Movies, Moralism and Books

If the title of this post causes confusion, I will clarify.  I refer to books which are made into movies, by moralists--moralists who depart from the book on which the movie is said to be based, for what they consider to be the good of the audience, or because the book is lacking in some respect which the moralist believes must be corrected in the movie.

Most recently, we see this take place in Peter Jackson's prolonged treatment of a relatively short book by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.  Compared to The Lord of the Rings which followed it, and which rather obviously addressed good and evil, I've always thought The Hobbit to have been written with no moral point in mind, rather like other classic "children's" works, before we began writing books to teach children what we refrain from teaching them ourselves.  In the film versions, it becomes a kind of morality tale regarding the perils of avarice.

Then there is the insertion of characters and events; something at which Mr. Jackson excels, and indulged in even when filming The Lord of the Rings.  For example, he managed to coax an entire host of Elves to come to the relief of Rohan at Helm's Deep, though no such thing took place in the book.  The chief of this host, who looked disturbingly like Legolas as played by Orlando Bloom, as did the members of the host we could see, announced they came to stand beside Men in the fight against evil.  Most uplifting.  But I wonder whether Jackson unwittingly was suggesting all Elves look the same, to him.

This time, though, he inserts as a major character one not mentioned in the book at all, an Elf woman of his own devising.  From what I've read he did this because he thought girls should have as kind of role model someone of their own, though an Elf, slaughtering Orcs and Goblins.  Not content with manufacturing this character, he conjures a romantic relation between her and one of the dwarves, probably to show us that we can all love one another and are all really the same, regardless of our differences.

I find myself wondering what it is that possesses someone making a movie based on a book, to depart from the book radically.  Presumably, the book is being made into a movie because the book is loved and admired, or at least very popular.  Why, then, change the book?

It's possible, of course, that scenes from a book cannot be effectively presented in a movie.  Our technology allows us to do a great deal in movies we couldn't do before, of course.  But even so, sometimes a picture won't do what was done in print.

It's also possible, of course, that a movie may be better than a book by departing from it, at least as far as lesser books are concerned, or that a movie may depart from a book in such a way as to take its place as a uniquely separate work of art.  Stanley Kubrick made a habit of taking books and running with them, in directions the author did not or could not imagine.

Although Kubrick collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke in making 2001:  A Space Odyssey, the movie and the book differ significantly.  There, though, Clarke may have written the book after the movie.  This has never been clear to me.  And Stephen King was appalled to find out what Kubrick had done to The Shining, though frankly I would take the movie over the book any day.  I consider the movie far superior.  As if to prove this to be the case, King made his own movie version of his book, which was uninteresting.  I'm not sure of what Anthony Burgess thought of A Clockwork Orange, but it's justly considered a great movie.

"Better than the book" doesn't work in the case of Mr. Jackson's adaptions of Tolkien, in my opinion, but neither are they such as to be considered unique works in and of themselves, being too derivative except in certain carefully selected ways.  So are others where moralists make movies.  The film version of The Scarlett Letter has Hester running off with Dimmesdale, presumably to live happily ever after.  Disney, of course, annihilated The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with everyone loving and accepting Quasimodo.  Such are perversions of great novels.

One can go on, of course.  But I think it takes an especially arrogant and self-righteous person to radically change a book, "for the better."  Great books should be taken "as is" and with all faults.  They cannot be made "better" and if those making movies seek to accomplish such a thing they should leave well enough alone.

William Gibson and the Creation of Worlds

I'm rereading Neuromancer and am moved to comment on what makes the superior writer of what's called science fiction such a boon to those who love to read.

All know William Gibson as the creator of cyberpunk, the man who named cyberspace, the matrix, who coined so many words and phrases now in common use when the Internet as we know it did not yet exist.  But reading this early work I'm struck by the imposing realness of the world he creates in this novel, and detailed in the subsequent novels Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.  As far as I'm concerned, our Internet is far less interesting than the artificial reality he described as accessed by his computer cowboys, though it is not (yet?) here in our world.  But the world in which his cowboys lived and, sometimes, thrived, bears considerable resemblance to the one in which we live.

Consider the ubiquity of drugs use in that world, the omnipresence of new and interesting technologies, the significance of money, the grittiness of the urban landscapes in which people live and die, deals are made and information obtained and traded, the twisting of medicine and genetics to doing service in making money and pursuing and exercising power though the enhancement of physical and mental abilities.  The latter may not be here yet, but one feels that it will come; that it must come.

For some reason, when I try to visualize the world that Gibson shows us in these novels, the landscapes we see in the movie Blade Runner always comes to my mind.  That's what I see when the Sprawl or Chiba City are mentioned.  I'm surprised that a movie hasn't been made of Neuromancer.  I would prefer such a movie to the sword and sorcery epics we're being dubiously treated to instead in the form of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and their imitations.  Odd that we obsess over faux castles and kingdoms, swords and magic; there's something adolescent about it.

Which is not to criticize either Tolkien or George R.R. Martin, both of them being superb creators of worlds themselves.  Other such creators are (or were) Frank Herbert who made the Dune universe, and Philip Jose Farmer for his Riverworld.  C.J. Cherryh has made more than one interesting world, as has Dan Simmons, the maker of Hyperion and the Shrike.  Orson Scott Card, when he is not busy moralizing, has also manufactured fascinating alternate realities.

It is unsurprising that it is in science fiction and fantasy that the worlds are created and live and are experienced.  Nowhere else is the imagination given such free reign; nowhere else is it the case that new and different realities are expected.  But it is the gift of Gibson and others to make these realities simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar.  Outlandish worlds somehow turn out to be uninteresting.  It's impossible to picture oneself in worlds that are entirely unreal, and one must picture oneself somewhere in order for it to hold one's interest and attention; in order for it to be worth the effort of reading or thinking, or dreaming. 

Science fiction is a curious genre, though.  Great science fiction can fascinate in a good way, but science fiction that is not great can fascinate in a bad way.  The many versions of Star Trek and Star Wars are examples of science fiction that is not great.  They are not bad, really, but they are silly.  This may come of the need evidently felt to come up with aliens who always seem to be far too much like human beings, but human beings who are comical or irritating or mystical in one sense or another and used as expositive devices.  We see the results of the fascination with science fiction that is not great in conventions and cosplay, in a devotion to the Klingon language or to The Force, in dreaming one is a Jedi Knight or superhero. 

The worlds of great science fiction are disturbingly real; those of science fiction that is not great are cartoonish.  It's regrettable that the science fiction we see translated into visual media these days is that science fiction which generates cartoon realities, primarily those of the superhero.  This suggests we desire to escape our own world, which is understandable.  But to escape into cartoons is only to escape reality, not to reimagine it and think of it.