As a book lover, I choose to read the book before I see the movie if I have any real interest in the story. As a scholar who works on adaptations, I appreciate the adaptation as a separate story with its own merits. Recently, I had the chance to read two novels and then see their adaptations soon after, but I definitely found it difficult to practice what I preach as a scholar.
At my most recent book club meeting, we discussed Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was a slow but compelling read. The mysterious origins of the main characters are revealed over the course of the novel as the narrator recalls her past and plans for her future.
Our conversations at book club centered on moral issues brought up by Ishiguro’s narrative. What constitutes personhood? What does it mean to have a soul? After some great debate, there was no real consensus about these, but there was one thing we did agree on: the movie adaptation was awful!
Perhaps we were all a bit biased by the amount of beer we’d consumed–because who doesn’t drink at book club? And things just got worse as we turned watching the film into a drinking game based around key terms from the book. My entertainment came from the drunken comparative analysis we all conducted between the film and the book. Our conclusion over and over was that, whereas the book was a fully realized plot with clear character development, the film jumped around and left the viewer confused–even the ones who knew the story.
During the week between finishing Never Let Me Go and meeting with my friends to talk about it, I read The Martian by Andy Weir. The adventurous story of an astronaut stranded on Mars was so completely a different reading experience. This novel was full of action; the protagonist faced disaster after disaster and explained his solutions by breaking down the science and engineering he used to survive them.
Picking apart Never Let Me Go with my friends put me in the mood to be a stickler for fidelity in The Martian, too. As I watched the movie, I commented out loud on all the differences, probably driving my viewing partner up the wall. One of my favorite aspects of Wier’s novel was the scientific explanation, and I felt over and over that the movie dumbed down the science even though the protagonist faced the same obstacles and overcame them in the same ways.
Overall, I really enjoyed The Martian as both a book and a film, but found only the original book of Never Let Me Go to be worthwhile.
