It’s been a big summer for Mr Stephen King, hasn’t it? With It racking up rave reviews left and right, Mr Mercedes about to wrap up its first season, and now Gerald’s Game out on Netflix, it seems the King of Horror can do no wrong these days.
I’ve yet to see It (it was just released this week in these parts) and I’m holding off to binge-watch Mr Mercedes, but I did just see Gerald’s Game, and it didn’t disappoint.
Of course, we’re not the ones doing the allowing. It’s up to the screenplay writers to adapt the book to screen, however they see fit.
Sometimes the books themselves pose the problem: whatever universe is created in the author’s mind might be extremely hard – indeed, sometimes downright impossible – to translate to the screen in a believable way. In some cases it’s done masterfully, in others… well, the results can range from kitch to awful, with bad CGI and even worse acting and directing being the usual culprits.
But for the sake of this post, I have to assume that the writers’ and directors’ vision was originally to stay true to the raw material. To take this carefully crafted world they were handed in book form and bring it to life in front of our very eyes. So what is it that usually goes wrong?
