up a whole new world.
For the new Jack Ryan show, it has absolutely nothing to do with the books. It just expands the stories involving the character of Jack Ryan in a whole new way.
Years ago, I read the book World War Z. I then watched the movie starring Brad Pitt. Guess what? I liked them both. My reason is that they're two takes on the same idea. Could the movie have been more truer to the book? Sure it could have. But it doesn't have to.
There are other shows that have been adapted, like Dr. Hannibal Lecter from the Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon to the TV show Hannibal.
Some people love their stories to be more truer to one medium versus the next. I'm not like that. I see the theatrical version and the book version as two versions of the same idea. The same could be said of video games, board games, audio productions, plays, poems, etc. All are different takes on the same idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment