Book adaptations - love them or hate them?

Is the book always better than the movie? If you had asked either of us before this episode, we both would have said unequivocally 'yes!' But our discussion showed us that this topic might actually be more nuanced than we realized. Join as we talk about nearly every Jane Austen adaptation ever made (don't worry, we also talk about other adaptations...a little), ponder whether we enjoy watching screen adaptations of our favorite books even if they're not perfect, daydream about books we wish would be made into screen adaptations, and more.

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Intro and outro music: "The Chase," by Aves.

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Read on!

Transcript

[All Books Aloud intro and theme music]

Martha: Hey, Liz.

Elizabeth: Hi, Martha. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm sitting right across from you, which is always a fun, good time. 

Martha: I know. We've had so many episodes lately where we could record together. It's been really cool. 

I'm excited to talk about this topic today. I think it's going to be a fun one. 

Elizabeth: But before we get into it, tell me about what you're reading.

Martha: I'm [00:01:00] reading a book called Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb, which I think you just read, probably a few episodes back you were reading it. Mm hmm. I'm about a hundred pages in already and loving it. It's a very fun read and very quick storyline. , the chapters are pretty short, which I love, and I'm just flying through it so far.

 It's a fake dating. Romance, and it's been a pleasure to read. 

Elizabeth: Yes, I absolutely loved that book. And, I'm really excited that we can talk now about the fact that we're actually going to be able to interview Sarah for the podcast, , and get to talk to her about her book, Birding with Benefits, which is coming out in June and also about her writing journey and being an author and stuff like that.

Martha: I can't wait to hear about it from her point of view and it'll be just in time for the release of the book. So definitely keep an eye out for that episode and Birding with [00:02:00] Benefits. I'm listening to a book called Red Hood by Elana K Arnold. I believe it's Elana.

Sorry if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly I'm listening to it on Spotify. It's included with Spotify Premium. It's for my book club. Called Be a Part of the Conversation, where we read certain books that are being challenged or banned right now in our local school district. And I'm about two chapters in, and it's definitely a departure from my normal fare.

It's a young adult fairy tale retelling. It's very loosely based on Red Riding Hood from what I've read online. , so we'll see how it goes. , I'm always interested to hear what the group has to say about it in our book club. So that's what I'm reading. What are you reading?

Elizabeth: I 

love that Palmer [00:03:00] has that book club and that people are paying attention to what's happening in the school district. Cause that's happening all over the country that people with a very specific and extreme, in my opinion, worldview get on the school districts on our banning, all these books.

So I'm really glad that people in Palmer are being engaged citizens and, making their voice heard about it, too, whatever ends up happening. 

Martha: Yeah, , 

Elizabeth: I am reading, Wayward W E Y W A R D, the word is spelled, which apparently comes from Shakespeare, which I didn't know, from Macbeth, and it's by, Emilia, Emilia Hart.

It looks like Amelia, except it has an E at the beginning. So apologies if I'm mispronouncing that, I'm not super far into it. I'm about 80 or a hundred pages, but I really like it so far. It's three different women's, , storylines. So one of the women characters, her story is told in first person.

The other two are in third person, [00:04:00] which I think is really interesting you don't see that done very often.

And all of the three women live in different time periods, one is in the current day, one is in the 1940s, and one is in, I want to say the 1600s? Yeah, the 1600s. And they're all part of the same family line, their last name being Wayward. So far, they're all just women who, notice nature more than other people,

 The book is marketed as, they have, , magical powers. , they're witches, basically. And the character from the 1600s, actually, her storyline opens with her being on trial for. Witchcraft. I really like it so far, but I feel like because there's three different storylines, I haven't really gotten very deep into any of the storylines yet because it alternates the chapters from each perspective.

Elizabeth: And so even though I'm 100 pages in I'm only getting to the beginning of each of their stories, and then my audio book right now is The [00:05:00] Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I don't know if you've heard of that. It's very popular.

And the reason that I started reading it is because it is, being made into a series. There are several books in the series already. The first one, which is the one that I'm reading now, it was published in 2020, and it is about a group of senior citizens who live in a retirement community that solve murders, basically, and they meet on Thursday afternoons, and thus, the Thursday Murder Club.

And it's just so adorable. , but also, It makes a really good point that you know Yes they're all adorable old people and we tend to brush old people aside in our society, but They're all extremely capable adults who had careers in all of these varying fields that make them very talented at solving murder so One of them is a retired psychologist.

One of them, it's never said explicitly, but is clearly a [00:06:00] retired, , CIA agent or secret service of some ilk. They're British, so it's not CIA. MI5, maybe. , And, , one of them is a retired nurse, so they all have these talents and pools of knowledge that they bring to, Solving mysteries, murder mysteries.

