Whenever a film adaption of a popular book is announced it is immediately received with excitement and anticipation. However, as soon as the sceptical die-hard fans get hold of the news, they never fail to cast shadows of doubt over the project, particularly with the fantasy genre. Thankfully, many of the movies do turn out to be awesome and extremely successful – some (dare I say it) better than the books. So with loads of book-to-film adaptions being released this year, here’s the lowdown on a big hit which set the high standards for fantasy movies and a flop guilty of storyline destruction, character warping and the murder of an excellent book.

Photo by Rosana Prada

Lord of the Rings

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do love the books, but they do become exceptionally dull in places – about fifty pages of overly-detailed description of a character who does in fact have no role whatsoever in the actual story – no thanks. Throughout the trilogy we are able to build a startlingly rich portrait of the characters, their history, looks and behaviour, an experience that the film can never truly match. But in the movie the plot moves forward at a decent pace and arrives at an eventual destination. Tolkien takes away from this in his novels with his Dickensian style and meticulous attention to even the most insignificant detail.

Director Peter Jackson’s vision for the movie is astoundingly accurate (if it wasn’t the Tolkien Society would have burned him alive already). The casting is fantastically done and the script seamlessly written. My advice would be to watch the movies before reading the books – know what you’re letting yourself in for, it will take commitment to plough through all 1216 pages, but it’s worth it!

Eragon

The Eragon movie should have been a Lord of the Rings style success story, but in this case not sticking to the book cost the production dearly. The novel is amazing (as is reflected by its worldwide success), the characters are believable and the plot is well rounded but enigmatic all at the same time.

The film is diabolical. The producers have picked what they consider to be the best parts of the story (can they actually read!?) and loosely strung these events together to create the bare bones of a storyline. The script is simplistic and so cheesy it’s actually cringe-worthy. But good actors can still give a shining performance even in a bad movie right? Well, pity there were no half-decent actors in the whole cast (commendable effort though by John Malkovich playing the villain that we shouldn’t actually see). The title role was bestowed upon the wooden Ed Speelers who managed to look completely vacant throughout the entire hour and forty minutes. Read the book, and don’t even waste time watching the movie unless you want to be haunted by the ghost of the success it could have been.