The Book Vs The Film: An Introduction

     As both an avid reader and film enthusiast, I enjoy watching films made from books and seeing how they've been adapted to the screen.  Given that both media have their own strengths and weaknesses, one thing I find interesting is after a comparing and contrasting both versions of a story after a book's been made into a film.

The main reasons for changing elements of a story when adapting it to film include:

• Length.  A book can be read in installments, but a movie has to be able to be viewed in a single sitting.  Adapting most full-length books (as opposed to short stories or novellas) requires a considerable amount of compression in this regard if an 8 hour-long movie is to be avoided.  Most of the time, this is possible, with characters being combined or omitted and the plot being trimmed down so that any extraneous side plots are removed.  This can be a double-edged sword: at best, this can straighten out a meandering plot, or trim down a bloated plot; at worst, it can omit so much of the book's plot that the movie is almost incomprehensible unless the viewer has read the book first.
• Cost.  Making a film is an incredibly expensive process.  If you can combine characters, or omit a scene which would require the construction of a new set (especially if the set was only going to be used for one scene or it would be overly expensive or complex to build).  Often, this results in the filmmaker "killing two birds with one stone" and removing scenes and/or characters results in both cost and length being reduced.
  
• Special effects limitations.  Sometimes filming a scene exactly the same way it's written in the book would require special effects too advanced for the time the film was made, or it might have the effect of destroying the audience's suspension of disbelief by looking too fake.  In horror films, a special effects failure can make a scene or monster laughable when it's supposed to be scary; if that's the case, then a change is probably for the best. 
• A scene doesn't translate well to screen.  For whatever reason, a scene that works well in a book would just be boring or confusing on screen, especially for those who haven't read the book.  Conversely, a scene might be added to the film that wasn't in the book, but is well-suited to the screen.
• Other.  Sometimes, if a film is an adaptation of a popular book, the film might make a major change to the ending or plot twist to surprise fans of the book.  This isn't especially new; the deaths of Cordelia and Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear were a surprise ending for those familiar with the stories that inspired the play.  Other times, the director of a film wants to make the film "their own", and makes changes for the sake of making changes.

When watching a film adaptation of a book, I really try to evaluate the film on its own merits rather than just say something like "the book was better".  For me, one of the most important things to consider is its accessibility to someone who hasn't read the book: would they be able to see the film and understand what's going on?

As far as faithfulness to the source goes, that's not a particularly high priority for me; I'd much rather see a good film that's a loose adaptation than a terrible film that adheres closely to the book.

With this in mind, I am starting a series of blog posts called The Book vs The Movie, in which I will look at adaptations of books to screen (I will probably not be writing about any reverse instances, like the novelizations of various films, or books and films that were written concurrently, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey).  What I will be looking at is how closely an adaptation follows the book, how good of a film it is, and how well it stands on its own.

The first work I will be reviewing is The Dogs of War.

PS: It goes without saying, but these reviews will be full of spoilers.