Example/Trope of director imbuing an artistic vision on source material
April 15, 2015 4:44 PM Subscribe
I'm looking for examples, or what the trope is called, where a director (or screenwriter) takes a source material (a novel, could be a comic book, or even a previous television show) and creates something new with a very particular artistic vision that wasn't there before. Details and examples inside.
The best example that comes to mind is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. He adapted it from a book which I understand to be nothing like Malick's eventual film. Maybe Malick saw a trace of something in the novel that the author himself didn't see which Malick then decided to explode and bring to the forefront, or maybe he just liked the book for some random reason but then introduced rather forcibly his own theme. Either way, Malick took a relatively flat novel and imbued it with a very strong artistic vision concerning war and humanity.
Another good example is the anime Casshern Sins. The source material (as I understand it) is some arbitrary run-of-the-mill action anime from the 70's, but Casshern Sins took this material and charged it with themes of sin, redemption, and death.
For a bad example, as great of a film and as skilled of an adaptation Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest is, the film's artistic vision is already present in the novel (from my understanding, though perhaps if Bresson interpreted the novel rather differently from the novel then it could count).
I'm curious if there are many more examples like this, as well as what this trope might be called that would facilitate further searches. There didn't seem to be any trope like this on tvtropes (the closest I saw was "sliding scale of adaptation").
The best example that comes to mind is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. He adapted it from a book which I understand to be nothing like Malick's eventual film. Maybe Malick saw a trace of something in the novel that the author himself didn't see which Malick then decided to explode and bring to the forefront, or maybe he just liked the book for some random reason but then introduced rather forcibly his own theme. Either way, Malick took a relatively flat novel and imbued it with a very strong artistic vision concerning war and humanity.
Another good example is the anime Casshern Sins. The source material (as I understand it) is some arbitrary run-of-the-mill action anime from the 70's, but Casshern Sins took this material and charged it with themes of sin, redemption, and death.
For a bad example, as great of a film and as skilled of an adaptation Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest is, the film's artistic vision is already present in the novel (from my understanding, though perhaps if Bresson interpreted the novel rather differently from the novel then it could count).
I'm curious if there are many more examples like this, as well as what this trope might be called that would facilitate further searches. There didn't seem to be any trope like this on tvtropes (the closest I saw was "sliding scale of adaptation").
Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean into Adaptation?
posted by bluecore at 4:58 PM on April 15, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by bluecore at 4:58 PM on April 15, 2015 [9 favorites]
The movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" doesn't follow the story in the book "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?", on which it was supposedly based. Among other things, they changed the murder victim.
The author of the book doesn't resent the change, by the way; I saw him give a talk at a science fiction convention one time.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:01 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
The author of the book doesn't resent the change, by the way; I saw him give a talk at a science fiction convention one time.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:01 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
In theater there's the concept of "director's theater" (used in this article, for example, which is just one of the first things that popped up on Google). I see the German word used more frequently: Regietheater. The basic idea is when the director of a play or opera decides to freshen things up by setting Wagner's Ring cycle in WWII Germany, or Hamlet in Las Vegas, or whatever. It's not quite what you're talking about, because it doesn't (to my knowledge) involve rewriting the plot, words, or music; but it's sort of conceptually adjacent.
posted by uosuaq at 5:12 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by uosuaq at 5:12 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
You should watch the reality TV series "The Chair," which takes this idea to a logical extreme. Two directors take the same source material and make two VERY different movies from it. It's amazing how much leeway you can get from characters, situations, and basic plot elements. As a bonus, the original screenwriter is involved, letting the audience know what he thinks of both directors' visions.
posted by xingcat at 5:14 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by xingcat at 5:14 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
How about Tim Burton's Batman Returns?
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:15 PM on April 15, 2015
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:15 PM on April 15, 2015
The Shining?
posted by RobotHero at 5:23 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by RobotHero at 5:23 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Generally, I'd just think of this as a "good adaptation," since film is a different medium, and if an adapted work is just a parroting it has no reason to exist. But, maybe a "loose adaptation?'
There's also the concept of a "source text," which is not actually licensing the original material, but using its plot points to create a new story in a completely different time and place, with different characters. (since plot elements can't be copyrighted). A great example of this is THE WRATH OF KHAN, which uses "Moby Dick" as a source text.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:31 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
There's also the concept of a "source text," which is not actually licensing the original material, but using its plot points to create a new story in a completely different time and place, with different characters. (since plot elements can't be copyrighted). A great example of this is THE WRATH OF KHAN, which uses "Moby Dick" as a source text.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:31 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
(Also CLUELESS, which is based on the story of Jane Austen's "Emma.")
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:32 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:32 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Walt Disney and fairy tales...
posted by Erroneous at 5:54 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Erroneous at 5:54 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
Best answer: On the theater front, pretty much everything Shakespeare ever wrote. I think The Tempest is the only Shakespeare play that doesn't have a clear source. And all of his plays are waaay different from the source material.
