Hello, everyone! This was the result of a rather long and convoluted post on movie adaptions of books. It all boiled down in my mind to this.
- Message. Is the message true to the book? On a scale of one to five. How good or bad is it? (Yes, add points to score; no, subtract points from score. If the message is virtually unrecognizable or mangled into a twisted dark clone of itself, subtract up to ten points.)
- Trueness to the book. (Yes, +0points; no, -1point unless it’s really really bad. Then -3points.)
- Diversions from the book. (Yes, +0points; no, -1point. Come on. It’s a movie. It is a separate entity. And if it has no diversions, it’s unimaginative.)
- Execution of diversions from book, on a scale of one to five. (Well done; +points. Poorly done; -points.)
- Execution of book canon portions, on a scale of one to five. (Well done; +points. Poorly done; -points. Superbly done; +7 to 10 points. Extremely badly done; -7 to 15 points. Yes, I’m a cynic. The real question is… are you?)
- General inventiveness, on a scale of one to five. (Well done; +points. Poorly done; -0points. Unless it’s completely unimaginative, in which case -up to 5 points.
- For Christians, believers in moral absolutes, and concerned parents only! Moral value, on a scale of one to five. (Moral value positive: +0 points. Moral value extremely positive: +5 points. Moral value negative: -up to 7 points.)
- Special effects, on a scale of one to five. (Good; +0points. Poor; -1point. Poor but ignorable; -0points. Poor for a reason–such as to emulate another era or style of film– +1point.)
- Other. For depressiveness, euphoria, simple beauty, etc. + or – up to 5 points.
Bear in mind, this system is not perfect. It’s subjective rather than objective; watching a movie–your experience of a movie–is a very personal experience. It can and will be different from someone else’s. Different people will most likely get different scores on the same movies. Lord of the Rings scored 20 (17 without morality points), and the BBC show Sherlock scored 27 (24 without morality points), due to its sheer inventiveness and addictiveness. Alice in Wonderland, on the other hand, scored a -11, or a -13 without morality points. *shudders* I really, really dislike that movie.
Hopefully this will help you rate your movies. Anything with more than ten points is probably worth watching; above twenty points is good; and above thirty is sublime. However, if it ends up with a negative score, then it should not be recommended.
These scores will be appended to the end of all movie reviews, provided that the movies are adaptions of the book. Thanks for reading, and God Bless!
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