We need this adapted into a series too. Why do all these mediocre books keep getting TV adaptations while this beautifully told story gets overlooked? Somebody, please make this happen. Lord Jesus, if not them, then let some fresh faces bring it to life.
The best (or worst) movie adaptations of book scenes? (Sherlock Holmes, etc, anything) (hw help)
Hello everyone, I am having to prepare to write a speech for my literature class concerning the quality of movie adaptations of novels. So I wanted to ask: Do you guys have any adapted scenes that you found remarkable in some way? Preferably a good one, but bad examples are welcome too of course🫡
Maybe a scene from Arthur Conan Doyle‘s canon that often gets left out but you find important? Or a scene that you thought a certain adaptation absolutely nailed or really just butchered? I am specifically referring to specific scenes here and *not* to overall series’ or movies.
Please do tell me about what you find remarkable in relation to the original novels, I would really appreciate any help with this as I’d started to look for examples a bit late so I only have today and tomorrow to gather them🧍♂️
This doesn’t have to concern Sherlock Holmes, it can also be about Harry Potter, etc., anything really, I just used that as an example since I plan on using Holmes as a reference/example for my thesis anyway.
Fast replies would be much appreciated, as I don’t really have any idea where to even start right now :,)
I found out about Love In The Big City through this book club, so the very first thing I knew about it was that it is going to be adapted into a movie and a series. Throughout my reading, one question has therefore been a constant presence in the back of my mind: how are they going to adapt this?
Already after reading Part I, I had concerns and wrote in my notes that “This seems to be the part they'll make the movie adaptation of which raises the question of if they'll be able to keep it as raw and unfiltered or if they'll romanticise it.” This is after reading part I, before we got into the truly heavy stuff.
When this week’s reading questions popped up, I realised that my concerns for how the adaptations will be done are clouding my expectations for both the movie and the series. Don’t get me wrong - I am very much looking forwards to seeing the movie and the series, to see how they handle the source material and to get to discuss it with you all, but when @bengiyo asks “What parts of the book are you most anticipating in the forthcoming adaptations?” I can’t think of anything. I can't think of a single thing, because what I am anticipating is disappointment.
Now, maybe I’m just tired and cranky and pessimistic. Maybe I’ve just been let down by one BL series too many in the past few months. I am feeling like a party pooper, but after receiving an ask on the subject from @archiveofmystuff (and this is your answer to that ask, btw), I realised I’m not the only one thinking of these things. I am honestly concerned about how the movie and the series will handle the source material, and the more I think about it, the more concerned I get. The reasons are many, so let me break it down a bit, starting with a couple of things that concern both adaptations and then delving into the movie adaptation and the series adaptation separately.
[putting the rest under the break because it's long and also spoilers]
Heavy (Taboo) Themes
As we’ve discussed in several posts in the past few weeks, the book handles a lot of really heavy themes. There is homophobia, terminal illness, attempted suicide, stigma and discrimination and HIV - and that’s just me rattling off the first few things that come to mind. All of these topics are not just complicated, but also sensitive. Some of them have been handled in Korean series and movies before (terminal illness and suicide, for example), some have not. Not that I can claim to have complete knowledge of what happens in Korean series and movies, but I have never seen themes such as HIV and the stigma and discrimination around it.
Would a mainstream Korean audience be ready for a movie/series depicting such themes? Coming from an outside perspective looking in, I do not think so. As we’ve discussed in part III (for example in this post by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings) many of these topics are still seen as taboo in Korea. I am therefore very concerned about how they’ll tackle these subjects in the adaptations - if they’ll tackle them at all. Korean series do not have a pristine past when it comes to representation of queer characters. Seeing that the author himself is the screenwriter for the series adaptation gives me some hope, but not enough to assuage my worries. They might make a fantastic job of it. They might make an honest attempt and fumble it. They might remove parts. I do not know, and all I can do is wait and watch the movie and series when they come out. But they are going to have to tread very carefully, and they are going to have to be very aware of what decisions they make in the adaptations.
