The Battle Between Print and Screen

As popular as some movie adaptations are, there are still flaws and missing details.

Chloe Miller, Editor in Chief|March 8, 2019

The time limitations on movies is often the cause of why so many details get cut from the original text.

Buckle up and get ready to take a trip into nerdville. Seeing as the film industry has nothing better to do than botch books for a quick buck, it is time to call these films out for what they are, cash grabs. The stories of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Divergent were all butchered in film form because of extreme lack of detail, unrealistic relationship development and missing plot points.

Harry Potter is way more detailed in the book

While minor details might not seem important to movie producers, eye color and description of characters are important, especially in Harry Potter. In the book, Harry’s eyes were green, a reminder of his mother to the adults in his life. Daniel Radcliffe, however, has blue eyes and would not wear contacts, so as Snape and Dumbledore remarked on his similarity to his mother, the color of his eyes were different than expected. Also, Hermione was described with curly hair and big teeth with nothing about her skin color was ever talked about. Seeing as this description could have put her as a black woman, it is strange that the movie producer chose Emma Watson without considering a different skin tone.

Relationships are developed realistically in the Hunger Games book

Anyone who has followed the storyline of the Hunger Games in either the book or the movie knows about the love triangle between Gale, Katniss and Peeta. In the book, both Gale and Peeta’s relationship are developed with nuance. In the movie, Gale is presented in short intervals that take shortcuts of his characterization, making the audience like Peeta more as he has more screen time. After reading all three novels, readers are able to make their own decisions regarding who they believe Katniss belongs with. Autonomy within reading is the one thing movies will never produce.

Readers can follow a flowing storyline in the book Divergent

The movie version of Divergent included a lot of important pieces that carried the plot but left out essential details in areas they saw fit. For example, after fighting a fellow initiate and getting sent to the infirmary, Tris was told that she was kicked out of Dauntless. The book clearly laid out the rules for when an initiate is dismissed and being injured was not one of them. The producer added this for a little suspense that fell very short to readers who knew this rule did not apply. Also, in the book, Tris’ mother visited her during visiting day at Dauntless, a scene in the book that allowed for help of her internal conflict. In the movie, this scene was shown but viewers were left wondering where her mother’s faction would be revealed.

“Movie [adaptations of books] in general are worse than books because it is based on what the directors want and not how the readers imagine it,” junior Sarah Ruhmann said.