And so the reason I started reading it, it'd been on my TBR for a really long time, but I saw the news recently that , they were making an adaptation of it with Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan and, , Ben Kingsley all starring in it as different members of the Thursday Murder Club. And I wanted to have read it before the adaptation came out.

So That's actually very apropos to our topic today, which is adaptations, love them or hate them. So , I feel like that anecdote about this book that I'm reading and my attitude about the adaptation basically sums up my quick answer to that question, which is that I always love to [00:07:00] watch an adaptation.

I want to watch the adaptations. I love that they exist and I get excited about them. But I always want to have read the book first, because I basically inevitably feel like the book I want to say the book is better, but I don't even really know if I mean the book is better. , most of the time I think what I mean is that the book is richer, and so I don't want that spoiled for me by already knowing what's going to happen in the plot.

Mm 

hmm. 

Before I get a chance to read it. Whereas I don't feel that way going into the movie. I like already knowing the story and going into the movie and seeing, or the show in this case, and seeing what they're going to do with 

it. 

What do you think about adaptations as a general rule? 

Martha: I love an adaptation.

I have so many favorites from the Harry Potter movies to the Colin Firth, Pride and Prejudice, Game of Thrones, until of course the latter seasons where they weren't based on the George R. R. Martin books anymore.

Elizabeth: Right. That's a really interesting example. 

Martha: That was a very [00:08:00] controversial, , series finale and most people hated it and felt like they got robbed of a real ending because.

There were no more books to finish the series. , I love Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, the 2009 Emma is my favorite, Little Women, Greta Gerwig's version, , Bridgerton, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Anne with an E, the Anne of Green Gables Netflix series from 2017 to 19. Honestly, I think one of the few.

shows that I really love that isn't based on a book is Down Abbey, which I just looked up.

I guess Doubt and Abbey supposedly came about because the producer read To Marry an English Lord and said that Doubt and Abbey picks up where To Marry an English Lord leaves off. So it tells the story of what happens after an American girl marries an English aristocrat. 

Elizabeth: So it was inspired by this real phenomenon and this book that was written about the phenomenon.

Martha: Yeah. 

 [00:09:00] Similarly to you, I usually want to read the book before I see the movie or the TV show. If I hear that a popular book is, Coming to TV , or there's a movie being made about it.

I'm like, oh, I want to read the book first Yeah, generally unless it's something that I never heard of until I see it on TV Which is what happened with Bridgerton, right? So yeah, I love an adaptation Obviously some are better than others 

Elizabeth: Yeah It's funny though, because before I started thinking about this topic for this episode if you would ask me, do you like books better than you like adaptations of books? I would have said hands down books every time, but the more that we were talking about this, the more that I realized that I actually love adaptations. It's what I always would prefer to watch if I had a choice out of any type of show or movie.

It's just that I will have wanted to read the book first. I do prefer. the books [00:10:00] generally in terms of the story and the details that you get in it and stuff like that. But if I'm going to watch movie or TV, I want it to be a book adaptation. And I even would go so far as to say I even love the bad ones in the sense that, well, in a couple of senses.

First of all, I would almost always rather watch any Jane Austen adaptation, or I would even extend that to any 19th century adjacent adaptation than basically anything else, except for maybe the Great British Bake Off. That's what I'm into, right? That's your 

Martha: comfort.

Elizabeth: So even the ones that are bad, quote unquote, the thing that always comes to mind when we're talking about Jane Austen adaptation specifically is the, recent Persuasion people hated. But I actually enjoy watching that, even though it's not my favorite. I would rather watch that than a lot of other movies.

But , the other reason I love even the bad ones, love that they [00:11:00] exist, is because it's one of the main ways that especially classical works stay in our social consciousness. , Jane Austen is the example that I always reach for because she's just my favorite author and I just know so much about her, but this goes for a lot of other classic authors as well.

She's getting further and further away from what we understand as a modern society, the society that she lived in, the rules that governed her society. You know, being human is being human. And we're still dealing with falling in and out of love and needing money to survive and stuff like that.

So some of the larger themes are still relevant, but being able to understand the way that her characters are interacting and all of that stuff, we're getting further and further away from people just being able to pick up those books and immediately understand them, I feel like.

And so adaptations are a way for them to be. interpreted for people, for lack of a better word, in a way that might make them interested in reading the book when they wouldn't [00:12:00] otherwise have read the book. This is a place that my husband Alex and I differ in a lot. He rails against all these new adaptations coming out for books that he loves.

Because he just feels like they're never as good and they water things down and they change the story and all that stuff. And my argument is always , I'm happy that people still want to reinterpret, , Lord of the Rings, for instance, because that means that that story is still in our public consciousness and people are still going to read it and appreciate it.

