Dante's Inferno: 14th Century to 2007

Dante's Inferno is the epic first part of the Divine Comedy following a man on a quest through the nine circles of hell, written and narrated by Dante Alighieri sometime in the 14th century.  Alighieri in 34 cantos (chapters) basically designs every concept of Hell that we have in our heads when asked to imagine it. Furthermore, he creates every punishment for every sin from 1st circle atheism all the way to 9th circle treachery.  The novel is very serious, very frightening, and just a wild story in general.

Fast forward to the 21st century,  Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders re-tell Alighieri's tale in terms of 2007 through their puppet-based film by the same name.  They establish a modern setting with modern idealism and utilize a humorous prose while holding true to the original Inferno.  If the book is too difficult to read with it's verse format, I'd venture to say that the film could give you a detailed grasp on everything within Alighieri's writings.

I feel that books usually become movies whenever some film maker is an avid fan of a work, or when a writer sees the potential movie within an author's work.  I can't imagine any writer creating novels with the intent that his pieces end up on the big screen.  This is why the film people have to be the ones to see the movie potential within a book, because they have much more feel on the length of movies, budgets, actors, etc.  Upon reading the book or getting an adapted script, they have to choose what's the most important, what to omit, think about scenes and what have you.  The makers of the film adaptation of Inferno had an apparent interest in the book, and decided that they would remake the story for their time and their voice.  And they actually do a great job in adapting the writing to a movie.

Which brings us to books vs. movies.  Books will always have the upper hand in that there's no time limitations, and therefore every detail needed is in the story.  They also allow you to make your own ideas in regards to the imagery of each scene, of each character, and of the general setting.  Movies on the other hand cannot be 5 hours long, and they spoon feed you the faces, the places, the things.  So you might miss out on some key parts.  Since Alighieri's work is written in it's verse format,  the film makers where actually able to take the story and dumb it down to common 21st century language.  Because of this, the film does well in capturing every circle of hell, every demon creature encounter, and so on.  The only difference is, is that some of the creatures and scenes are portrayed in a modernized way, compared to the book.

With this specific example,  I feel that someone who has seen the film interpretation of Dante's Inferno before reading the book may not seek out the actual book. And even if they did, I could see them seeing the way it is written, getting frustrated and calling it quits.  The film is also much more comical than the novel, so some audience may even be lost on that principle alone when it comes down to actually reading Dante Alighieri.