The Curious Case of Translation to Film

I watched the Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night, and was surprised to learn, in the credits, that it was based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I knew it had to be a loose translation, considering that Fitzgerald died right around the time the movie's characters were coming of age.

So I looked it up. They used the title, and the concept.

And that's about it.

I wasn't surprised by this. I typically find movie adaptations of books fairly aggravating, but it blows my mind when Hollywood changes the story entirely.

For example, My Sister's Keeper, which came out last year. The book is one of my favorites, and I was stoked to find out about the movie. I went to see it with two of my friends who also had read the book and thus knew the story. And the movie was pretty good, except for a couple of directional choices (aka...cast) that I wouldn't have gone with.

UNTIL THE END.

All caps is important there, because it's foreboding. So at the end of the movie where {spoiler alert}, the older sister battling with cancer dies, everybody in the theater is crying and we're handing out kleenexes like tootsie rolls at a parade, and I'm NOT crying because I'm shocked and then indignant and then flat-out pissed because that's NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK.

Look, I've read several Jodi Picoult novels, and the woman is brilliant, albeit a little formulaic. There is always, always a twist at the end. Sometimes, even when you're expecting the twist, it comes around and you're still surprised because it's not the twist you were actually expecting.

Long story short, if you make a movie about the family of a girl who has cancer, and the little girl dies at the end, there is no twist. And since My Sister's Keeper is a Jodi Picoult story, and Jodi Picoult's stories all have twists, then the movie formerly referred to as My Sister's Keeper is not actually what it claims to be.

Yeah, that's right. I have a bachelor's degree in Philosophy. Four years and $40,000 to tell y'all that Hollywood missed the boat.

It's just so bizarre to me. I'll never understand the thought process behind changing a book for the screen. Especially when the book is one that has become famous or well-loved because of its story. If you thought it was so good that you wanted to make a movie, why did you change it?