Terribly unsatisified

[neotoma]

I've been trying to read the novelization of Pacific Rim, but somehow the writer has managed to make Raleigh come across as a dudebro, which is just unpleasant.

Where is the big Labrador puppy from the movie? Why am I reading about a guy who is insubordinate and disrespectful, because Raleigh was neither of those things in the movie?!

Comments

[neotoma]

I can only guess the tie-in author got an early version of the script, or totally missed the point if he got something closer to the finished version.

...I'm thinking I might have to abandon the novelization, no matter what juicy details about the minor characters like the other Jaeger pilots are in it, just because I'm finding Raleigh so repulsive.

And I might have to write a review for Amazon saying "the author made Raleigh a dudebro, and thus totally missed his characterization from the movie. Would not recommend."

Seriously, this is messing up my attempts to plot a PR fic. :(

[malkingrey]

I can only guess the tie-in author got an early version of the script

Speaking as somebody who did a couple of movie tie-ins once upon a time, that's depressingly probable. In which case they'd be getting the character purely as written, without any of the nuances that the actor and the director (and the costume designer, and the cinematographer, etc., etc.) brought to the role. And God forbid that the tie-in novelist should attempt to add some three-dimensionality to what by the nature of screenplays is mostly a sketched-in outline, because he or she might accidentally take the character in a different direction from the actor and the director and all the et ceteras.

The writer probably counted himself lucky if the scenes in the screenplay more or less matched up with the ones in the final movie.

Writing tie-ins can pay well, but it is often dispiriting work.