FUCK ADAPTATIONS

(Spoilers for various books, movies, and TV shows below, please read with caution)

I've always fucking hated when my favorite books are adapted into movies or TV shows, because they are very rarely (if ever) faithful adaptations. Why would I love a book and then subject myself to watching a bastardized version of something that I love?

I don't even fucking understand why screenwriters and directors would change anything about a book, let alone the crucial aspects of the plot that usually are twisted and mangled in these types of things. The most infamous example I can think of is the total perversion of Dumbledore's character in the Harry Potter movie series. Gone is the kind, gentle, calm, wizened old wizard, and replacing him is an abrasive jerkoff. This gif says it all. FUCK the Harry Potter movies.

The worst specific example I can think of is The Silver Linings Playbook and its movie adaptation. In the book, a central scene involves Pat and Tiffany performing in a dance competition. Except, they are the only adults performing, and the stakes are pretty low. The whole point was that Pat was opening himself up to being with and sharing experiences with another person. It was growth in just being able to dance in the first place. However, the movie fucks this up terribly. The dance competition still exists, but it's a LEGIT dance competition, and the stakes are HIGH. And somehow, Pat and Tiffany pull off the win?! It completely fucking defeats the purpose. Winning the competition isn't the point, and winning proves nothing about Pat's progress as a person, it just means he is an unrealistically good dancer for some reason. FUCK Silver Linings Playbook. (And FUCK Robert DeNiro's portrayal of Pat's dad.)

All that burying of the lede to say that I am currently going through the frustrations of watching one of my favorite books being mangled beyond recognition on the screen.

Stephen King's 11/22/63 is the best time traveling book I've ever read. In it, our protagonist, Jake Epping, travels from 2011 to 1958 (via the "rabbit hole") to attempt to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Jake is methodical and ingenious in how he goes about this process, fighting all odds, stalking Lee Harvey Oswald and plotting how to change the world by preventing a murder that is destined to happen.

Except, Jake travels to 1958, not 1963 (the year JFK is killed), and so he has five years to hang out before stopping Oswald. And our protagonist is a kind and caring man, and so he gets wrapped up in the small-town life of (the fictional) Jodie, Texas, while he awaits his fate. He teaches English, changes students' lives, and falls deeply in love with the school librarian, Sadie. King expertly handles the whiplash between the will-they-won't-they in Jodie and the preparations for preventing calamity in Dallas.

The whole point, in my opinion, the main message Stephen King is trying to tell us through the incredible tale of Jake Epping in the Land of Ago, is this: The small changes we effect in our lives are infinitely more important than any large changes we attempt to effect. It's more important to be improve the lives of those around you than bully your way into worldwide celebrity. Jake, despite all the love and joy he finds in Jodie, TX, still foolishly considers JFK's safety to be his ultimate goal. It's not until he completes his task that he finds that it doesn't fucking matter. JFK could live for a thousand years, and that still couldn't replace the loss of someone close to you.

Pam and I read this book to Willow, since you're supposed to read books to children as soon as they are born, and because we thought that a Stephen King book would be a hilarious "Child's First Book," and because, well, 11/22/63 is a fucking masterpiece. I was tasked with reading the final chapter aloud, and man, it took me like an hour to read the damn thing because we both couldn't stop crying. I'm tearing up now, just writing about the book.

We started watching Hulu's TV adaptation, 11.22.63, and rather than cry, all I'm doing is rolling my eyes.

FUCK it's so goddamn frustrating to watch this goddamn show. There's no other word for it—it's just plain ol' fucking stupid how many plot points and characterizations they are changing and adding and removing.

Probably my least favorite is how dumb and dickish James Franco plays the part of Jake Epping. Our protagonist in the book holds dear the responsibilities of time traveling, and holds even dearer the friends he has around him. Our protagonist in the TV show is pretty shitty to most people he encounters (that fucking patented James Franco Smirk has never and will never convey an ounce of empathy in any on-screen appearance). AND he is so stupid and careless about everything. I'm surprised to see by the third episode that the entire city of Dallas doesn't yet know he's a time traveler, since he seems to just blab about it to anyone who asks.

To illustrate both the point that TV Epping is a fucking imbecile and the point that the TV show swerves wildly from its source material, I point you toward the end of episode two, where an auxiliary character (at best) from the book suddenly becomes a main character on the show. This guy, Bill Turcotte, played a small role as an antagonist in the first quarter of the book, but now in the TV show, the trip to Dallas to hunt Oswald turns into a Buddy Comedy featuring Jake and Bill. It makes no sense for the plot to do this. Fucking NONE.

There are so many other instances of this tomfoolery (race relations are suddenly integral to the story for no reason; Jake meets Sadie years earlier; an integral trip to Derry, ME, to test out of the consequences of time travel is completely changed, and the outcome is completely irrelevant in the TV show anyway). It's gotten to the point where I'm thinking this might even be the TV showrunners trying (poorly) to illustrate, in a somewhat meta way, the concept of the butterfly effect. Just as one little action by Jake has vast effects, so too does one little change in the adaptation of the book affect the vast majority of the book's plot as a whole.

That's a stretch, though, to believe for one second that anyone has that keen of a handle on this. What this really is, I know for certain, is just some dumb fucks taking a wonderful novel and turning it to shit. It's a tale as old as time. I will never fucking understand how someone could say, "I love this book, and so to adapt it I'm going to change everything." What does this accomplish?

11.22.63 is a hackneyed time travel television show that pays the novel 11/22/63 no respect whatsoever, and the people that created it should be ashamed of themselves. FUCK this show.