Annihilation – The Film
January 20th, 2019When I heard Jeff Vandermeer’s novel Annihilation was being made into a movie, my reaction was, “No way! Impossible!â€
I’d listened to the audio editions of all three books in the Southern Reach trilogy, and there was so much that was internal, philosophical, reflective, that I couldn’t see how a movie could be made out of it.
I think I was right.
I finally had a chance to see the film last night and I thought it was good. I liked the setting, the script, and the women characters on the expedition who were portrayed as realistic individuals and not just victims-in-waiting as women so often are.
I think the film succeeded because it wasn’t trying too hard to replicate the book. I would describe it as being based on elements of the book, rather than on the book as a whole. And that’s fine. Books and movies are different mediums, they tell stories in different ways, and so they can’t always tell the same stories.
Annihilation-the-film succeeded in respecting the feeling and the environment of Annihilation-the-novel, while telling a much simpler story, and that’s probably the best an author can hope for.
Kudos to both Jeff Vandermeer and to director/screenwriter Alex Garland.
For anyone interested in screenwriting, the conversion of book to movie would make an interesting study.
Posted on: Sunday, January 20th, 2019 at 3:12 pm
Categories: Movies.
Tags: Annihilation, the Southern Reach trilogy
January 21st, 2019 at 12:07 pm
The other way is useful to study as well.
Watch Superman Returns, and Man of Steel, then read the novelizations.
The movies are too compressed, not giving time for the story. The writers took the movies and turned them into story. What they needed to do was shoot a miniseries for each, and tell the story that is in the books.
– Superman Returns by Marv Wolfman
– Man of Steel by Greg Cox
The same with the movie Interstellar. The movie left too much on the cutting room floor. The novelization explained what was going on.
– Interstellar by Greg Keyes
Then Constantine and Resident Evil:Retribution, were captured perfectly in the novelizations. They matched one-to-one. Shirley even wrote a plot error in Resident Evil as an inside joke. She gets dressed without boots, and a few pages later has the boots. HA!
– Constantine by John Shirley
– Resident Evil:Retribution by John Shirley
The movie Suicide Squad was devastating, but the novelization failed because it was based on the shooting script and not the final cut of the movie. They edited the movie into something dangerous. HA!
January 24th, 2019 at 9:05 am
I hated the Annihilation book, but I love your writing so now I am wondering what did I miss? Did I read it all wrong?
January 24th, 2019 at 2:11 pm
First, thank you, Melissa! And this is a really interesting question. In this post I talked about my reaction to the Southern Reach trilogy. I think the key for me was that I listened to the audiobooks, and the narration was terrific, really mesmerizing. I probably wouldn’t have gotten through them, if I’d actually had to read them. Even so, I never would have predicted the level of success they’ve enjoyed. I even remember talking to someone in the publishing industry about it, expressing my amazement that the trilogy had done so well in sales.
It’s true they’re nothing like mine. I do like to read all kinds of books though. I vaguely remember thinking that Jeff Vandermeer had addressed some concepts that I’d tried to handle in Deception Well — but he’d done a much better job with it!
January 28th, 2019 at 1:45 pm
“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either” Then why bother writing about it?!?!!?
It’s totally possible that I got so frustrated reading Annihilation that I was mentally arguing with the text while trying to read it, which is… not a great way to appreciate art.
I see what you’re saying about Deception Well and Annihilation sharing concepts but I know whose voice I would rather have in my head.
Cynically, I wonder if there is a pent-up demand for ecological-disaster-sci-fi-with-female-protaginists, written by men, of course 😉
January 28th, 2019 at 4:47 pm
I had a similar reaction to a book that shall remain unnamed. It had great reviews. I tried reading it, and then listening to it, but I kept arguing with the plot, the world building, the characters… It just didn’t make sense to me, so I finally gave up.
Honestly, there are a lot of popular books that do nothing for me, but I can almost always appreciate something about them–the writing, the research that went into them, the creative ideas. It’s rare that I’m totally negative. But it does happen. 🙂