Writer To Go

Like Five-Minute Shakespeare, the film adaptation of Stieg Larson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire” (2009) is just staccato shorthand, meaningless if you haven’t read the book.

If you’re seeking entertainment, forego the movies, just read the books.

It’s not easy translating a story across media. It takes a capable screenwriter, who groks the medium of the new project, and the running time of the finished work. The task benefits from a minimalist aesthetic, combined with a love of the original. Importantly, the filmmakers cannot cower before a bestseller’s fans.

Time and again, we see the narrative of a novel better translated to a television season than a 2 hour feature. Dexter and The Wire come to mind.  Whereas movies are more like novellas.

[Collated from my original posts at FeralFilm.com.  I write Feral Film’s micro-reviews, as seen there, on Twitter and Facebook.]