I canāt do this anymore
a general reply to people in the notes. assigned reading before replying: thomas leitch on adaptation theory (available with a free academia dot edu account and/or probably accessible elsewhere on the web or via a library) and robert stam on going beyond fidelity in adaptations. please return to the comments with compelling rebuttals or do not return at all
your nostalgia for old things you loved as a child is being used to manipulate you. childhood favorites were never as ideologically pure as you wanted/remembered them to be
jrr tolkien and cs lewis are good writers with imperfections that modern adaptations should probably tackle and not whitewash (racism and colonialism re: the haradrim and calormen, for instance)
there is no such thing as an adaptation "ruining" an original text. the original text will always be there, untarnished, untouched, to return to when you want
everything with regard to a text is interpretation. reading involves interpretation. adapting involves interpretation. gerwig's interpretation is as valid is your interpretation is as valid as your best friend's interpretation. they are just interpretations.
on the same note, there is no such thing as the essential spirit of a text, because what is "essential" will vary from person to person. it is, again, all interpretation.
fidelity/faithfulness to a source text is certainly one metric you can use to judge adaptations, but it is not, and should never be, the sole metric.
what actually matters is if the adaptation stands up as a quality work on its own merits or not. that's why audiences generally like distant adaptations if the adaptation stands on its own merits (arguably the lord of the rings trilogy is a rather distant adaptationāif you disagree on this please get back to me about how faithful the films are to aragorn, faramir, arwen, denethor, glorfindel, tom bombadil, haldir, merry, pippin, the scouring, etc., etc.), or something like scorsese's hugo adaptation, or the neil gaiman stardust movie, etc., and accept those without too much nitpicking of the differences, but criticize adaptations when they stray from the source text if they're just not good by any metric.
[like I've said on some other fidelity-related post, the percy jackson films are not bad solely because they are distant, unfaithful adaptations. they are bad because they fail as good movies, period.]
i'm excited to see what gerwig does because gerwig is a skilled filmmaker with a compelling voice and strong grasp on narrative, character, dialog, cinematography, and so on. as near or distant as her adaptation may be, it will be interesting, and it is neither intended as or will serve as a replacement for the book but will be a work of art in and of itself. and i for one do want a woman filmmaker's take on narnia.
lewis and tolkien were just human guys, and i think it's perfectly fine to take them down from the pedestal once in a while and think critically about them and let the conversations and interpretations flow.
it's not a sacred text, it is not going to ruin your childhood, it is just a different director's interpretation that you can choose to see or not see.
the rhetoric around faithfulness in adaptations is just an unfortunate smorgasbord of the worst takes i've ever seen so every so often i feel the need to write too many words about it
source: i wrote my thesis on adaptation theory and you should at the very least read stam and leitch before positioning yourself as any kind of adaptation theory critic
