ok i actually have been feeling similarly and i was thinking about why this is. because i’ve been feeling the same way about the pjo casting even though i have no evidence to prove that they’re not gonna be fantastic, and i wanted to unpack this feeling for anyone else who might be experiencing it.
basically what i think it is … you just can’t compare the book series to its corresponding television show or video game, or any other spinoff media that comes about. and i don’t think it matters how closely that media decides to follow the source material because at the end of the day, a book is a very different form of art than a television show is — and you also consume them in two very different ways.
an example i use a lot is the Harry Potter books versus the movies. because objectively i think the movies are great, and there isn’t much that is specifically wrong with them. but still, when comparing them to the books, they just can’t stand up. and this isn’t because the movies are bad or the did something wrong, i just think you can’t compare them because they’re two different forms of art.
when you read a book, the world is basically your oyster. even though it’s written for a mass audience, a book is still incredibly personalized thing because the whole world is created through words instead of pictures. you imagine the characters in your head, as well as how the world looks and how they speak and all the other small little details. and there’s fan art and stuff, but everyone is going to have their own concept of what the world and characters look like, but it WORKS because like i said before, there is no opinion that is right or wrong because the experience is different for everyone.
which brings me to my point, because in a television show or a movie, much less is given to the imagination, and therefore there is much less room for that personalization that books have.
and the reason, in my opinion, that it’s difficult for book fans to accept a spin-off show or movie and it’s casting is that books just draw a different type of crowd than video media. it’s just two different groups of people who looks for different things in the type of media they consume. book lovers crave that personal touch that writing gives them to customize their world, whereas cinema fans accept the hard facts that come with visual media and look for personal touches in other parts of that media.
and yes, there’s definitely some overlap between the groups, and some fans are gonna get lucky and maybe the casting is spot on for them. but i think the majority of book fans will never be able to fully accept a spin-off of their favorite work because it takes away some of the mystery and creativity that drew them to that work in the first place.
anyways, thank you for reading if you made it this far and also please let me know if you agree or you think i’m completely off base.
