Day 14: Book turned movie and completely desecrated!
Let me start by saying that I understand the way a movie works. They have only so many hours to tell a story that a book has much more page time to tell. This means that characters will hit the cutting room floor, scenes will be chopped, and some of the timeline may be rearranged. I accept a certain amount of this when a book becomes a movie, IF the heart and meat of the story is good. If I walk away thinking "Despite the changes that FELT like the book" I'm happy. A movie will never be perfectly the book. With that said, the movie that I felt truly ruined the book was:
Who in the world EVER thought that this book would translate well to a movie?! This story is about a Neanderthal clan coming across a Cro-Magnon child and, despite the fact that they keep the themselves, decide to adopt her into the the clan. Okay, so in the book those in the Clan speak by a series of grunts and hand motions... can you picture how this looks in the movie? Second, while the idea of Darryl Hannah as Ayla is perfect (tall and blonde) the reality was Darryl Hannah crawling around in the dirt and grunting.
Clan of the Cave Bear is a beautiful compelling story about differences and love, and there was absolutely no way that this stood a chance as a movie. Sometimes cinema just shouldn't touch a story no matter how popular it is.
I'm sad to think that there may be people out there who watched the movie and wrote it off without having read the novel.
