Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tom Cashel" data-source="post: 480749" data-attributes="member: 321">First, the qualifier "better" is completely meaningless on internet messageboards and elsewhere.  There's simply no such thing, once you eliminate subjectivity.  "Better" is a matter of preference.  Secondly, the idea that the closer a story is to the author's intention, the "better" it is, is not neccesarily true.  The history of storytelling is full of examples of stories that have surpassed (in meaning) what the author intended...how about Star Wars, or Shakespeare's plays?  Are these better or worse than perceived?  Than the author perceived?Mallus, you make some extremely good points, especially about prose allowing for structures too complex for film.  Plots mixed with subplot upon subplot that work just ducky in prose would be complete goobledygook on film, no matter how skilled the director and how long the film might run.  But...You might find more in the Pacific, but at least you can drink the Evian. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />First flaw of film: it takes a whole committee to get one made.  Lots and lots of people...director, script writer, producer, camera man, key grip, actors...even auteurs who write, direct, produce, edit and act can't do everything in a single film.  Hence no film can be constructed solely upon the author's intentions...it's muddled by all those other peoples' involvement.BUT...the idea of a piece of storytelling that tells you only what the author intends strikes me as, well, boring.  Stories gain life and staying power based on the interpretations they spawn; something that can only be seen one way is, IMO, inferior to something that can be interpreted in many ways.  One shuts down all discussion while the other gives life to it.Now I'm not applying this to books or film, because I like them both for different reasons and for the different things thay can do.  I'm just saying that where there is no possibility of interpretation, no multiple viewpoint, there is stasis.  It might make a damn good film, but the shelf life is very very limited.</blockquote>

Verification