Films like this made me wish I read more books in my
off-time. Not that I’m ashamed of my literary diet mainly consisting of comic
books and articles written by my contemporaries, but in terms of literary
adaptations, part of me thinks that I should incorporate reading the source
material into my pre-viewing background routine. Admittedly, the reason why I
don’t as a general rule is so I can more easily let a given film stand on its
own merits, since the source material tends to be far superior than any
adaptation of the work anyway. And yes, I’ve done the exact opposite for
remakes and the like, but different medium, different rules, far as I’m
concerned.
At any rate, in the case of this film, I started wondering
about this because I genuinely don’t know how much of this film’s faults are to
do with the adaptation or to do with the original book.
