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I really liked the book "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and it's sequels (hey, I work at a middle school).
Now there's a movie coming out, and while the trailers look faithful, I can't imagine it can capture the feeling of the book.
NO SPOILERS, but the book is the diary of a little kid. He's a little bastard with zero empathy or understanding of other people, but because the book is from his point of view, it's kind of charming because you see everything he does from his kid-logic viewpoint and how he actually doesn't realize what a bastard he is.
The movie though, with it's omniscient camera, is either going to have to change him fundamentally, or make a movie about a really really dislikeable kid.
It got me thinking about adaptations, and which have the most challenges, and which have it easy, and which are faithful, and which totally miss the point.
One that I thought of was "Count of Monte Christo" and how SPOILER ALERT in the book it's not clear who the count is, or what characters know who he is or not. But in the movie, with actors and closeups of reactions it's harder to pull that off, so even though the most recent adaptation was marginally faithful to the book, in one fundamental way the narrative was completely changed.
