With movie franchises you constantly hear things like
"the movie wasn't good enough...nothing like the book." But when it
comes to books made into movies there's a lot to consider and even a new
mindset going into that movie theater.
Franchises including The Hunger Games, Eragon, Twilight, and
even Percy Jackson-fans have never truly been happy about these movies and
there is only so much the movie industry can do to make us "happy."
The closest fans have ever become "happy" about the movie adaption
was The Hunger Games but it took a community to create those feelings among the
fans.
As an old Hunger Games fan myself I saw the fan community
grow into a network of leaders and family. The vibe some of these websites
introduced to the Internet early on was how people started reacting to the
series: Retweets on Twitter constantly of fans enjoying the Hunger Games and
their own personal info to share with the rest of the community, Blogs posting
of Hunger Games events for the holidays where they encourage YOU to get
involved...
For even more examples of their unity with the fans are
people like Sam Cushion, a music writer who does unofficial music for the
Hunger Games and the Matched trilogy on iTunes. On Facebook you have pages like
District 9 3/4 to unite Hunger Games fans and Harry Potter fans. Even a page
called The Hunger Games Army so fans can get together and go crazy with spoiler
alerts together.
But what really got me was the Facebook page called: Let's
not make Hunger Games a twilight thing with "team Peeta" or
"team Gale". This is actually a brilliant idea because what really
got people rolling was the disaster over the Twilight series franchise.
When I was in the 8th grade (2008-2009), I remember
finishing the whole series in one week then I noticed literally every student
in the hallways carrying a Twilight book in hand. For a while that was
"the Trend", everyone read the books-everyone talked about the
series...then the movie came out.
Now the difference here between myself and everyone else
around me was my reaction to the first Twilight movie. EVERYONE all of a sudden
hated the series, saying the movie was TERRIBLE. That really made a dent into
the Twilight community and the series has never been the same among people
today.
What happened here was the community of Twilight. Before
this uproar of hatred the community was very obsessive over the series with
some amazing podcasts on Zune Marketplace, some who even went to the place
where they were filming the movie in Oregon; MANY websites all about the
series, bands formed from inspiration for the series, the books themselves even
changed the location of Forks, Washington FOREVER.
Honestly the Twilight community is great but the people
didn't find that very appealing on the outside. Even worse Twilight has become
a franchise that the future has learned mistakes for so they don't mess up.
Franchises are a constant issue today because of the PEOPLE.
But the most ironic thing about the Twilight series was when The Twilight Saga
Breaking Dawn Part 1 came out and the true fans emerged out of the crowds of
hatred and showed that they still love the series. Kids at school wore clothing
for Twilight to go see the movie in their clothing...just like they had in the
fall of 2008.
For teens around my age today (14-18 wars old) have gone
through this Twilight boom around middle school time (5th-9th grades) where
teens are constantly pressured and bullied. Twilight became something among
middle school students as something terribly stupid. We fans had to hide our
fandom out of fear and walls built by kids at school and even on the Internet.
What the Hunger Games did right was a change in the community.
They created unity, passion, leadership, and trust among the fans. What was
even more amazing was the casts reacting to that 100%, telling the media
they're Team Katniss, wearing Mockingjay pins at the premier.
For the amazing Eragon series, there IS NO Eragon community
but they do have a HUGE FAN BASE but no community online really. The series is
a huge hit but there isn't much of a way for fans to connect. The movie is
discussed constantly as a terribly bad adaption to the book where there wasn't
enough want for another movie (Eldest) to hit the big screen. There WAS talk of
remaking Eragon the movie but that was the end of it-more like a moot point.
With the last book, Inheritance, out the fandom has silenced. There was SO MUCH
POTENTIAL in this series but there was no ball moving to back it up.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan is an
interesting case... When the first movie came out there were lines going out
the door at my movie theater for DAYS. But the issue here was the movie ended
up being a huge disappointment in a million ways, even I gave in on this one
but I still loved the series to death!
Rick Riordan's book signing last fall for Heroes of Olympus
book 2 came to Olympia, Washington where I drove down to meet the mastermind. A
kid asked him a very important question where Riordan's answer has never left
my head since. The kid asked if he was proud of The Lightning Thief movie and
he told over 1,000 kids and parents that day that he has NEVER seen the movie
because he's got the best version of the movie in his head.
Even though Rick Riordan is the author of the Percy Jackson
and Olympians and the Heroes of Olympus series we can do exactly what he says
to heart.
What disappointed fans will complain most about with movies
are sentences like: "the character isn't like how I imagined",
"they took out a bunch of info", "Why did they change it?"
But what we must keep in mind is the fact that books can
describe beautiful scenes in detail for pages but that's horror for movies.
Movies can't explain what's on those 3 pages because it's a visual film and
they have a time frame of under 3 hours of movie where a book (if you made it
into a movie down to every single word in the book) would be an 8 hour movie.
It's literally impossible to make a movie exact to fan's likings. But all our
perceptions of the books are completely different from the kid next to you in
math.
But it's exactly like what Rick Riordan said in Olympia less
than a year ago where we can do the same no matter who we are or what we do:
"I have the best version of the book in my head."
