Watching “The Time travellers wife” after reading the book begs to ask the question why change the two active voices or rather two first person points of view from the book to the usual third person voyeuristic narrative that you can find in most movies. I have my suspicions, that it was thought that the “American audience” wouldn’t go for it. Wether this was decided at the Producer level or the Directorial level again I don’t know, but what a do know is that instead of being a great film it was a mediocre and pedestrian film from an awesome book. (Ok so it combined two of my favourite genres, time travel and romance.) And the box office takings proved it was mediocre.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimaya was originally a Japanese “light novels” has been translated into successful two anime series and an anime film, this successfully kept the first person point of view of the protagonist.
But there are other awesome films adapted from books such as the Lord of the rings and Harry Potter which have gone on to very commercially successful films. Admittedly those two series are juggernauts both film and book wise but consider if the first films had flopped they wouldn’t have got to the third and eighth films would they?
What does this have to do directoring? Glad you asked. Adapting material from other sources and I don’t just mean books, Akira one of the best know animes here in the west is being attempted to be adapted into a western live action, is a tricky business, finding a balance as a director trying to make their movie and being faithful to the material is hard.
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