And going back to film, Starship Troopers might be close to a canonical example of this.
posted by phoenixy at 6:10 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
And going back to film, Starship Troopers might be close to a canonical example of this.
posted by phoenixy at 6:10 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Field of Dreams is a vast improvement on the relatively creepy "I kidnapped JD Salinger because baseball and now we're buds" Shoeless Joe book. The screenplay focuses the text considerably and gives much more careful attention to the themes of nostalgia and loss, and creates a much more emotionally affecting work.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:13 PM on April 15, 2015
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:13 PM on April 15, 2015
I see this a lot with movie versions of kids books, where they take some happy little bedtime story and turn it into a dark wild roller coaster for adults with a very different plot. Most of the Dr Seuss movies (The Grinch, esp.), Paddington Bear, Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, Alexander and the no good very bad day, etc.
posted by bleep at 6:37 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by bleep at 6:37 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
World War Z was not an entirely successful movie (as far as story), but as it was a kind of light-horror/action movie following a single character (and, less so, his family) through a series of events, it bore little relation to the original novel by Max Brooks, which was a series of oral histories from survivors and participants in the Zombie War. Some of the episodes of book and movie coincide, and a couple of the book's subjects appear as characters, but it's really as if the book, in which Brooks interviews about a dozen people who were at or participated in pivotal events in the war, only exists in the same universe as the movie. In any case the entire structure of the storytelling was altered.
Numerous other books considered "unfilmable" have been altered in this way to make them filmable. The other one that comes to mind is "Tristram Shandy," an comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as themselves in the process of filming the a movie based on the 1760s book "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," by Lawrence Sterne, which has a narrator who is badly afflicted by the curse of uncontrollable digression. The movie addresses this with on-screen drama that changes from the lives of actors to the lives of their characters and back. (And it's very funny-- Coogan and Brydon are excellent comic actors.)
posted by Sunburnt at 7:42 PM on April 15, 2015
Numerous other books considered "unfilmable" have been altered in this way to make them filmable. The other one that comes to mind is "Tristram Shandy," an comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as themselves in the process of filming the a movie based on the 1760s book "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," by Lawrence Sterne, which has a narrator who is badly afflicted by the curse of uncontrollable digression. The movie addresses this with on-screen drama that changes from the lives of actors to the lives of their characters and back. (And it's very funny-- Coogan and Brydon are excellent comic actors.)
posted by Sunburnt at 7:42 PM on April 15, 2015
There Will Be Blood.
I've read Oil, the book it is very loosly based on. It's a good book, don't get me wrong, but the movie is transcendent.
posted by muddgirl at 12:04 AM on April 16, 2015
I've read Oil, the book it is very loosly based on. It's a good book, don't get me wrong, but the movie is transcendent.
posted by muddgirl at 12:04 AM on April 16, 2015
(Trigger warning: rape)
Jodorowsky's Dune, of which:
About three-quarters of the way into Frank Pavich’s 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, we are told the ending to what would have been Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film adaptation of the science fiction novel Dune, had the project not fallen through in 1976. The hero, Paul Atreides, the only son of a murdered duke and psychic messiah of the planet Arrakis, is stabbed to death, but his spirit immediately possesses the body of another. Then another, and another, and another, and then multiple people at once. A crowd of people in unison chant “I am Paul,” and Arrakis, a nearly lifeless desert world, suddenly blooms with water and life. Forests and rivers and animals appear out of nowhere, and all humans on Arrakis immediately join a collective mind-spirit. The planet then shoots across the galaxy to spread its enlightening vibes to the rest of the cosmos.
It’s not important that you know what any of this means. Anyone familiar with Frank Herbert’s original novel knows what a radical departure it is from the book’s tragic, ambiguous ending. Anyone unfamiliar with it is in a perfect position to experience Jodorowsky’s version, which depends neither on Herbert’s book nor on the audience’s ability or desire to understand what’s going on.
The extent to which you consider this a good or bad thing is partly a matter of taste, or even ideology. For me, it was the final insult in a series of preposterous artistic decisions and obfuscations that the film presents as fascinating insights. Jodorowsky himself, in his early eighties at the time of filming, had this to say about it:
“I changed the ending, evidently … I did that. It was my Dune. When you make a picture, you must not respect the novel. It’s like, you get married, no? You go with the wife, white, the woman is white, you take the woman, if you respect the woman, you will never have child. You need to open the costume and to rape the bride. And then you will have your picture. I was raping Frank Herbert, raping, like this! But with love, with love.”
So.
-----------------------------------------------------
In the Guerilla Film Makers Handbook, there's mention of some directors 'keeping the more controlling writers off the set'. And then there's this list 11 Authors Who Hated the Movie Versions of Their Books. There seems to be an explicit, army-like hierarchy on a flim set, with writers being quite low.
Researching the status of writers in Holywood would dig up useful resources for this query. And I'd watch the Jodorowsky's Dune documentary despite the quoted excerpt.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:30 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
Jodorowsky's Dune, of which:
About three-quarters of the way into Frank Pavich’s 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, we are told the ending to what would have been Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film adaptation of the science fiction novel Dune, had the project not fallen through in 1976. The hero, Paul Atreides, the only son of a murdered duke and psychic messiah of the planet Arrakis, is stabbed to death, but his spirit immediately possesses the body of another. Then another, and another, and another, and then multiple people at once. A crowd of people in unison chant “I am Paul,” and Arrakis, a nearly lifeless desert world, suddenly blooms with water and life. Forests and rivers and animals appear out of nowhere, and all humans on Arrakis immediately join a collective mind-spirit. The planet then shoots across the galaxy to spread its enlightening vibes to the rest of the cosmos.