Yeah. And the other thing, actually, along those same lines, the other reason that I feel like adaptations are, I'm happy about them, even when they're not good, quote unquote, is that 

 They're almost always better than a movie or a show that's not based on a book. Yeah. , Downton Abbey might be the one exception to that, but there are so many new and fresh ideas and books and so many books are being published every year. Whereas I feel like the same five movies keep getting 

Martha: made.

Elizabeth: I sound like I'm a thousand years [00:13:00] old with what I'm about to say, but every time I go to the movie theater, there's a new Marvel comics movie or there's a new Godzilla versus King Kong movie, you know? And it's , fine. I don't care if people like those and enjoy them. That's fine.

But it feels like , That's all there is sometimes. Whereas if they would just make movies out of any, , even tiny percentage of the books that are published every year. Yeah. They would be, you know, there would at least be different stories to go to the movies and see. 

Martha: I definitely think when it comes to movies that aren't based on books, it can feel very formulaic because it is, , they have a, goal in mind to Sell so many tickets to gross much revenue so that they can make more movies So I totally get what you're saying And usually they don't have enough time to develop the story in the way that a book would so they're just [00:14:00] shallow There's not a lot of depth to them if they're not based on books.

However with a series like Downton Abbey they have the time to get deeper into these storylines, especially when there's an ensemble cast and a lot of different storylines going on. Even some long running shows like The Office, can get a little deeper because they just have so many shows.

Elizabeth: Yeah, that's a really good point. And it also brings to mind the other reason that they just won't make a movie out of, , all the books that are coming out. Is that it's a more of a risk, right? There's so much money that goes into making a movie.

And people who make movies are very risk averse. They want to make sure that it's going to be popular. Yeah. . So that's part of it. And with a show, after the first season, if it gets continued, it's because they know that they have an audience that's interested in it. Yeah.

So I get that. But the plots of books are kind of formulaic too. You have people who are really good at sticking to the formula that [00:15:00] they know works and also making it feel fresh and fun and new. Mm-Hmm. , even though. The arc of the story, , all the beats that you're hitting, it's a tale as old as time.

, I love a really good, well executed rom com, even though I know that they're gonna, , get together in the end, and they're gonna break up three quarters of the way through, right? , all those story beats you have to hit, but then there are really good examples of that, and there are really bad examples of it.

Martha: Definitely. 

Elizabeth: The same thing is with books. 

Martha: You know what I wish we had? I wish we had A request box that we could submit things to. Submit suggestions to for shows and movies. , you and I talked a while ago and I made a TikTok about it. We want Julian Fellowes to do a series based on Evie Dunmore's books.

Oh my god. Bringing Down the Duke and, The League of Extraordinary Women. It would be so good. In a way that I [00:16:00] feel like only Julian Fellowes can do it. It would be amazing. Similarly, we want Nora Goes Off Script. Yes. By Annabelle Monaghan to become a movie. It would be so good. And we were kind of comparing it to that new Anne Hathaway movie.

I cannot remember the name. The Idea of You. The Idea of You. We watched The Idea of You last week. And it's kind of a similar storyline to Nora Goes Off Script, but not. And Liz and I were watching the movie and just like, Oh my god, I wish that they would do Nora Goes Off Script because it would be so much better.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it's a similar story in the sense that it's a normal woman that falls for a famous man. Marries a star, or falls for a star, yeah. Yeah, this is a great example actually of what we were just talking about, because the idea of you is also based on a book. Mm hmm, 

Martha: yeah. , but one book pulls off the idea better than the other book.

Yes. Which I guess I can't really say because I haven't read the book. Wow. But based on the movie, on the adaptation. Based on, [00:17:00] yeah. Anyway, I digress a little, but I do wish we had a way that we could suggest we are your audience. Mm-Hmm. and these are the books we wanna see made into movies or tv.

Elizabeth: Right. , I would love that Evie Dunmore series to be adapted to a series. I think it would be so great. And I think Julian Fellowes could do it, but also, the vibes that that makes me think of is also very much Bridgerton Shonda Rhimes could do the Evie Dunmore series.

And , the books that Bridgerton are based off of. I didn't like. I actually only read the first one. Yeah, no. So I can't say all of them, but , I didn't feel the need to read any of the other books in the series because I just , didn't like the first book. But then, I watched Bridgerton because I was like, well, whatever, it's still a book adaptation.

I'd still rather watch it more than I'd rather watch Bridgerton. Anything else that's on Netflix right now, and I love that. So that's a good, an example of where , the adaptation is actually better than the books, I think. 

Martha: So much better, and that's one example where, I mentioned it [00:18:00] earlier, I hadn't read the books.

I watched the show, and I absolutely loved Bridgerton, and I was like, Oh my god, I have to read these books, because they're probably so good. , If the show is this good, I can only imagine all the detail they left out, and I can't wait to read it, it's gonna be so good, and I was sorely disappointed. No, 

Elizabeth: the details that they left out are best left 

Martha: out.

