Daniel Strauss asks a terrific question in one of his recent blog posts, declaring: "I submit that seeing the movie or t.v. adaptation of a book series that you like risks ruining your vision of the entire world that you’ve learned to love and that can happen even if it’s a good movie or show." And since he asked me to weigh in, I will.
I'm not willing to categorically agree to that statement in a world in which the A&E Pride & Prejudice adaptation exists. It's the absolute acme of such projects: faithful line-by-line to the original without being stiff, funny and warm, lovely in its historical details. And in Darcy's plunge into the lake, the miniseries managed, with a single historically plausible detail to link desires past and present in a powerful moment. It was a small alteration, and enough to lend the entire thing some serious zing. I feel fairly similarly about the 1994 Little Women adaptation--watching it as a 9-year-old, I cried so hard when Beth died that a friend of my mother's, who was in the theater at the same time, called home to make sure I was all right. That movie marries a similar fidelity to the novel's detail with some appropriate and updated sizzle: Jo's smooch with the Professor backstage at the opera in the movie adaptation lent a sensuality to the novel that the original lacked, leaving a sense of disappointment to Jo's eventual marriage.
But I understand that it's an extraordinarily difficult brief to live up to. I think it's extremely rare for directors, writers, and the actors they work with to stumble into that deep sympathy with an original work, and for them all to understand how to create a space for audiences to recognize their highly personal interpretations of fiction. I'll also concede that there are few characters and universes that I'm so wedded to that misinterpretations of them make me sick. It's how I've been able to enjoy the Star Wars extended universe: my desire to see the world I love grow outweighed my need for fidelity to the originals and my emotional conception of them. It's not an easy choice, though. And I understand where Daniel is coming from.