This was an interesting read for me; I’ve long been a fan of the movie, which is a delight, and I was curious how the book measured up. I’m sorry to say, I honestly do enjoy the film more. That’s never happened to me before. I’ve enjoyed the book and film version equally, and seen them as different beasts (e.g. Fight Club, The Princess Bride, most TV adaptations of detective series...) and I’ve certainly had much-beloved books whose movie versions horrified me (e.g. The Hobbit; who decided there should be 3 installments and none of them good?!). But I’ve never before preferred the film’s ending to the book’s ending, and that’s exactly what happened with Stardust.
As a reader and a writer, I can understand why that happened. The film script was actually written by Gaiman himself, and he certainly played with the difference in medium like an expert! What it boils down to is, the film version is always fast, always adventurous, and the characters are defined (along with your opinion of them) from the second you meet, which is right for an adventure fantasy film. But the book, which is very much written in the style of a fairy tale of old, is sadder and doesn’t end quite as neatly and has quiet sections in which not much happens, just like in any true fairy tale. (Note: the Disney version of fairy tales do the exact same thing that Gaiman did here. Happily ever after doesn’t really happen in the original Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. That’s neither bad nor good, but rather it’s just what’s true of the different tellings). The thing is that my personal preference is for the style of adventure at which film so excels and at which fairy tales don’t. I like big set pieces and the odd little diversions that show up in the movie version. I was disappointed to find that in the book, my favorite character--a sky pirate captain--shows up for less than five pages and plays a much smaller role, with a different personality altogether. Oh well.
In general, actually, I found the characters just a bit less vivid, a bit less dramatic, a bit less engaging than they are in the film. Now, I know Neil Gaiman can get me invested in characters through plain old novels. I sobbed for almost two hours at one point reading American Gods because I was so upset for a minor character’s lot in life (although at the time I was reading, I had also just gotten back from an overseas trip and had the worst jetlag of my life). I still think about the characters in that book and Good Omens from time to time, despite it having been at least a year since I last read either of them. But for some reason, no one grabbed my heart in the same way in Stardust, except for a couple of the protagonist’s relatives who show up in only the beginning and the end. I didn’t believe the love story quite as readily as I did in the film, and I felt there weren’t as many twists and turns in character development for the protagonists. I did definitely enjoy the quieter take on the film’s flashiest antagonists; Septimus, for instance, a major villain in the movie, played a less central role but was fascinating to follow and root against in the book. Overall, though, I enjoyed less of the characters and found the characterization and character arcs a bit clumsier.
Still… there’s just something about Gaiman’s writing that draws me in, even when I’m not sure I love the plot or the main characters. I think it’s his ability to write so completely in one tone throughout the work. No part of Stardust feels like anything over than a fairy tale, even the bits set in mundane Victorian Britain. Everything obeys the rules of ancient folklore, including his wording, in both narration and character dialogue. I definitely liked this book—but less than American Gods, my favorite of his solo works, and less than the film. In the end, I’d recommend this to fans of fairy tales, but not all fantasy fans.
Comments
Post a Comment