Mainstream Reception
How the movie and series are going to be received by the mainstream audience is another worry of mine. Especially because they (the producers, writers, directors, investors and everyone else involved in making these adaptations) have to be aware that, to some extent, these adaptations are going to be viewed by a larger mainstream audience. Why? First off, the source material is a prize-winning novel that has gained some attention. This alone could lead to a wider interest among the general audience. However, what really makes me think the movie and series adaptations are going to go mainstream is the choice of actors.
The movie is headed by Kim Go Eun. She’s got several main roles under her belt, perhaps most notably in the incredibly popular series Goblin from 2016 but she has also been the leading actress of several major productions since. Long story short: she’s famous. In the movie adaptation she’ll be playing Jaehee. With her, she’ll have Steve Noh who’ll be playing “her gay best friend” and Kang Ha Neul (I haven’t found who Kang will be playing, but my assumption is that he’ll be Jaehee’s boyfriend). Neither Noh nor Kang are newbies, and they’ve both been in large productions before.
The series seems to have Nam Yoon Su playing the main role of Young, and Nam isn’t a new face either. He gained recognition in the Korean series Extracurricular in 2020, and has since been busy. Alongside Nam there are several familiar faces, such as Lee Se Hee, Jin Ho Eun and Kwon Hyuk (who, interestingly, was also in the Korean BL series The New Employee). As with the movie adaptation, none of these actors and actresses are newbies - they are more or less known faces.
My point? Adding known actors and actresses to a movie and/or series production is going to bring interest from a larger mainstream audience. This brings me back to the previous point about the heavy themes in the source material - will a mainstream audience be ready for a movie/series with such themes? Will actors and actresses of some level of fame be willing to put that fame on the line, with the risk that the movie/series could be badly received because of the general view of such taboo themes? Will the production be willing to take the risk, or will they cater to that mainstream audience and aim to create a more palatable product? Again, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.
The Movie Adaptation
The movie is going to be an adaptation based on part I with Jaehee, which initially seems like a wise choice. There’s a lot going on in the book, potentially too much to do it all justice in one movie, so to choose one part of the book seems like a good idea. The focus, however, concerns me.
As mentioned above, Kim Go Eun who’ll be playing Jaehee in the movie adaptation is potentially the most famous person out of all the actors involved in these two adaptations. Kang Ha Neul who (I think) will play the husband-to-be is also quite famous, while Steve Noh appears to be slightly less so (please do contradict me if I’m wrong, this is based on my own impressions from watching series as well as the MyDramaList profiles). What does this tell me? The money and fame is invested into the straight characters of the story.
And the synopsis?
“The movie depicts the love and separation of the free-spirited young generation, the free-spirited Jae Hee and her gay best friend Heung Soo who share a house together.”
Am I just being picky, or is Jaehee introduced as the front and centre of the film?
My concern here, based on the choice of actors and various synopsis that I’ve read, is that they’re going to straighten out the movie. They’re going to make Jaehee the main character, which is going to make for a heteronormative story with traditional values. My pessimism is telling me that we’re getting “lost young woman living with her gay friend (le gasp!) finally settles down with a proper young man and finds happiness in marriage”. Young (in the movie renamed Heung Soo, another clue that they’re going to be changing things) is going to get sidelined and left behind, and while that is the theme and tragic end of part I in the book, it’s going to be proof that the gays don’t deserve to be happy and in love in the movie. This, for me, would be the worst case scenario and all the alarm bells in my head are going off and I do hope I am wrong.
Please, I beg, surprise me.
The Series Adaptation
As earlier mentioned, the series adaptation has the authors as the screenwriter, which is very promising! As mentioned above, the risks with famous actors and a mainstream audience applies here as well, but I want to address two additional concerns: genre expectations and narrative structure.
