MovieChat Forums > Blood Work (2002) Discussion > Divergence

Divergence

posted 15 years ago by fenrislupus
2 replies | jump to latest

I'm watching this now and can not for the life of me figure out why there is such a divergence from the book. I haven't finished watching but if I find out Buddy Noone? is the killer I will start thinking seriusly of murdering screen writers... I mean this has gone so far from the book that I think it's ridiculous.

Anyway... WHY do they stray so far from the original story when it would be just as easy and evern better if they stuck to the damn script of the original book?????

Michael Connelly is still a good read and I really enjoy the Bosch books. I still see Harvey Kietel in the roll.

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"I'm sorry... my Karma just ran over your Dogma..."

[–] Rayvio 10 years ago

it's not uncommon for a movie (or TV) adaptation to make some drastic changes from the source material. hell, it's a lot more common than a faithful adaptation in my experience. compare the Bourne or Bond movies to the books for example. about the most faithful adaptation of anything I can think of is Game Of Thrones and that was only for the first season

part of it is because some aspects of a story which work well in written form don't adapt well to visual media, partly it can be because those adapting the work want to still have some surprises for those who've read the source material. sometimes it's because the source material inspired them with a similar idea but with a different twist and sometimes it's just for the name value

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"I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me..."

[–] noofy311 10 years ago

Exactly. If the the script is identical to the novel, then why make the movie? The cat is already out of the bag. How many times have you seen a movie and said, "Wow, that was exactly like the book!" Probably never.

The best adaptations I've read are The Shining and Misery, both Stephen King masterpieces imho. While Misery was much closer to the source material than The Shining, both had excellent screenplays, actors and directors.

I didn't read Benchley's Jaws or Puzo's The Godfather, so I can't compare them, but I wish I could because I've heard they're excellent.

Obviously, a book doesn't need a 120-minute runtime and can devote much more to character development, back-story, inner dialog, subplots, etc, which are often severely cut down or dropped for time. Some things just aren't good visuals. A good screenplay can veer from the novel in order to move the story along at an exciting pace. Or, as was previously stated, offer a fresh take.

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