Reply #43: Well [View All]

It is hard to fit a book into a two (even a four) hour movie, so any movie has to adapt the book. The best movies do one of two things-- either they cut out all but one strand of the book, like the various versions of Les Miserables do, or like Jaws did, or else they rewrite scenes that capture the spirit of several book scenes, to shorten the script to movie length. If done well, this is good.

I even have some respect for directors who make a different film from the book altogether, who capture the essence of the book even though the film is different. The Godfather did this well. The Name of the Rose does this, too, even though they save a character they kill in the book. It still doesn't violate the spirit of the book, as "The Sun Also Rises" did. Or the Scarlet Letter.

Treasure Island is just impossible to put perfectly on film. There is no way to capture Long John Silver's conniving, or to reconcile his intense evil with his charm. My kids love Treasure Planet (I kind of like it, too), but on one of our long drives I got an audio book of Treasure Island. My eleven year old (ten then) doesn't read well enough to read it, and I didn't think she'd follow it. She was enthralled. She caught almost every nuance of the writing (which is incredibly sharp and funny), though she got lost in the ship terminology.

I'll have to look for your Heston version. Thanks for the reference.