In Praise of Unfaithful Movie Adaptations

For whatever reason, I decided to watch The Eagle today. It's a 300-lite adaptation of The Eagle of the Ninth, which used to be the kind of dusty thing elementary kids were assigned to read, like Johnny Tremaine but without all the silver-deformed hands. Anyway, I read it sometime when I was 10 or 11, so my recollection might be foggy. But I'm fairly sure the book ended with the protagonist disillusioned with the glory of Rome. Instead, the movie has our hero (Channing "Mr. Poutylips 2012" Tatum) and his sidekick (Jamie "Billy Elliot Got Buff" Bell) striding out the door and into a buddy comedy.

But oh well. A sick side of me actually enjoys it when movie adaptations stomp all over their source text. Like that version of The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore, where a bunch of Natives ride in at the end to save the day. I figure by that point screenwriting was happening on a day-to-day basis, and having run out of excuses for Demi to get her frock off, the writers decided to wrap it up quickly. Credit also goes to Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted. Mark Millar's comic books might not have the same cultural capital as Hawthorne's AmLit 101 staple, but they get hacked just the same in the 2008 adaptation. The title's the same, and so are the characters' names, but... that's about it. And I loved it. Here's to faithless movies made from better books. They allow me to quietly disrespect my English degree and eat hot buttered popcorn, all at the same time.