Hollywood, Hapless

I love movies. And I love books. So you would think, then, that I would also love movies based on books, but no. (Same goes for books based on movies, but that's a different story.)

Somehow, Hollywood has an almost supernatural ability to ruin books by making theoretically related movies. Virtually the only movies based on books I've liked are the ones I've seen before reading the books (Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, Fight Club, The Bourne Identity, etc. And of those I've only ever read Lord of the Rings.) Harry Potter was okay, in general. I still haven't seen the last one and it doesn't particularly bother me. I laughed through Twilight in theaters and have no plans to watch any of the sequels. The Chronicles of Narnia started off okay and then degenerated into a giant pile of crap.

I think I develop a really clear picture in my head of The Way Things Are in a book, so when the movie comes around and (obviously) doesn't match my picture, I don't like it. Plus, because movies are such a different medium, the story has to be told differently, which I understand logically but don't have to be happy about. The Fever series being made into movies (by Dreamworks, no less) makes me very nervous, because a great deal of that story depends on being in Mac's head, which isn't really possible from a theatrical standpoint.

That being said, I watched the trailer for the Hunger Games movie today and I'm kind of excited. It looks like it could actually be pretty amazing, and from the trailer, at least, they're sticking pretty close to the book. If you haven't seen it yet, unlikely as that seems, check it out: