The Crucible Vs. The Crucible

The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is both a play and a movie (made based off of the play).  Now whenever a movie is made based off of some text, the question is always asked, “Will the movie stay true to the text?”  And in the case of  The Crucible, a large number of people on Amazon.com agree the movie adaptation was incredibly well done and very historically accurate.  Granted Miller wrote the screenplay so already there was a good advantage of the writing staying true to the text in the script, and since the text was also a play, the formatting is already similar to a screenplay making it that much easier to include as much original content as possible.

Of course not all book-to-movie adaptations are successful in terms of being equal in quality to the original text.  There are many movies out there that butcher a book by completely changing  either the ending or simply leaving out so much of the novel’s original contents that it’s difficult to follow anything super intimate or detailed in a storyline (can anyone say Eragon?).  Which is really unfortunate because movies are the opportunity of taking something readers could only imagine in their minds and turning those images into a tactile moving picture. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that a movie usually can’t be a carbon copy of the original novel, and that there are aspects of a book that must be sacrificed because they don’t translate well into movies.  But still, when key, important details such as the ending or random plot twists that weren’t in the story are thrown in, I usually get angry because it demolishes the integrity the original text.

Even though I love the freedom of imagining the contents of a book however I so choose, it’s always so interesting to see a director’s vision, actor portrayals,  and special effects that bring something that was once only available to visualize in my mind into something I can actually look at and make my own judgments as to whether or not the movie was everything I dreamed it would be.  Isn’t that why we want books become movies anyways? It fulfills a vision we had; when other people in the world say they also envisioned a novel in a similar way we did, it’s empowering to know weren’t officially not alone and also can give the feeling we were right… even though we know we can’t really say another’s imagination is really wrong if it was different…

Now let’s ask ourselves if we’re likely to read a book if we watch a movie based off of a book? Quite honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever read the book a movie is based off of after seeing a movie, but I know that I LOVE to see the movies that are made about books I’ve read and loved.  So does that support the whole reason our earlier reasoning as to why these movies exist?  I think it does. These movies are an entertaining short investment of time compared to reading most books, so it’s easier to watch a movie about a story we may only be mildly interested in but haven’t read the yet. And of course, if we loved the book originally, it’s the opportunity to see the words we loved on paper come to life.

Questions:

1) Do you usually read the book a movie is based off of after you see a movie (obviously assuming you’ve never read the book before seeing a particular movie)? Why or why not?

2) How much liberty should a storyline be given because it’s being translated from a novel to the big screen?