When it comes to adaptations, I’m pretty sure we can all agree that most of the time the original is the best version. Whenever I go to the movies to see something based off a book, I always go in with the expectation that I’ll be disappointed. Yet for some reason, I keep on going. There was one movie in particular that I recently re-watched and had some interesting thoughts about. The book is Every day by David Leviathan. The original novel came out in August of 2012 and the movie came out in February of 2018. I had read the novel a few years before the movie came out and I loved it! It was a book I always recommended for other people and was always my go-to recommendation for book clubs because I think the book offers some really interesting perspectives and allows for a lot of conversation. The story follows “A” a being that wakes up in a different person’s body every day. They explain that they have no idea why this happens or what they are and their main focus is to not mess up anyone’s life after they leave the person’s body. Until one day, A wakes up in the body of a character named Rhiannon’s boyfriend, A develops a crush on Rhiannon and the story then follows their romance. It is actually a very compelling romantic story that made me very emotional. As you can see, I really enjoyed this book so when a movie was announced I was so excited. I went to see it the theatres with my friend the Friday after it came out, it was only playing in the movie theatre that was 30 minutes away, but we made the sacrifice.
After seeing the film, both my friend and I had differing opinions. My friend was head over heels in love with, while I was a bit hesitant about my praise. They had changed the ending. In the novel, the ending took a darker and more sci-fi approach going into why “A” was the way they were. While the movie ignored that point from the original novel and focused more on the romance aspect. For the most part, the movie was incredibly similar to its origin, but I couldn’t get over how they altered the ending. Looking back on it now, I kind of prefer the ending in the movie. My only complaint of the book while reading it was that the ending felt rushed. I feel they started exploring the supernatural aspects too late in the story and it was never fully fleshed out. Even so, when this part was taken out from the movie I was upset and angry because it differed from the original source. I don’t know why I have such a purist view when it comes to movie adaptations, but I always want the movie to be identical to the book even if I know it would be better with some differences. Either because it would make the story better or they don’t have to ability to make certain aspects possible. This is not to say that movie adaptations are always better because most of the time I am truly unimpressed, but do I think that because the adaptations were really that bad or did I just go in with my mind already made up?
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