Film history is littered with bad adaptations of good books. Think of Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliot in Netflix’s Persuasion, a film that boldly asks: “What if a Jane Austen heroine was possessed by Fleabag?” Or of The Hobbit franchise’s rapidly diminishing returns. Or even the plodding movie version of The Girl on the Train, which pointlessly transplanted the action to the US and tried to trick viewers into believing that Emily Blunt was a washed-up alcoholic by making her skin look a bit red.
It’s case studies like these ones that can lead readers to declare that the novel is always, always better than the movie. There’s space for characters to be properly sketched out, and for us to fully get to grips with their foibles and motivations; often, they have a distinctive inner voice that just doesn’t work on the big screen.
