Originally published by OnDit Issue 84.7 on Monday 4 July 2016.

There is nothing. I repeat. Nothing more frustrating than watching a book-turned-movie and finding that they have all of the facts wrong. Especially when it’s a story that you have loved and become emotionally tied to. Watching it get butchered on the big screen is possibly one of the worst pains of the twenty-first century.

Alright, that’s a major exaggeration. There are a lot of things more frustrating. And certainly a lot of things in life that are much more detrimental to our health. But, it can be frustrating when somebody takes a well-loved storyline, changes it’s medium and just manages to butcher it. So here are some books that I love that have been turned into movies. For better or for worse.

*Be warned. There are spoilers ahead.*

Harry Potter
This may not be the most popular opinion, but when I first saw the Harry Potter movies. I hated them. With a fiery, fiery passion. For starters, one of my favourite characters was left out – Peeves. Then as the stories went on, the Weasley Twins’ wit and humour was kind of lost in the movie dialogue, and Ginny’s pure spirit was so watered down. Yes, I understand why a lot of these changes were made. But it still meant that parts of the story that I thought were REALLY important were left out. The movies have slowly grown on me through the years, but I still think that the book is WAY better.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
I actually watched the movie before I even realised that Percy Jackson was a character in a book. And, I liked the storyline. I just thought that it was way too American-central. It took reading the book to understand that there was a justifiable (in the world of fantasy) reason for this. The movie encouraged me to pursue the other stories and I am now a huge fan of Rick Riordan. Having said that, I still haven’t had the chance to sit down and watch the newest Percy Jackson move – The Sea of Monsters.

Bones
Kathy Reichs not only helps to write the script (and ensure the validity of the science), but she also wrote the book series that Bones is based on. Although, other than the led in both stories being a forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs, there really aren’t many similarities. I’m a huge fan of BOTH series. They keep to the science, but have great interpersonal relationships between the characters. The dry, slightly dark wit also appears to the slightly more macabre side of my humour.

Bitten
Like Bones, the creators of the TV series Bitten took a great idea from an author, and used it for an entirely different storyline. So much so, that the author of the original series doesn’t have much to do with the show and hasn’t actually watched most of it. The intertwining of the writers imagination and the original book series worked really well here – I was constantly recognising some of my favourite characters, but always wondering what was going to happen next. I also loved that Logan (who was killed off in the first book) survived the first season.

There are a lot more TV shows and movies that have been inspired by books, and even comics (think of the Marvel universe). The list of switched mediums is honestly endless. But these are some of my favourite (and least favourite) adaptations of books. And, since I’m a total bibliophile, I always think that the books are better than the film adaptations!

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