So today is the day apparently, to venture into familiar murky and unpleasant memories when you might’ve felt that gouging your eyes out is a better alternative than looking at your screen at whatever the hell is going on. So we’re talking about the book characters that were changed for worse in their movie adaptations, really painful experiences for all the fans out there if I might say.
Often it might be difficult for directors and writers to portray some character entirely as it was in the book due to some issues that fall under the category of cultural representation (Justice Smith in all the bright places instead of a white actor as it was in the books) or other reasons probably that are completely justifiable under their terms of work, and most of us respect that.
But sometimes things get way out of hand with the changes and the end result is often frustrating or even infuriating for the book fans that just come with hopes and expectations of something reasonably similar to the book that they’ve read. Today we hope to cover a few of these characters who did not receive any justice in their portrayal.
1. Mayor David Prentiss (Chaos Walking): A simple yet very complicated character as the main antagonist of the series; Mayor Prentiss’s profuse narcissism and the determined hunger for power aligns him to a lot of personalities we might come across in real life, which highlights the character’s ingenuity. He has a great skill for using his words powerfully to sway the people in his favor and he is portrayed as a very clever and powerful overall, one of the best book villains I’ve come across so far. Then there’s the movie *sigh* , there’s already an article on this site you can check out about how bad exactly is the Chaos Walking adaptation. The way his death occurs (minor spoiler alert?) and how he is portrayed overall does his character zero justice in total.
2. Annabeth Chase (Percy Jackson): You say bad adaptation, I say Percy Jackson! Anyone talking about bad book adaptations cannot leave this one alone (the next one better be awesome). There are a lot of structural changes which would be acceptable if the personality of the character is preserved but of course not. So book Annabeth is 12, with blond curly hair and stormy gray eyes and expresses her affection for Percy by phrases like “you drool in your sleep” and “seaweed brain” and they say romance is dead. Movie Annabeth on the other hand is 18, has blue eyes and lovely brown wavy hair with no visible character depth. For the entirety of the first movie she appears as nothing but majorly a prop and lacks Annabeth’s important past like how she ran away home, how she lost her best friend and how intelligent and strategic she is being the daughter of Athena that she is. This really does make us think that, there is not a lot of point of her character. And she’s just another demigod who is Percy’s romantic interest while in reality; she is just so much more than that.
3. Ginny Weasley (Harry Potter): when it comes to movie adaptations Harry Potter is among the best even despite quite a few changes throughout the series. But one of the changes that strike the fans the most is the degradation of Ginny Weasley’s character portrayal just threw it off a cliff. In the books, Ginny is a determined, strong, sassy, never backs down from a challenge… overall, the epitome of a true Gryffindor. The movies managed to erase her whole personality and quite literally if I might add, her character is flat and doesn’t have that much screen time as she should and appears as a wallpaper of sorts, always in the background until Harry suddenly starts liking her back. It would’ve been really remarkable if there had been some of the parts of her character that made everyone fall in love with her. Like how she comes up with witty remarks all the time, how spirited she gets when she plays Quidditch and how she’s head to head with her brothers when they pick on her and so many more. (Also there is no chemistry between her and Harry in movies, its cringey and weird)
4. Euron Greyjoy (Game of Thrones): like many other characters in Game of thrones, Euron Greyjoy is a much watered down version of his book counterpart. Apart from the startling change in his appearance (no eye patch, what even) and the fact that he is not the only Greyjoy brother who is in line for the throne, the character lacks the features that would mark him as really dangerous and powerful rather than the annoyance that he’s portrayed as in the show. The books cover a variety of his achievements ranging from him being one of the few people who have managed to kill a dragon, he was in the possession of ‘Dragonbinder’ (an ancient horn that can control dragon) and he even managed to track down an egg once. And the show bring him down as Cerci’s lackey, he does everything to please her and keeps trying all the time which is just pathetic and very unlike his book version who was much more interested in ruling himself.
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