Not All Pop Culture Aspects Should Have Movie Adaptations

Have you ever realized that major pop cultures, like books, TV shows or video games, directors decided that it should be brought to the big screen? With these adaptations, it give readers the chance to view their favorite novels on the big screen and new fans to enjoy another aspect of pop culture. While new fans enjoy the action-pack, drama or love story on the screen, readers who already read the book might feel indifferent about the project based on the outlook.

There are three different ways to describe adaptation: close, intermediate and loose. Though self explanatory on what these three words mean, close adaptation means that if not complete, but majority of the story is accurate, intermediate is in the middle, while loose keep very little themes or plot points of the original item and filled in a lot of substitutes that can still play into the story so there can be a type of flow.

When it comes to adaptations, sometimes you read the text before watching on the screen, sometimes it is the other way around, but if it turns about something of a loose adaptation, and possibly for intermediate adaptation, it will cause a mix of emotions, but nothing other than anger. A couple of examples I can think off the top of my head of adaptations I was speechless or confused other (and you probably can think of some as well) are of the following:

1. Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief (and I am grouping this with Sea of Monsters)

2. Insurgent and Allegiant (Divergent was not that bad as it was pretty close to the text. I can not speak for the other two following)

3. Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy (Despite what the trilogy is about, the books were better than the movie in terms of plot and content)

4. Paper Towns (Changing the impact and emotion that this novel invokes)

5. The Scarlet Letter (The movie did not keep the hypocrisy and repression that Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of my favorite writers, created)

6. The Cat in the Hat (A nice attempt, but kind of ruined the image of the beloved children's book written by Dr. Seuss)

To close off, I will also mention some movie to show and show to movie adaptations. Popular TV shows get picked up by directors that get turned to live action movies, and vice versa with animated movies becoming an animated series, but yet, even these do not always go well. Here is a list of TV shows to movie adaptation and movies to TV show adaptations that needed to stay where they were and not crossed the line:

1. Dragon Ball Evolution (I do not even know where to begin with the problems this movie had, just know if you ever ask a Dragon Ball Fan what is one thing they do not like about the franchise, it is the existence of this movie)

2. Avatar: The Last Air Bender (As I repeated in point one, if I have to pick on thing wrong with the franchise, it was this movie. From the pronunciation of the main character's name to the appearance changes from other main characters, it was hard to trying to find one thing I liked about the movie)

3. Monster vs Aliens (If you did not know this movie had a show, now you know. It was only picked up for a season but Nickelodeon tackled this project and for someone who watched 3 episodes, it was not good)

4. Kung Fu Panda (I like the concept and the idea, but the execution was not enough for me)

5. Stuart Little (Yes they had an animated series and no I will not go in depth of the plot of the series. Just know it was not as good as they thought it was going to be)

6. The Smurfs (I was more of a fan of the cartoon show than the movies. I felt that did not have to make as many movies as they did with this iconic show)