How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love All Three Hobbit Movies

I think we reading-enthusiasts might do well to develop a different attitude when it comes to movies that are based upon beloved books. Because we tend to go into frankly disturbing levels of rage when a film commits the unconscionable sin of deviating from a previously established storyline, to the point where we apparently feel like the book itself has been insulted by said changes.

But films based upon books are just that: Based on them. The book serves as the base, the initial inspiration, and from that, the filmmakers essentially do whatever they want. We act as though it’s the duty of the filmmakers to represent the book as faithfully as possible, but that’s ridiculous, because the book represents itself. A truly good book doesn’t need a movie to do the representing, it’s doing just fine on its own, thanks. The filmmakers are taking the most base elements of a book, and using those elements to create something. That’s why it says “Based on the book by Suchandsuch Whathaveyou” and not, “Painstakingly transmogrified into sights and sounds from the words contained within the book by Suchandsuch Whathaveyou”

Sometimes, such films wind up strikingly similar to the books upon which they’re based, like Catching Fire, or Holes. Sometimes, they end up pretty different, like The Shining, or the trilogy based on The Hobbit. And if the movie sucks, the movie sucks, but it’s because it failed at being a good movie, not because it failed to follow the sacred text in every conceivable way. As a reader, going into a movie with a mindset of, “I hope this is a DIRECT CARBON-COPY OF THE BOOK I LOVED” is ludicrous, when instead the mindset should just be, “I hope this is a quality film.”