What Makes A Good Book-To-Screen Adaptation?

Hey, it's Julia! With the new Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action show coming out it's got me thinking about adaptations. Book to movie, cartoon to live action... the most common complaint is "it's not book accurate!" Well I'm here to tell you why accuracy is not the most important thing in a good adaptation.

Shadow and Bone

Accuracy- 50%

Rotten Tomatoes- 89% (season 1) 80% (season 2)

Mashing a trilogy and a duology while throwing the timeline into a blender sounds like a recipe for disaster, BUT IT WORKS.

How? There's no exact formula, but the casting and special effects were immaculate. Every one of the Crows were absolutely amazing in their role and had great chemistry with each other both on and off set. They're so similar to their characters they relate to them on a deeper level, AND the show runners gave them the creative freedom to play the characters how the actors felt they should be played.

Alina (Jessie Mei Li) and the Darkling (Ben Barnes) were casted perfectly as well, working well with each other with absolutely insane chemistry. Does it matter that the character Alina was not originally of Asian/Shu descent? No. Does it matter that the Crows never worked with Alina in the books? NO. Because they stuck to the original feeling and motivation of the original characters.

How To Train Your Dragon

Accuracy- 5%

Rotten Tomatoes- 99%

The books are so radically different from the movies,  the only things that stay the same are the names. I don't know of anyone who read the books first so I can't say if they were disappointed in the accuracy, but no one can deny the movies are iconic. (That theme song though!!!)

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Accuracy- 90%

Rotten Tomatoes- 87%

This one sticks very close to the original source material. The only aberrations? The Hand Touch™️. The almost-kiss in the Gazebo Scene™️. "Mrs. Darcy." All amazing, and changes nothing too drastically, because it's all things the characters would have done. Darcy WOULD have impulsively helped Elizabeth into the carriage. He WOULD be internally panicking as he practically runs back to the house without a word. Elizabeth WOULD have noticed, but misunderstood what it meant and thought he was a weirdo. It keeps the original feeling of yearning and poetry and suppressed emotions and lowborn enemies-to-lovers of the original Pride and Prejudice, complimenting it and enhancing it. Now THAT'S a good adaptation.

Most ardently,

Julia