What happens when we take a story from a book to the big screen?

We generally know the stories of ‘Harry Potter’, ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘Frankenstein’ or many others through the blockbusters that Hollywood offers to the worldwide audience. However, these films have been based in previously written books. As a result of this, many great pieces of literature have been unfortunately impoverished and simplified by the Film Business in order to fit a commercial product.

‘The Twilight Saga’ is a story like the previous ones: it was first published as a book and then taken to the cinema. The saga was written by Stephenie Meyer in 2005, and is divided into four volumes. The first of the books was taken to the big screen by Summit Entertainment in 2008, and then the second and third followed. The last one has not been released yet. All of them had an enormous and incredible worldwide success.

The saga’s four volumes are ‘Twilight’, ‘New Moon’, ‘Eclipse’ and ‘Breaking Dawn’. The films have the same title than the books already mentioned; however, their content does not coincide.

In the motion picture, the story is quite similar to the one in the book and this happens all throughout the saga. We say only ‘similar’, as there is a slight difference when talking about details. We know that it is impossible to include in a film everything that a book says, because while the movie lasts two hours, reading a book may take us a week, a month or even a year. There are some incongruities when comparing Stephenie Meyer’s books and the films, in spite of sharing titles, their content is not identical when talking about the details previously mentioned.  We mean that in some of the films there is coincidence of events with their corresponding book, but not in all of them. For example, we may find in one of the films some situations that won’t appear till we reach the next corresponding volume of the books.

When these films were presented in the cinemas all around the world, we could see frantic and mad teenagers queuing for hours and waiting to see their idols. And then, we met them again while watching, or at least trying to watch, the film in the middle of their crazy screams. Beautiful women, blue-eyed vampires, super muscled werewolves and a love story make the Twilight saga an irresistible attraction for young people. But, what happens with the rest of the audience? Are people in general interested in this kind of films? Actually, they are not. It’s clear that adults or mature viewers are looking for something more than just two hours of romance or fights between creatures that don’t exist at all. However, when we refer to these same facts in the books, we may find at least some people interested in reading them. The quality of the writing is really good, with great details and profound moral matters expressed in a subtle way. This last point may be the one that can attract a non-teenager-public, because it gives the reader some food for thought.

One last point that we want to refer to is that of the position of the reader or viewer upon the ‘presented images’. The writer may describe a scene in the most detailed way, but there is always a gap, bigger or smaller, for imagination. This doesn’t happen when we watch a blockbuster: there is nothing else but what we see; our imagination has a limit. In this way, the audience is much more ‘passive’ when watching this kind of films than when reading a book. They just watch and wait for the sceneries to appear in front of them, while a reader might need to reconstruct the ‘presented image’ in his mind. Although he has more freedom, he also has to make a bigger effort.

Our intended focus is placed on the importance of getting to know the stories through their real source, their original form, content and meaning; and also to restore the position of books as mind activators, critical-thought-builders and the key to a new world of creativeness and unlimited possibilities for the imagination.