It’s not important that you know what any of this means. Anyone familiar with Frank Herbert’s original novel knows what a radical departure it is from the book’s tragic, ambiguous ending. Anyone unfamiliar with it is in a perfect position to experience Jodorowsky’s version, which depends neither on Herbert’s book nor on the audience’s ability or desire to understand what’s going on.
The extent to which you consider this a good or bad thing is partly a matter of taste, or even ideology. For me, it was the final insult in a series of preposterous artistic decisions and obfuscations that the film presents as fascinating insights. Jodorowsky himself, in his early eighties at the time of filming, had this to say about it:
“I changed the ending, evidently … I did that. It was my Dune. When you make a picture, you must not respect the novel. It’s like, you get married, no? You go with the wife, white, the woman is white, you take the woman, if you respect the woman, you will never have child. You need to open the costume and to rape the bride. And then you will have your picture. I was raping Frank Herbert, raping, like this! But with love, with love.”
So.
-----------------------------------------------------
In the Guerilla Film Makers Handbook, there's mention of some directors 'keeping the more controlling writers off the set'. And then there's this list 11 Authors Who Hated the Movie Versions of Their Books. There seems to be an explicit, army-like hierarchy on a flim set, with writers being quite low.
Researching the status of writers in Holywood would dig up useful resources for this query. And I'd watch the Jodorowsky's Dune documentary despite the quoted excerpt.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:30 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Stephen King, from the link above: Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones.
Which is true, and way more scary than ghosts, and supports the point that Kubrick's The Shining tells a different story than King's book.
posted by glasseyes at 3:09 AM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
Which is true, and way more scary than ghosts, and supports the point that Kubrick's The Shining tells a different story than King's book.
posted by glasseyes at 3:09 AM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
Seconding The Princess Bride. How about Akira Kurosawa taking a Dashiell Hammett novel and turning it into a samurai film in Yojimbo? Along similar lines, Kurosawa was inspired by Westerns in making The Seven Samurai, which was remade as an actual Western with The Magnificent Seven.
The king of them all, though, would have to be George Lucas riffing on Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars.
posted by Gelatin at 5:45 AM on April 16, 2015
The king of them all, though, would have to be George Lucas riffing on Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars.
posted by Gelatin at 5:45 AM on April 16, 2015
Kurosawa's Ran, I think, is riffing on King Lear. Here's a Buzzfeed list of 15 Movies Based on Shakespeare Plays. See also Throne of Blood and She's the Man.
Howls Moving Castle is a free - very free indeed - adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones's book.
posted by glasseyes at 6:01 AM on April 16, 2015
Howls Moving Castle is a free - very free indeed - adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones's book.
posted by glasseyes at 6:01 AM on April 16, 2015
Response by poster: I'm surprised it's not in that list given by sebastienbailard, but Tarkovsky's Solaris is another good example. Lem hated what Tarkovsky did, because Lem was concerned with the unfamiliarity of alien life which Tarkovsky largely scrapped to go in his own direction to deal with the psychology of its characters. Maybe not unlike what Kubrick did to King's book.
posted by Dalby at 6:28 AM on April 16, 2015
posted by Dalby at 6:28 AM on April 16, 2015
James Whale's Frankenstein has very little relation to Mary Shelly's book, but is a wonderful work of its own.
posted by octothorpe at 9:06 AM on April 16, 2015
posted by octothorpe at 9:06 AM on April 16, 2015
Tarkovsky's Stalker barely resembles the source material, either.
I'd argue that this sort of thing is generally more common than straight adaptations, because too many cooks, but ascertaining whether it was due to "artistic vision" is a bit slippery...
posted by neckro23 at 12:31 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'd argue that this sort of thing is generally more common than straight adaptations, because too many cooks, but ascertaining whether it was due to "artistic vision" is a bit slippery...
posted by neckro23 at 12:31 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
One of these may be the trope you're looking for:
Adaptation Distillation
Compressed Adaptation
Pragmatic Adaptation
Adaptation Expansion
Adaptation Explanation Extrication
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:36 PM on April 16, 2015
Adaptation Distillation
Compressed Adaptation
Pragmatic Adaptation
Adaptation Expansion
Adaptation Explanation Extrication
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:36 PM on April 16, 2015
Under the Skin (the book) is thematically about the meatpacking industry. Under the Skin (the movie) has a lot of themes regarding gender presentation and otherness.
Much like Starship Troopers, Children of Men's film adaptation veers dramatically from the right-wing origins of its roots.
posted by JauntyFedora at 2:37 PM on April 27, 2015
Much like Starship Troopers, Children of Men's film adaptation veers dramatically from the right-wing origins of its roots.
posted by JauntyFedora at 2:37 PM on April 27, 2015
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The Princess Bride?
posted by synecdoche at 4:55 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]