Yeah, so what Shonda Rhimes did for that series is amazing, I mean, really. 

Elizabeth: So that just goes to what I was saying, , even though I would have said before that it is as black and white as books are better than movies. , books are more detailed, they're richer, they're better than movies.

It's not actually that simple because it's just about whose hands it's in. There can be really good books that can't be captured in a movie and there can be really subpar books that can be made into great movies and great shows. Yeah. Do we have other examples of. Book adaptations that were better than the book.

Martha: . One that was thrown around a [00:19:00] little bit, , by Mike, our brothers, The Princess Bride, which, The Princess Bride is one of my all time favorite movies ever.

I didn't even know it was a book, so, maybe that's true. 

Elizabeth: I have read the book, The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. And, , I really liked it, , and it's been a while, but my recollection is actually that, that adaptation is one of the truest adaptations I've ever seen.

 The movie is the book, as far as I remember. I don't think that there's anything that they left out. 

Martha: Like they use the book as the script. 

Elizabeth: Essentially. Yeah. A lot of times with adaptations, even if I really like them. I'll be like, well, they were really good, but they left out this one scene or they left out this one character.

And I really liked that. And I can't think of that with the Princess Bride. So maybe it's actually , there are some stories that are just better suited to being adapted to the screen versus others. 

Martha: Well, and I just, I think that the Princess Bride is just such a cult classic.

It's so near and dear to so [00:20:00] many people's hearts that maybe they just hold it on a pedestal. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. The movie. Right. So much of what we talk about, we want to have hot takes on it, but it's also subjective. Yeah. I do think that there is a lot to what you just said, though, when it comes to adaptations, because with things like Princess Bride or the version of the Jane Austen adaptation that I first watched when I was a teenager.

That I sort of formed my personality around. You know, I have those things that are so formative and favorites that even if I can look at them and objectively say , yes, one adaptation is better than this one. I still feel like that's the, my favorite in my heart. 

Elizabeth: The Emma Thompson, Sense and Sensibility, for instance, it's absolutely absurd that Emma Thompson is playing Eleanor in that movie.

She's not well cast. Yeah, she's way too old. Yeah It doesn't make any sense at all, but I just love that movie. Yes, Elim. Would you [00:21:00] like to say something? I don't know what he's upset about. If you hear any grunting or whining, he's been doing a lot of licking as well. I feel like there might be some salivating sounds that come through.

That's just Martha's 15 year old Yorkie sitting 

Martha: on my lap because he was awoken from a nap right before we started recording poor guy. 

Elizabeth: Do you know what I mean though? So that plays a part in it. The one that is your favorite might also have a lot to do with it being when you watched it and what it meant to you at the time.

Martha: Yeah, unless you, Examine that which we did last week. Emma the Emma adaptation specifically You thought that the Gwyneth Paltrow one was your favorite, right Or it is your I would say it is still my favorite is still your favorite and I said I challenged the notion that it was the first one that you watched.

Because the first one I [00:22:00] watched was also the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma, the 1996 Emma. But my favorite Emma is 2009. Which is a series. Which is a series. How many episodes is it, like four or six? Four, I think four. A mini series. 

Elizabeth: We watched all three of, well, there are more Emma adaptations than this, but we watched the 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow.

, this is what we do for this podcast. This is the level of sacrifice. This is the level of research that we do. Yeah. We watched the 1996 Gwyneth, Emma, the 2009, who's the actress that plays Emma in that one? 

Martha: Well, we started with, 2020 and then we kind of went back to 1996 and we went to 2009.

 Emma Woodhouse is played by Ramola Gari, G A 

Elizabeth: R A I. Right. So this adaptation, there aren't really any huge stars in it. There are people who are very well known, especially in British [00:23:00] cinema. . Tamsyn Gregg is Mrs. Bates in it.

Martha: Mm 

Elizabeth: hmm or Miss Bates 

Martha: Um, Michael Gambon, 

Elizabeth: but there aren't any like huge stars there's no Gwyneth Paltrow in that one But it's a BBC, miniseries adaptation and we also watched the 2020 Who is Emma in that one? 

Martha: Anya Taylor Joy. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Right. Anya Taylor Joy. So we watched all three of them.

I would still say that the Gwyneth Paltrow one is the Emma of my heart because it is the one that I watched when I was a teenager. 1996 I was a freshman in high school, but after watching all three of them, I have to say objectively that your favorite of the 2009 one is the best one of those three.

And I think that a big part of that is because it's a series and it has so much more time to include all the details and the little Easter eggs and all the little signs that there are miscommunications. 

