It’s weird to watch movies about books — there I said it. Fire me, ostracize me, do whatever you want, but no thank you, adaptations are not my thing. When I hear about a new adaptation of a beloved BookTok book, I’m immediately wary. There is a significantly larger chance of the directors missing the mark on these stories than there is of them hitting it. And it shows.

Watching shows/movies about books makes them feel fake, and that may seem like an ironic statement, like “wait, isn’t it supposed to make them feel more real?” Not for me.

I have very specific visions of these characters that I conjured up in my head, and seeing them translated onto the screen feels warped. Basically, my fight and flight argues, “how dare you intrude on my perception with real life people with real life faces.” So, no, these aren’t the characters; these are imposters pretending to be them.

You get the gist. I would call it obsessive, even to myself. And I know that me being entrenched in this world of books has caused some side effects. I am extremely protective of my vision of characters — call it gatekeeping. But it’s what makes the story real to me. It sounds snotty, but I hold these stories so close to my chest and on my sleeve that it’s hard to let them be tainted. 

For example, I haven’t seen any of the “Twilight Saga” movies, or the original “Hunger Games” movies (I have seen “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” but that’s an exceptional movie and basically the only exception to this blog post).

Also, I mentioned gatekeeping (guilty, but hey). Putting books into movie form alienates me for more than one reason. Number one, they are exposing my beloved story to the light, making it about advertisement and addled plots instead of the essence of it. 

And number two, it’s an absolute shame that some people are being introduced to the story on screen before it’s true form on the page. There is so much lost in translation like characters, subplots and even major plot points just for the sake of budget.

There’s a lot of new content announcements coming about for TV shows on popular BookTok books like “Fourth Wing,” “Powerless” and even the new HBO Harry Potter reboot. Given that, be careful out there guys.