One reason films change the story…

Isn't it annoying that the book never quite matches the movie. They always seem to have to alter some details of the story. At best, you can simply live with it, at worst you find that the film absolutely ruined the story. There's something about that transition from page to screen that always leaves something to be desired. 

Now, the question I can't help asking is, do we just lack filmmakers who are dedicated to the story they're telling, or is there something intrinsic about film which requires a changing of the story?

Let me start off admitting that this is a topic which is far too broad or deep for me to delve into in one article, perhaps even a lifetime, but I would like to explore one reason good filmmakers change details in great stories when they put them on film.

I have often heard people talk about films being short stories, so to condense a novel into a short story one must sometimes rearrange details or remove them in order to tell the story quicker. 

Another reason for discrepancy is the fact that most books do not give a minutely detailed account of the background props and scenery in every scene. Thus, the filmmakers must make these up themselves. In this case the discrepancy is actually between our imagination and the filmmaker's imagination. 

However, I think perhaps the most significant reason why good filmmakers change the details of a perfectly good story is because of their dedication to the feel of a story. Let me explain what I mean. When you read a story it most often uses narration to allow you to know what the characters are feeling. As you read what the characters are feeling your imagination allows you to enter into the emotions of the characters. Despite the fact that good writers are told to "show" rather than "tell" there is a certain amount of telling which is necessary to bring the reader into the emotional lives of the characters. 

In film this is actually much harder, because no one really wants to watch a narrated film; you might as well read the book. On screen it is even more important to "show" rather than "tell" because no one wants to be told what is happening in a film. Part of the magic of film is that you get to figure it out as the viewer. As much as you might want to know what's going on, the point of watching a film without spoilers is that each plot twist can surprise you. A good film will often bring the viewer into the story as another character, rather than a distant narrator.

However, what if you want to help people feel a certain aspect of the story they often miss? What if you want to put your audience in the shoes of the main character himself? 

As characters in our own life stories we are not omniscient and we have no omniscient narrators telling us exactly what is going to happen next. We make plans, but don't know what the future will hold. That uncertainty makes it exciting, although perhaps also worrisome. So to bring a viewer into the shoes of a character who has lost hope you cannot allow the viewer to maintain hope by showing him a character who has kept it. The character in the story may have lost sight of hope because he is seeing reality falsely, but as long as the viewer can see a way out he will take it. If the viewer sees people who have not lost hope he is no longer in the shoes of the depressed character, but has become more like an omniscient onlooker.

Despite our desire to enter into the stories of other people, we will always look for a way to escape the pain and become the distant omniscient narrator who knows how everything will turn out in the end. So in order to keep the viewers from distancing themselves from the weight of despair a character in a story might feel a good filmmaker might modify or remove certain hopeful details in order to help the viewer feel what the character might be going through.

Let me take this to the realm of the specifics. A lot of people criticized the film Noah which modified a number of details from the original account found in the Bible. Many people saw no reason for them to change those details since the excuse of adapting a story for the screen didn't appear to justify it. 

However, I believe that the filmmakers knew that many people saw the hopefulness of the Noah story and seemed to miss horror of it. It is my guess that things did not seem quite as clear and hopeful in the midst of the story as it does when we read it as distant, omniscient narrators. So, in an effort to help the viewers not miss the horror the characters must have felt, they omitted details which would have kept the viewers from entering into the trauma the characters would have been going through at the time.

Sometimes the only way for us to notice details of a story is to omitt other details. So if the filmmakers wanted the viewer to enter into the terror of the moment when God-tells-a-man-that-He-is-sorry-He-ever-made-man-and-is-going-to-destroy-all-flesh, they might show the main character losing all hope so that the viewer doesn't have the hope of another character to rely on. Removing hope from the main character places the viewer in the same position as the main character in the original story. Although the original character might have held on to hope by himself, he would have had to wrestle against great doubts because he was alone in his position. If the filmmaker maintained the original details of the main character holding onto hope they would have placed the viewer in a position differing from the character in the original story. The only way to place the viewer in the position of the character in the original story is to alter the main character and give him less hope than in the original story.

The question remains is the main character's character worth the sacrifice of placing the viewer in his shoes? That is a question we must each answer for ourselves, but let's at least allow ourselves to ponder this question since the filmmakers thought it was worth it.