Introduction to Film Novelization

Bastardization of Novels: the Crossbred Offspring of Film and Novels

The novelizations of Hollywood blockbusters often enter and leave the shelves of stores unnoticed. Indeed, the general response received when explaining this project to people was “Which films have been novelized?” The answer is just about any film ever made that wasn't already a book: Indiana Jones, Alien, Rocky, Star Wars: Episodes I-VI, Ghostbusters, Batman Begins, Terminator, E.T., Saturday Night Fever, Poltergeist, Transformers, The Mummy, Gladiator, Jaws 2, Pacific Rim, the list goes on (and on). In his article for Slate.com, a current affairs and culture magazine, Jim Pagels points out that “since 2000, the top twenty grossing American films that were not directly based on a book already were all made into mass market paperbacks.” For novel theorists and critics, it can be puzzling to know what to do with this relatively unknown set of literature. However, the discussion is inevitable. As critic Morris Dickstein affirms, “movies and novels are more closely allied than any other cultural forms” (12). For this project, I will argue that the film novelization is not a novel at all but rather a Hollywood product designed only to generate interest and money for the film it novelizes. I will explore pertinent questions about writing novelizations, present problems of authorship, and demonstrate how the visual format of the film fails to successfully transition to the verbal format of a book. Critic Thomas Van Paryn sums up the two arguments nicely: “The repression of the visual in their [films] adapted counterparts [novelizations] supports the notion that the novelization is merely intended as a reading companion to the film, a promotional product rather than a novel in its own right” (289). To demonstrate this lack of intermediality between films and novelizations, I will make comparisons between the text and film versions of The Dark Knight Rises, one of Hollywood’s commercial successes that was novelized by Greg Cox in 2012.

            Novelizations are anomalies for a variety of reasons. A review of the difference between novels-to-films and films-to-novels is in order. When a film is spawned from a book (an adaptation), there is of course no guarantee that readers will see the same story that they have read. The screenwriters have the ability to change things as they see fit, hence the term “adaptation.” Sometimes the films hardly resemble the novels, for example Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of John Buchan’s The 39 Steps (1935), or the more recent attempt at filming Max Brook’s novel World War Z (2013). Other times, it captures the essence and spirit of the novel extremely well and includes much of the original dialogue from the text as seen in Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby (2013) or the adaptation of Louis Sachar’s young adult novel Holes (2003). In addition, the film adaptations can be separated from the books in a critical sense and viewed as a separate artistic project through the possibilities of musical score, tonal lighting, and plot adjustments that may make a story more relevant for a particular audience or period. In the case of The 39 Steps, Hitchcock adds a blonde who acts as a romantic interest for the protagonist. In The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann adds contemporary hip-hop music to emphasize the shocking and jarring lifestyle Americans were living during the Jazz Age. While undeniably tied to the source text, films adapted from books do not require the average filmgoer to have read the novel to appreciate the film-viewing experience.

On the other hand, Johannes Mahlknecht indicates in his informative essay on the creation and marketing of novelizations that one of the goals of film novelization is “a repetition of the pleasure experienced while watching the film” (143). In other words, readers will read exactly what they saw in the theater with no change or variation. Jan Baetens, one of the leading contemporary critics in this field of literature, states the following in his work on the subject: “In the case of a cinematic adaptation, once the adaptation rights are bought, the director can freely transform the source text. In the case of a novelization, the situation is very different, since the genre is characterized by a larger number of constraints on the transformer” (Baetens, 65, Example, my italics). Few, if any, liberties are allowed the novelizer by the screenwriters. The final product is an exact reproduction of the dialogue or action contained in the screenplay, which makes for a rather boring book. While I do not claim that novels cannot be dialogue-driven or action-filled, the exact repetition of novelizations furthers the notion that the novels are pure advertising devices for their films. The very definition of the word “novel” is inapplicable to film novelizations: new and not resembling something formerly known or used (Merriam-Webster). If novels are stories and material previously unseen, novelizations hardly fit the bill; they are merely duplications.