Martha: Yeah. Mr. Knightley actually had a personality and you can see his friendship with Emma. [00:24:00] And I think Ramola did a great job playing Emma, the most true Emma to Jane Austen's writing, in my opinion. But like you said, it's just because they had the time to do it with the four episodes. Whereas in a movie, , you have to condense it and still make it make sense the best you can.

 My first impression of the 2020 Emma, I did not like it. Similar to the Persuasion. , I felt like. The characters are so exaggerated and they don't explain enough and it just Doesn't feel authentic to me 

Elizabeth: Are you ready for me to go on a Jane Austen rant?

Yes, I have a serious Jane Austen rant to go on. You could probably expound on this theory for other authors, adaptations, but because I know Jane Austen so well, this is the one that I can think this in depth about it. But I think that the reason that those three adaptations are the way they [00:25:00] are, and the reason that you feel the way you feel about them is embedded within what you just said.

So I agree with you that the series version of Emma and Mr. Knightley are much truer to Jane Austen's. And it's not a matter of, it being more current or less current. I think that the key is that it's a series. And so they have time to develop those characters in the nuanced way that they actually are developed in the book.

Whereas in the movies, both of the movies, 1996 and 2020, there isn't that time. And so in order to get across what the audience needs to understand about the characters, They have to exaggerate the characters because it's connected with what I was saying earlier, for an audience that was contemporary to Jane Austen., they would immediately understand how inappropriate it was for Emma to be friends with Harriet socially. Right. [00:26:00] We don't understand that quite as immediately and so they have to exaggerate it or I feel like I have a better example, so they would have immediately understood how Mr.

Elton was a buffoon. 

Martha: Mm hmm 

Elizabeth: But the nuanced subtle way that that comes across in Jane Austen's actual book is not something that is culturally as relevant to us, especially Americans. ,

and so for us to understand what a buffoon Mr. Elton is, he has to really be a buffoon in the first two minutes that you see him because we need to understand immediately, Oh, that guy's a joke. Yeah. And so they have to exaggerate the characters. I also think that the 2020 Emma was doing something else.

 You said, you felt like it was watching a Wes Anderson version of Emma. Right. Which I agree. There was a stylistic thing happening there, but I also think that , movies have to immediately. Get across what is the core of this character and what do you need to understand about them because they don't have time Yeah, and especially going back to what we were saying [00:27:00] about the People who make movies don't want to take risks They have to make a movie that's gonna be appealing to as many people as humanly possible so they don't actually want to make a movie that only people who love Jane Austen are gonna read because even though I Think that there should be more of us That is not a majority of the population.

Right. So in order for people to watch this movie and enjoy it and understand it, it needs to be closer to 

Martha: Modern sensibilities. I think the 2022 Persuasion is even more obvious. Like how Mary talks about self care. Yes. Because, , that would have never been A phrase that was uttered in Jane Austen's time.

But we immediately know what that means and can identify the kind of person that Mary is. And it's the same, it's not 

Elizabeth: changing the character, that is what you're meant to get about Mary's character. She's selfish, she is a neglectful mother, she's [00:28:00] not a good wife, she is annoying to be around, you're supposed to get that from her character.

But the way that Jane Austen gets it across in the book, It's just too subtle. It's too 

Martha: subtle for us now. 

Elizabeth: Not for every single person, , people can still read Jane Austen and get that Mary is annoying. But the 2022 Persuasion is much maligned and reviled.

Jane Austen lovers, the Jane Austen community, which, of which I'm actually only on , the edges of, I'm not in the middle of, but. Definitely get enough of that content that I know that people who love Jane Austen were absolutely horrified with that adaptation. But I actually love it because I think that it shows, like I was saying in the beginning, that this is still a story that people want it to be modern.

They want it to be understandable by modern audiences. And so they're looking for touch points that modern audiences would have to get across again. in that really short period of time, what they need to know about those [00:29:00] characters. So yeah, Mary is a perfect example. , at one point she also says that she's an empath.

Martha: Yeah. 

Elizabeth: You just don't understand, I can't stay here with my sick child and miss this dinner because I am an empath. And so it's much harder for me to be around him when he's suffering than it would be for you who's less sensitive, which obviously it's completely the reverse. She's actually like a narcissistic, right.

jerk. But a modern 2024 audience, hearing a woman be like, I'm sorry, I'm an empath and I can't do this. , emotionally difficult thing. It just immediately is understandable in a way that it would take minutes and minutes and minutes, if you actually did the Jane Austen dialogue, to get across what was so annoying about this character.

Martha: I was in the camp of hating the 2022 Persuasion. I just didn't really get it. I didn't love it until you told me your theory before we re-watched it again.

And then with that lens of knowing that. They did it [00:30:00] on purpose. They did it for a reason. It was a choice that they made. I enjoyed it more. Yeah, because I understood what they were doing. And then, 

Elizabeth: right. And , I think that the reason that it's so reviled is that people are like, Oh, this is bastardizing.

