The production of movies from bestselling novels has become a common practice in Hollywood these days. However, these movies ruin the very integrity of the book itself, especially the basic components of the book, such as the plot, characters, and tone of the story. Three of the big occurrences that box office Hollywood movies tend to do is leave out important scenes, fail to recognize the inner emotions of the characters, and the actors are sometimes poor imitations of what the characters are supposed to be. There are many examples of this but the movies that exemplifies this practice are the two Percy Jackson and the Olympians movies. They exclude some of the major points of the book. There is the fact that they entirely changed who the villain was. In the first movie, the villain was Hades, god of the Underworld. However, in the book, the real culprit was Kronos acting out through Ares, god of War. Not only does this change the motives of Luke, the primary antagonist in both the movie and the book, it completely disregards Hades's personality. Hades doesn't want Zeus' powers; he simply wants his kingdom to work efficiently and not have to deal with his brother's war. In the second movie, they did end up blaming Kronos for the crimes but one scene told us that Silena Beauregard, a daughter of Aphrodite, had become one of the demigods who sided with Kronos. We never actually figure this out until the last book in the middle of the Battle of Manhattan. The movie tries to cram the rest of the books into a single movie, therefore losing all of the necessary information needed to make a compelling and amazing movie to go along with the books. Secondly the characters themselves are changed; also, we are unable to know their emotions, which are usually shown clearly in the book. An example of these are the Hunger Games and Divergent. In the Hunger Games, at the end of the book, we are shown that Katniss hadn`t actually cared for Peeta like it seemed, and had only acted that way towards him because she needed to win and get sponsors. In the movie, however, that was completely cut from Katniss` character, focusing on the love triangle between her and the two boys in her life, Peeta and Gale, which changes her priorities dramatically. In Divergent, the minor characters are barely given life and, if a person hadn`t read the book, their names would never have been known. There was no sympathy for Tris when she killed Will because no one even knew his name! The audience had no real idea of what Tris felt when she had to kill him, whereas in the book, the readers know her anguish and never ending feelings of guilt after she killed him. Tris wasn't able to pick up a gun for so long after his death, even though her very life was in danger! Lastly, sometimes the actors play a dry portrayal of these characters. The two examples of this are Twilight and Mortal Instruments. There are many things wrong with Twilight and many would agree; one of the things wrong with it are the actors. They weren't very good at acting. Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob Black, was too dramatic but doesn't display many emotions. Kristen Stewart, who plays Bella Swan, is somehow able to keep a straight face through most of the heartbreaking scenes. Although the book wasn't very good, the movie was worse. In the Mortal Instruments, there are an amazing set of actors who just happened to not do very well. The villain, Valentine, who was played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is not the soft-spoken yet evil man he was in the book. He became an angry, violent man who wanted the Mortal Cup, instead of a man who wanted to purify the Shadowhunter race of people by killing the Downworlders.
These are only a few things wrong about books being made into movies. I could probably go on and on about serious issues of such movies, such as white-washing the actors, erasing disabilities and mental illnesses, and the neglect of the character's sexuality. But this would involve me ranting about the entertainment industry and the discrimination that is rampant within it and that would take about ten pages. Most people would say, “But you get to see the book played out visually!” when told that books are best on paper but it doesn`t mean it actually is the book. There are so many errors and scenes left out that it really isn't a visual representation of the book; rather it is a bad copy of one. Books would be better off staying books, rather than having Hollywood turn it into something it isn`t. Next time the reader goes to the movies to see a book-turned-movie, remember this: there will always be something missing from the movie. So go read the book.
