The Jump from Book to Film
He never goes there in the novel.
I saw the movie Jumper in the theaters. I loved the idea of teleportation enough to brave my doubts about the acting of Hayden Christensen. Besides, it had Samuel L. Jackson in it. How bad could it be?
Pretty bad, really. The special effects were a lot of fun, but the basic story was weak, at best. I went home and promptly forgot about it. Well, I did remember one thing: it was based on a novel.
I don’t know about you, but when I see a weak movie based on a novel, part of me wonders if the problem wasn’t the base story but the transition to film. Maybe this war between “paladins” and “jumpers” made more sense when narrative could flush it out. Maybe key plot elements ended up on the cutting room floor because someone decided they were unlikely to draw in patrons.
All right, I admit it: as a writer, I want to assume that the fault wasn’t in the novelist.
So, I grabbed a copy of the novel, figuring I’d get around to it at some point. “At some point” turned out to be five years later; I read it last month. I was in for a bit of a shock. There are no “paladins” in that novel, no ancient order of people with fancy tech who chase “jumpers.” In fact, as far as the main character knows, he is the only “teleport” ever to walk the Earth.
It’s not an action-adventure story at all. It’s a bildungsroman, and it’s excellent. Steven Gould, the author, put a lot of thought into teleportation, its mechanisms and consequences, and how it might affect a young man from a broken home. I’m not going to say more about the story in case any of you want to read it, but I recommend it.
What I do marvel at, though, is the dissimilarity between the novel and the film. The movie kept some character names, some background, and that’s about it. The story is vastly different, a whole source of conflict is invented, and even the mechanism of teleportation is modified. By way of comparison, Will Smith’s I Am Legend almost looks like a sincere attempt at a faithful retelling of Richard Matheson’s novel.
Have you ever had an experience like this? The feeling that a movie and the book it was based on were telling two entirely different stories? What movies and books have given you this sense of disconnection?