Yeah. It's not 

Martha: authentic. 

Elizabeth: My point is, no, actually , I'm not going to say that all the dialogue is brilliant, but they're really putting an effort in to get to the core of these characters in a way that is immediately understandable to modern audiences.

Whereas I think a really bad adaptation is one that. is incomprehensible to modern audiences. It's boring. People don't understand the story because they're doing it so faithfully to the book and the book isn't one that's able to be accessed and understood by a modern audience. So I actually, I both love and hate the 2022 Persuasion because I can objectively see how there are things about it that are super cringeworthy.

 Breaking the fourth wall and talking to the camera and all that stuff. , I do find that a little bit annoying. But the way that they use modern tropes and modern [00:31:00] stereotypes to get to what Jane Austen was doing with her characters, I think is just brilliant. There are other examples, like the way that Anne is basically the wine aunt, I called her, right?

Elizabeth: the aunt who isn't married and doesn't have kids and at the family function is the one that Drinks wine and makes, , snarky comments in the corner.

Martha: And they're like, what did you say, Anne? . 

Elizabeth: But she's saying, , the most biting, , snarky things that no one else understands because she's smarter than all of them.

, that is the caricature that modern audiences immediately are like, oh, we get this character, right? , or Anne talking about Mr. Elliot, how she doesn't trust him because he's a 10. And I never trust a 10 not to have an angle. Yeah. That's such a stupid line, but you immediately understand, oh, Mr. Elliot is, sketchy, he's so good looking that she doesn't trust that his motives are pure, that there's not an ulterior motive.

Martha: I love the idea of Jane Austen watching these adaptations and then we have to explain it to her. And then [00:32:00] her being like, Oh, that's perfect. You know, that makes total sense. That's exactly what I was going for. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: You actually captured that character quite well. Yeah. 

Yeah. So I do, , I kind of love that 2022 Persuasion adaptation for that reason.

Even though there are some lines that are cringeworthy, like the way that she talks about how we're worse than strangers, we're exes about Wentworth. I'm like, Oh my God. Oh my God. . It's just so bad.

Martha: We didn't really talk about books better than the adaptation, but I feel like that's most, most adaptations. 

Elizabeth: Well, I would have said before that most books are better than the adaptation, but then we're actually having trouble coming up with some examples of really egregiously bad adaptations that we wouldn't want to watch.

Do you have any examples? I don't. 

Player One is the biggest one. 

Martha: It was just horrible. They didn't stick to the book I can't say they didn't stick to the book at all, but major plot [00:33:00] points they changed for what seems like no reason 

Elizabeth: Okay, 

Martha: and it's Fairly recent book.

There's no reason why they need to make it more palatable for modern audiences, right?

And it's a sci fi set in the future. So

Elizabeth: right. It's not like that. It's like realistic 

or anything 

Martha: No, 

 There's no reason and it didn't add to the plot. It didn't make it better In fact, it made it more confusing and that's my biggest complaint about adaptations is when you're watching it with someone who hasn't read the book and you're like, do you even know why that just happened?

Or what's going on? That's similar to Harry Potter. I love the Harry Potter movies. I think they did a good job, but the books are so long. There's just no way you can pack all the detail in that amount of time. When I would watch them with a friend who hadn't seen them, I remember saying , do you understand why that just happened?

And they'd be like, not really. Oh, who hadn't 

read the books, not who hadn't seen 

the books. Sorry, who hadn't read the books. And they were like, [00:34:00] not really. And then when I explained what they didn't put in that was in the book, they're like, Oh, well, yeah, that makes more sense. You know? So I think that's, for me, my biggest complaint is when there's plot holes that are essential.

To the plot to make it make sense that they just leave out and that they leave out or change 

Elizabeth: for no conceivable reason. For 

Martha: no reason. 

Elizabeth: It's always necessary to leave out parts of the plot to make a movie from a book for the most part. I mean, maybe except Princess Bride.

Yeah. But it really comes back to, , people are either good at it or they're not because you can leave big plot points out and have the movie still make sense. , , I've been reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Alex. And so those books are fresh in my mind. And for instance, for anyone who's ever read Lord of the Rings and also watched the movie, they completely leave out the whole episode with Tom Bombadil, how they end up in Tom Bombadil's woods and they're in his house and they do.

 He's just not in the [00:35:00] movies at all, but the movies do not suffer from it, right? , he's an interesting character and there are different ways that you could interpret his presence in the book and what he means. , it's not to say that there's nothing interesting about that, but the movies do not suffer from not having that character or that part of the plot in them.

You can still understand what's happening. 

Martha: Yeah. 

Elizabeth: So there's a good way to take stuff out of the plot and a bad way. 

