"This film is based on..."
"This film is inspired by..."
These are two of the most vague statements in all of cinema. Too often an audience has difficulty judging how much of the film is really based in fact and how much is the product of the filmmakers' own imaginations and influences. It is not uncommon for an audience to learn to take a film's content literally if they are not familiar with the original history or source material supposedly behind it. It is also not uncommon for an audience to take great offense if they see the film deviating greatly from the original source material that they are already familiar with. The difficulty is to know how much of a "margin of error" to allow a film and when to take a step back and say "this film is a completely independent artistic work in its own right".
So what is a filmgoer to do? Should we just assume all films are either bald-faced lies or not subject to the constraints of the original source or should we give them free reign? Ideally we should do neither.
When it comes to a film based on actual events the best someone can do is keep in mind that whatever they are watching has been filtered several times over through writers, producers, directors, editors, and censors. There is no possible way that all of these people working together could assemble a film that is 100% historically accurate. First of all, it is impossible to actually know every detail about the historical happenings. Secondly, one has to acknowledge the other factors at play when making a film such as creative license, time constraints, ratings, budget, pacing, etc. The ideal way for a person to combat the "film as literal history" problem is to go out and research the events on their own in order to come to an informed conclusion. Lacking that, education-based channels such as TLC and The History Channel have been known to put programs on when a historically-based film is released that discuss the actual events in question as compared to the events in the film. Naturally, most people cannot be expected to research the history behind every film they see. Thus, we must all learn to accept that at least some aspect of each film that is "Based on/inspired by true events/a true story" is not actually based in fact.
Though media can be a powerful tool in swaying the hearts and minds of an audience, people can, for the most part, be trusted to remember that a film is just a film and not an historical tome. The greater difficulty actually lies in the "based on the novel/graphic novel/play/etc. by..." category. When a filmmaker decides to make a film based on a preexisting source material, such as a book, they know that there is a built-in audience already waiting for them. On the one hand, this is a good thing because it guarantees a certain minimum of ticket sales for all of those who enjoyed the original work and are curious about the film. At the same time, this is a dangerous thing for a filmmaker because that means they must spend the next several years (or more) of their lives combating the opinions and expectations of that audience. No matter how unfair it is, the audience will expect everything that they remember from the original source material to make it to the screen. As any filmmaker can tell you, this is highly impractical. A short story, for example, might be able to make it to the screen with every event within it intact but the end result would not be the same as the story. The difficulty lies not only in what parts of the overall story have to be cut but in how the story translates from one medium to another. Some brilliant books make terrible films and vice versa. The problem lies within the presentation.
The audience is often tempted to blame the filmmaker when a film based on their favorite book turns out terrible. Yet, if the book had a structure that just doesn't work on film then there was nothing the filmmaker could've done to salvage it. A book that relies heavily on the internalizations of characters suffers when put onscreen because the voice that the reader grew to love is forced to be absent. A character cannot spend the entire movie describing everything in great detail and giving a running commentary. The film would never get anywhere and the action would look stilted. Because not all formats translate directly onto film, the filmmakers are forced to alter the original work to make it function in a movie format. The
Harry Potter books, for example, suffer when turned into film because they are so rich with events, characters, and nuances that can't all possibly fit without the film being hours and hours long. What saves the films is the writer adapting what important bits he can from the books and trying to evoke the same feeling through various changes in scenes and dialogue in order to remain true to the work. As you can see, this method of keeping the main plot structure and rearranging to refit for a film format has worked out quite well for
Harry Potter.
The most difficult style of film is what I call the "reinterpretation of an original work". Oftentimes, an audience will be hesitant to give a film a chance because while it resembles the original source material, and possibly even claims to be based on it, there are drastic alterations in tone and format as well as characters and events. One such film that suffered from loose connections is
Constantine. Though not heavily touted in its ad campaign,
Constantine is loosely based on the Vertigo comic book
Hellblazer. It is not unusual for a filmmaker to play fast and loose with the material from a comic book source since the books themselves are notorious for having constantly changing continuities. This, of course, doesn't stop fans from getting indignant over changes they see onscreen that do not coincide with their own character ideals. However, with a more compact title like
Hellblazer in which the continuity doesn't shift like crazy and there aren't several alternate universe spinoff comics fans tend to get stricter with what changes they will accept. Though
Constantine still stars John Constantine, there are several large changes made to his story that completely change the story in such a way that it is an alternate universe unto itself. Just a few examples: John is played by Keanu Reeves rather than resembling popstar Sting, he lives in Los Angeles instead of London, his best mate/driver Chas Chandler has become his teenage appretince/driver (Chaz Kramer), rather than a magician John is now a "freelance exorcist".
The most interesting thing about all of the changes that were made was that they served to give John a different purpose in the story. In the comics, John is a rapscallion who looks out for himself and used to play in a punk band. The most purpose he has in life is to live it and to continue being somewhat of a rebel in the universe. In the film they give him a proper and immediate motivation: John committed suicide as a teen because he could see angels and demons, he is brought back to life and now knows the Hell he is doomed to for killing himself, his mission in life is to do as much good as he can (though exorcisms) in order to win a ticket back to Heaven, he is dying of cancer. John now has an immediate motivation. He needs to become a good person before he dies so that he doesn't go back to Hell (especially since the demons he exorcises all know who he is). This gives the film a theme of redemption to keep the audience going through the main story arc about the Big Baddie he must defeat. The characters around him are all in place to aid in that redemption or try to thwart his efforts. Making Chas/Chaz younger, in particular, is a device in place to convince the audience that John is not a complete asshole. In the comics, John always treats Chas like crap but they continue to be friends throughout. Having Chaz as a young apprentice speeds up the character development because the audience expects him to be hard on the kid and prevent him from doing much in order to inadvertantly protect him.
Overall, the film is better for the changes and has the potential for something better. Yet, many a
Hellblazer fan turned their noses up at it because they were familiar with the source material and that film was no it. What the audience needs to bear in mind is that this film is not so much an adaptation of the comic book as a reimagining. It's an alternate universe story and should be viewed as though it were its own completely independent entity. Because it
is.
A film is never going to be 100% true to the original story. That is okay. A film should be viewed as a separate piece of work in its own right and not held up directly to the original material. If we did that for every "based on..." film then we would be missing out on many, many good films simply because they don't look exactly the same as what we remember. As long as the film is good, it does not matter. With luck, a good enough film will simply get more people interested in the original source material and they can each pass their own judgment on the end product. Take it with a grain of salt, people, and happy viewing.