Genre expectations
I am curious to see how they’re going to market the series adaptation. Korea has been putting out more and more BL series lately, no doubt catching on to the success of Thai BL series the last few years and wanting to cash in on the popularity, so they might decide to market Love In The Big City the series as a BL, which would come with certain expectations from the audience. Regardless of the marketing, large parts of the audience will not have read the book before seeing the series, and there’s the risk that they’ll approach it as one would a normal BL series. That is, I suspect they’re going to expect romance, BL-style kisses/sex scenes and a happy ending.
That is not Love In The Big City.
There is romance, yes, but it is tragic romance. It doesn’t work out. Young does not get to skip happily into the sunset with his partner - not to mention that there are several partners and failed relationships, which does not happen in the world of BL. And the sex? Most BL-fans will likely expect a sweet/passionate kiss, some will hope for an expertly composed bed scene of deep sighs and romantic lighting, intimate touches and blissed out expressions transitioning to some cuddling and pillow talk. Now, I’m not trying to throw shade, but that’s not how sex is depicted in the book.
In the book?
“We’d gone at it a little too hard - there was bleeding.” (134)
Yeah. Not happening in your regular BL-series.
As I thought already after reading part I, this book is unfiltered. It is raw. It is real. There is no romanticisation to be had. And I am worried that the production will choose to filter it to cater to the expectations of the audience, or the audience will react negatively to the rawness of it and reject it. Again, I hope I’m wrong.
Narrative structure
Judging from this post that @my-rose-tinted-glasses put up, they’re going to cover the whole book in the series adaptation. As already mentioned, that’s a lot to cover, but this is a series and so they have more time to cover more ground.
But the book is not written as one story, it is deliberately written in four parts that are connected but not structured as a single narrative. I have been reading it as parts of the author’s own life, or at least more or less inspired by the author’s own life. They’re bits of reality put on paper, written as looks into a life lived. While some editing and adding has surely been done, the parts are not structured with the clear narrative arc and conclusion that stories tend to have - because it’s not a fictional story.
I think the book is better for it. I appreciate how real it is. But how will they carry it over into a series? Will they follow the book closely and let the eight episodes correspond to the four parts? Or will they weave it together into one cohesive story with a narrative beginning, middle and end? If they change it, it’ll be at the risk of losing some of the real rawness of the book. If they don’t change it, it’ll again risk alienating a large portion of the viewers.
I obviously do not know what they’re going to do with these adaptations. With what I know of the audiences - both the larger mainstream audience in Korea and the more specific BL-invested audience - I think that large portions of the audience will be unable to appreciate Love In The Big City, so I believe that the production will choose to make changes in the adaptations. What those changes will be and what the final product will look like, only time will tell. In my worst moments, I've been convinced they're going to pick out the “good parts” and piece together a perfectly generic romance, offencive in its inoffensiveness, all smooth where the book is crinkled with the raw complexity of real experiences. As I’ve said before: I hope I’m wrong.
Final thoughts lifted from my notes:
I am equal parts overjoyed that they're really investing in these adaptations and worried that they'll scrub it clean.
They're either going to create a generic romance that's not worthy of the name, or they're going to make history.
Well, this is a surprise! I love the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and was extremely excited when it was announced that Disney was going to create a brand new series adaptation with series creator Rick Riordan as part of the project. Between the constant updates, casting announcements on Twitter, and now this teaser I think we can say that this beloved series is in the right hands.
I am so confused. The SH serie is perfect for a TV show. Showbusiness, man up, it's time to make a new hit series
I've always said that I prefer this over Harry Potter and I absolutely believe that many people will love it if they make a show out of the Septimus Heap saga
Although I'm also a bit scared because I have this whole world in my head. Who will play the actors? When I was younger I always imagined Marcia to be played by Rachel McAdams because I once saw her with curly hair. But after my tumblr time I've seen so many beautiful drawings of Marcia that I honestly don't care what she looks like anymore. As long as the actor plays her with the absolute best Marcia attitude