Martha: Yeah, I agree. And I think The longer the book, the harder it is to, get all the detail in an hour and a half or two hour movie. Right. 

Elizabeth: Well, which they don't even try to get it into a two hour movie anymore, like Dune.

Martha: Yeah. 

Elizabeth: We just watched the second Dune, which is, , I want to say it's almost three hours long.

And the first movie was over two hours and there's going to be a third movie, right? So it's not even like they're, giving themselves the challenge of getting the whole book into an hour and 45 minute movie anymore. I actually haven't read Dune. But Alex has read Dune and is, again, notoriously hard on adaptations when they're not well done, but he [00:36:00] even was happy with the Dune adaptation.

But , he told me actually, similarly to what you were talking about with people that you watch Harry Potter with, after we watched the movie, he was like, they left out the whole reason that the spice is important. They don't tell you that the reason it's important is because it's the way that people travel around.

Martha: It's basically like oil or gas. 

Elizabeth: And that there's this one group of. People that control the spice and that everyone is beholden to them. . And I was like, Oh yeah, that actually would have been interesting to know. 

. But then on the other hand, I think that the Dune movies. Again, I haven't read the book, but just from what I have talked with Al about the books, it seems like they do really capture some elements of the book that I think would be difficult to capture 

like, the element of the story about the holy war and the religious elements of it, where the religion of the indigenous people is essentially something that the other people made up, all of that stuff I feel like could in the wrong hands get really [00:37:00] dicey.

 The whole messianic element of Paul Atreides character, that could be very badly done and they handled it pretty well. So, There is an art to it, , of adapting a book to a movie and deciding which details you're going to leave in, how you're going to get to the core of a character or to the core of a theme without having all that time and space to explore it.

Even when you are making a movie that's two hours long, that's still not long. That's not as long as it takes to read the book. 

Martha: Especially if you're dealing with complicated themes like Dune. 

Yeah, you 

know, yeah, so for sure. 

 So, are there any adaptations coming up that aren't out that you're excited for? 

Elizabeth: , I am excited about the Thursday Murder Club adaptation.

I want to see that. I'm not overly attached to that book, though. I think that also might be the flip side of the coin to the way that you have, movie adaptations that you're so nostalgic about or [00:38:00] attached to. I think that that also goes for the books. , if you're really attached to the book, you're probably less likely to be happy with an adaptation.

Whereas this book, I'm reading it specifically so I can watch the adaptation. , it's probably a little bit less likely than I'm going to be super critical of the adaptation. 

Google tells me that there's an adaptation of Frankenstein that's forthcoming, apparently. I would watch that. I really like Frankenstein. And that's one that's been adapted so many times.

That's the thing , there are some stories that just get adapted over and over again. I'm sure that in another few years time there will be another round of Jane Austen adaptations.

Martha: Oh yeah, give it a couple years. I feel like we're due for a Sense and Sensibility one. 

Elizabeth: We're almost due for a Pride and Prejudice adaptation too. When was the Keira Knightley one? I want to say it was like 2016 or something. Oh yeah, if not, 

Martha: be like 2012. And at the time 

Elizabeth: 2005! Oh my god, 

Martha: 2005. 

Elizabeth: Jeez.

Martha: Oh, that was way before the 2009 Emma. 

Elizabeth: [00:39:00] Well, we'll definitely due another Pride and Prejudice adaptation then. I'm actually surprised that hasn't come out yet. Yeah, who's doing it? Greta Gerwig? At the time, I didn't like the Keira Knightley adaptation. I love it now, but I thought that it was way too brooding, atmospheric.

Moody, yeah. Yeah, I felt like it didn't, it wasn't Jane Austen at all. 

Martha: Mm mm. 

Elizabeth: They had a hog in their yard. Yeah. This is a great example of what we were talking about of having to exaggerate characters because a contemporary Jane Austen audience would have understood through really subtle cues that Elizabeth Bennett's family was slightly lower socially than Darcy's.

Yeah. They're still in the gentry, but all they would have had to do for Jane Austen, or all she did have to say for Jane Austen's audience is that Elizabeth Bennett's mom's family came from trade. Right. Period. Right. People immediately knew that that meant that they were like, 

Martha: yeah, well, not to mention the fact that they had a big house and they had servants, but they didn't have an estate with tenant farmers and stuff the way that someone [00:40:00] like Darcy would.

Right. 

Elizabeth: So then the Keira Knightley one had to exaggerate that by having their yard be muddy and a pig wandering around it. That would not, no, no, but that was an exaggerated characteristic to help people understand that Elizabeth and her family were below Darcy and Bingley.

You know, another set of adaptations that we watched before we started talking about this, that we haven't talked about yet are the little women. 

Martha: Oh gosh, how could we not have talked about Little Women yet? 

