There have been many times in a reader’s life when they have read a book and then they find out that a movie is being made about the book. Now, usually, this gets people excited and they can’t wait to go see it. Most of the time the movie follows the plot of the book, and it’s awesome; however, there comes a time when the movie is simply awful and it completely disrespects the book.

Once in a while, there comes a truly great book series, one is The Inheritance Series. The series follows the adventures of Eragon and his dragon Saphira as they try to find a way to defeat the evil King Galbatorix. The first book in the series, Eragon, takes its namesake from the main character of the series. In 2006, the movie adaptation was released. The beginning of the movie starts out the same, don’t worry, no spoilers, but as the book goes on you can tell that it is simply an adaptation. After the beginning the movie begins to fall apart. One of the characters in the book, Murtaugh, is completely different in the movie than he is in the book and his personality is extremely important to the plot of the series. Pentucket senior, Steven Kolvek had this to say: “I read Eragon a while ago and I really enjoyed it, I was looking forward to seeing the movie and I was disappointed how the only thing they kept consistent would be the names of the characters and locations.” It’s a series so it had to have been bad if they didn’t go and make the second book into a movie.

Another adaptation of an amazing book series is The Series of Unfortunate Events. The series is about the Baudelaire orphans and their attempts to try and find somewhere to call home. The entire series consists of 13 books. Trevor Thomas saw the 2004 movie and had this to say “I think Jim Carrey was a perfect role for Count Olaf in that movie because he made it funny, even though it’s supposed to be really sad and depressing.” Although Trevor did like some aspects of the movie, such as how Jim Carrey played the main antagonist, he also said that “they also left out a lot of minor details, in the movie there was an uncle who owned a bunch of snakes, and in the book Count Olaf kills the uncle, but in the movie he makes it look like the snake killed the uncle.” Although the movie was good it left out many key details and received mixed reviews.

The majority of the time, book adaptations become good movies, and would even be applauded as great movies by some. However, since they are supposedly based off of a book that people like, people expect it to be like the book. Adaptations are usually fine. It’s when they mess with the plot that people get upset.