Quote:
Originally Posted by vienna
There's always a problem with bringing books to the screen. Sometimes it's a question of length; really long, involved book storylines are often too unwieldy to fit into the normal 80 minute to 2 hour film length seen as more or less standard in Hollywood; also, the standard length is seen by most producers as best suited to the comfortable attention span of audiences, not to mention longer length means longer production time and higher production costs. Then there is the dilemma of the theater owners: they depend on high turnover of audiences to generate revenue and a four hour film means only half the showings daily of a two hour film and, correspondingly, half the audiences and revenue...
Some books to film are also changed to accommodate the marketing goals of the producers. If they can sign an actor, say Tom Cruise, the producers will change, add to or delete from the original text/story to make it a "star vehicle" and put the emphasis on the actors attributes rather than the story's...
Technology sometimes causes changes: either it isn't available or the producers have access to new technology they think will appeal more to the audiences. Imagine what the original 1950s WOTW would have been like if George Pal had access to today's tech...
All in all, perhaps the Orson Welles radio dram adaptation is the best of both worlds; the film is in your mind and imagination...
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The War of the Worlds isn't a particularly long book and I think the format it's written in is quite easily adaptable to a movie (the newer version actually does follow it quite closely for the most part). The problem is that every adaptation (except Pendragon Pictures' sadly under-budgeted version) shifts the setting of the story to the modern era, while making a movie set in the original Victorian setting would both be much more logical given the point the story is trying to make about imperialism and much more interesting as a movie overall. If updating the setting so the audience could relate to it is so necessary for the story to work, people would not still be reading the book to this day. Or, at least, that's my opinion...