Baetens quotes Christopher Priest, a successful novelist who novelizes on the side (under a pseudonym, which is telling): “At the time the novel is being written, the author only has a screenplay to work with. It’s probably not even a final version, a shooting script. You have no real idea which actors will be in it, or where the film will be shot. You have no knowledge of the music, the pace, what the special effects will look like, the way the lighting will be used, the overall style” (Baetens, Example, 67). The novelization is paradoxical in that the author is expected to accurately portray the feel or tone of the film—theoretically using all of the elements described by Priest—while not having seen the final cut. Jim Pagels offers his findings: “Some studios tell authors that they must describe a scene in print exactly as it appears on screen—but don’t allow them to see any of the filmed scenes.” Ironically, the goal of a novelization is to help the reader see and hear exactly those things that the novelizer is unable to see while creating the novelization of the film.

Priest also adds, “They [the screenwriters and producers] want the book to be ready so that it can be on sale at the same time as the film is released” (Baetens, Example, 67). The publication date is based solely around the date that the film will appear in theaters; no matter that the book may contain any number of grammatical and spelling errors. The speedy, almost to the point of careless, publication process indicates that if the novelization appears on shelves after the film has come out, the value is heavily decreased. Again, the novelization is not a separate artistic project with its own contribution to the literary canon but is rather connected solely (and financially) with the film it copies. Baetens notes that “the target readership of novelizations . . . is seen as unsophisticated” (Example, 73). Indeed, novelizations are rarely reviewed by professionals at all (Cox).

Moreover, the screenwriters are willing to sacrifice continuity between the book and the film in order to get their film poster pasted on the cover of about 200 pages of novelization for additional commercial promotion. If the stories in the novelization and the film differ, it is not because the book presents a different message but because the screenwriters simply changed the story after the book was sent off to publication. These changes do not refer to minute dialogue differences or the location of a certain event but larger incidents in the story that can have an impact on the end result. Mahlknecht recounts the story of how the ending of Terminator Salvation came about in both the film and the novelization:

In the case of Terminator Salvation, the screenplay underwent substantial alterations before the film went into production. Foster [the novelizer] accordingly rewrote large parts of the novelization after finding out that the shooting script differed greatly from the screenplay that the studio had originally given him. And yet, despite these changes, the novelization’s final version still has a radically different ending from the finished film, because the studio was so secretive about the ending it was going to use that it did not inform even the novelizer about it (157).

In the novel, all the characters survive. However, in the final film version, one main character sacrifices his own life to save that of another character. The lack of artistic integrity and accuracy demonstrated by Hollywood producers, especially in the case of Terminator Salvation, decreases whatever value the novelization had to begin with.

The commercialization continues. On the cover of many novelizations, the screenwriter’s or the director’s name is more prominent than that of the novelist himself. For example, on the cover of The Sixth Sense novelization, the title is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. The credit goes all to the director and writer of the film rather than the actual author of the pages readers are holding in their hands. On the title page, M. Night Shyamalan is again given credit for The Sixth Sense. This leads to confusion on the reader’s part, or at least misinterpretation. Did M. Night Shyamalan write the novelization? It is not until after readers finish the novel that they turn the page and see the “About the Author” paragraph and realize that the credit for the story they just read goes to Peter Lerangis. However, even that statement isn't accurate.

A film novelization is a bastard in the true sense of the word: the lack of true parentage of these works creates an identity crisis for this form of literature. Baetens points out that “novelization does not so much aspire to become the movie’s other as it wants to be its double” (Baetens, Genre, 50). It isn’t trying to be a novel; it’s trying to be the film in book form. The novelization is a replication; there are no additions or variations, despite one writer handing off the baton to another. The author who creates the novelization can’t claim credit for the story and characters, yet the screenwriters can’t declare the 60,000-plus word version of their screenplay as purely their own work either, so to whom does the novelization belong? Mahlknecht makes the point that even lowbrow writers like Dan Brown and John Grisham can at least claim all of their characters and plots as their own (150). However unsophisticated their novels may be, they are able to take pride in an idea of their own that comes to fruition on the page.

This sort of pride is something that neither the screenwriters of the film nor the author of the text can have when discussing their novelization. Ironically, each might give credit to the other for the book itself: the author would thank the screenwriter for giving him such good material; the screenwriter would credit the novelizer for such a nice execution of his material. There is something lost when a piece of work is a shared product on such a broad level. The collaboration of novelizers and screenwriters can hardly be called a team effort when it is possible that they will never meet in person.