Elizabeth: Well, we talked about a lot of the components that are both good and bad about the Little Women adaptations already.

Like, the one that we both liked better was the one that was a series, a mini series. Right? It had four episodes? No, 

Martha: actually in this case, I like the Greta Gerwig movie better because even though , it didn't have every detail. I think she captured all of the important parts, but the way that she jumped from the past to the [00:41:00] future, you know, or she jumped between the timelines to where we knew what was gonna happen in the beginning and it gave context for their childhood and what was happening.

Whereas in the series, , it's linear. So you start when they're in their teens and 

Elizabeth: as the book is linear. 

Martha: Yes. And the lead up is, I don't want to say boring, but I found it more interesting to see that Laurie ends up with Amy. And then you kind of work backwards and you're like, oh, but him and Joe were like thick as thieves.

How does this come about? , I found 

 

Martha: it to be a more, Captivating story when you're doing it in a two hour adaptation. 

Elizabeth: Wow. Okay. Well, so I'm glad that I remembered Little Women then because it sort of turns a lot of what we've talked about on its head. Because I think that I enjoy the Greta Gerwig movie more as well.

Greta Gerwig is just so good. Yeah, she's really good at doing it. 

Martha: Yeah, Greta Gerwig is a great director and there's also just [00:42:00] so many great actors. Big name actors in that film that I thought were very well cast. Like obviously, Timothee Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh.

I thought she was a great Amy compared to the Amy in the series. Laura Dern, who I thought was a great Marmie. I mean, there were just so many that fit. Meryl Streep as Aunt March. Oh, yeah, Meryl Streep, that's right. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, it is a really great movie, and I agree with you about the way that she jumps between the timelines, and I think that it's precisely because she knows that she doesn't have time to get all the details in, so she needs to quickly get to the core of the characters.

, the way that we start with Jo getting her stories published, mm 

Martha: hmm. 

Elizabeth: You know immediately, okay, this is the core of this character. Whereas when you're reading the book or watching any of the other adaptations, you don't get that until, I mean, you get it pretty early that she's up in the attic, right?

Yeah. But 

Martha: yeah, it's different. [00:43:00] The series is more true to the book. So in that way, I think you could argue it's a better adaptation, but this one bucks my rule where I feel like the is a personal favorite over the series. 

Elizabeth: Right, because it's more recent. The one that I would have said before the Greta Gerwig one came out was my favorite is the Winona Ryder.

Who is Laurie in that one? Christian Bale. Christian Bale. But

Martha: I think , in Little Women, Greta Gerwig didn't have to over exaggerate because there's a little bit of class, but it's American and it's during the time of the Civil War. , we as a modern audience still understand the context of that time period for the most part. 

Elizabeth: Maybe, but, you know, I also think that she just was a much defter pair of hands because the way that she got to the core of the characters.

She did it differently. , she did it with the way that she laid out the story, going back and forth between the [00:44:00] timelines. I think that maybe she just is better at it. 

Martha: Yeah. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: She's some of the other adaptations. 

Martha: Absolutely. She's an incredible director. 

Elizabeth: And she made her choices about how she was gonna get to the core of the characters in the core of the story.

Martha: Similar to Shonda Rhimes. Making Bridgerton what it is, like you said, just a very capable pair of hands that took the idea of the story and turned it into something really great. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. I love the book Little Women, and also a lot of people love the Julia Quinn books that Bridgerton is based on.

Yeah, it's all subjective. It's all subjective. , there are certainly people who love those books. And also love the series or don't love the series. Whatever, but yeah, that's interesting. I do think that little women is the exception that breaks a lot of our rules that we are coming up with throughout the episode, which is great though, I actually love that because it is like we were saying, it's just, it's all just so subjective.

Martha: Yeah. It just brings us full circle to our themes of this [00:45:00] podcast that. Everything is subjective. Like what you like, , no one's here to tell you you're wrong, but I do think that it's cool that we have this conversation because I think, as book lovers, we always want to say the books are so much better than the movies or the shows, but it's not always the case.

And it's really fun to see your favorite stories come to life. Yeah. On screen. 

Elizabeth: And in fact, we had a hard time coming up with examples of where the movie was , egregiously worse than the book, which is telling, I think. Yeah. 

Martha: And kind of fun to be proven wrong in that way. Cool. Well, thanks Liz. This was a great conversation.

Super fun. We got a lot of quality screen time in with our favorite adaptations since you've been up here. If you're looking for even more bookish content, make sure you follow us on Instagram and TikTok @allbooksaloudpod. If you want to tell us what your favorite adaptations are or send us a request for a topic , you can email us at [00:46:00] allbooksaloudpod@gmail.com. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And leave us a positive rating and review so that other people can find us. And read on, my friends.

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