Financially speaking, novelizing is not a fulfilling occupation. Screenwriters make much more than the novelizer (Mahlknecht 148), which reinforces the idea that the novel version of the film is lower in value. The fact that film novelizations rarely get a second printing (Baetens, Genre, 46) makes the lover of literature question again if the project of a film novelization is more than an advertising ploy similar to action figures or coloring books. (The Omen, which was written by the screenwriter, Gladiator, and E.T. are among the few that made the reprinted list.) Once the hype over the film is done, the novelization becomes the stuff of online auction websites and charity shops and is forgotten.

All these facts support the idea that film novelizations are not meant to create another piece to add to the modern-day literary canon, but are rather a corporate maneuver to rake in even more money for the film the novelization has wordified. Peter Kobel agrees. In an article written for The New York Times, he criticizes novelizations in the following way: “Novelizations can make a John Grisham book seem like high art. More than even the movie industry itself, novelizations are about commerce, not art.” In short, novelizations serve the same purpose as action figures. Action figures draw children to the films they represent; novels draw readers to the films they represent. The action figures are a money-making device, and they are not viewed as sculptures. In the same way, novelizations should not be regarded as novels but one more way the film poster can be on display. As Malknecht declares, “Irrespective of the quality of the writing, it is the corresponding film that will (almost) always be considered the novelization’s main selling point” (142).

Having established the blatant commercial nature of novelizations, I will now take a theoretical turn and discuss the inability of films to transmedialize, or change from one format to another, into novels, the second key factor in the bastardization of novels. While comparing novel-to-film adaptations and film-to-book novelizations is similar to comparing apples and oranges in many respects, there is nevertheless a process of transmedialization that occurs in both instances. In Jan Baetens’s essay “Novelization: A Contaminated Genre?,” he acknowledges the existence of the transmedial factor but underplays the importance of it: “Most of the novelizations are in fact based on one form or another of screenplay, that is, on a verbal pretext, which entails, among other things, that the problem of the ‘translation’ from one semiotic system to another is systematically eluded” (Genre, 46). I contend that the problem of “translation from one semiotic system to another” is not “systematically eluded” when a film is turned into words.

Baetens argues that novelizations are not attempting to cross semiotic systems (that is, from visual to verbal) because the novelizations are based on a screenplay, making it a transition from verbal to verbal. But the screenplay is written for a visual audience. It is not meant to be read, but viewed; this is the screenplay’s objective. Therefore, when the dialogue and directions from the screenplay are changed to a full-fledged descriptive narrative, the entire work undergoes transmedialization. The story is now meant to be read. Novelizations attempt to convey the visual aspect of film (being based on the visually-oriented screenplay) in book form, which is something that is difficult to accomplish when the novelizer is allowed so little freedom with his characters, dialogue, and setting.

Further, the direct transfer of screenplay to book takes away from the subtlety of the visual format that makes films special in the first place. In a discussion of how to teach film and literature in the classroom, John Golden makes a distinction between scenes that are “directly filmable, which are words and phrases that can be readily translated into film with little interference” (Golden 26), and “indirectly filmable . . . where a director needs to rely on a variety of cinematic and theatrical elements to translate the print to screen” (26). In a similar vein, I propose that there are scenes from films that are “writeable” and “non-writeable,” meaning that the translation from screen to book may be effective in cases, but not in others. The way characters’ facial expressions work together to convey an unspoken message, edits that are only seconds long to show one event in different locations, and instant visual registration of scenery, physical appearance, and tone of voice all are visual elements of films that can become clunky and drawn out when a novelization attempts to capture them in word form.

Further, the novelizer must add explanations and background to give credence to the character’s actions and thoughts because the novelization must be more than a simple presentation of the screenplay. However, since the book is verbatim screenplay material (and therefore a visual medium at its base), that means that anything essential to the plot and characterization will be properly communicated through the characters, either with their words or their physical expression. Therefore, any additional “help” from the novelizer, while perhaps interesting, is unnecessary to understand the story. This “padding,” as it is referred to by Grady Hendrix, creates clunky passages and unnecessary explanations. Padding adds to the flatness of novelizations and makes readers wonder why they should waste time reading the novelization when they can see the film. What takes thirty minutes to read may take ten to watch. The visual ten minutes will inevitably also be more exciting.

To further illustrate the visual-to-verbal challenges that face the novelization, I will examine the film The Dark Knight Rises and its novelization.