I guess since it's April Fools, I should have written a post not about books

For a long, long, looooooong time I was of the opinion that a movie could never, ever get a book right. Every time I watched a movie based on a book, I would simply be disappointed. This is largely true: movies always seem to leave out or change parts of the book I enjoy. It's just inevitable, because movies are limited in what they can present. I mean, you try to base a movie on a 1,000 page book, and you get four hours of Vivien Leigh being INTOLERABLE. You know? Sometimes you just gotta cut some stuff.

So I grew up a little and realized that the movie had to find its own way to tell the story of its source novel, and I began to see that some of them can do a good job, even changing things from the source. The Little Women with Winona Ryder is probably the best example of this; there are plenty of things that are different in the movie, but the movie still captures the story, the family bonds, everything. And so I love it. Plus, Winona Ryder is hot when she cuts off all her hair for money for her mother.

Lately, I've started to enjoy some movies better than the books upon which they were based, but this was only because I did not enjoy the books upon which they were based. The Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley, which purists hate, totally slayed me, because it was so fun. Like, the movie demonstrated what I did not get from the book at all, that these five girls were a family who loved each other, who laughed and teased and shared secrets and acted like a modern bunch of sisters might. I liked that a lot, how the movie showed you the affection between the Bennetts and the goofiness of Mr. Bingley, presenting these upper class characters from two hundred years ago as people we could know. These period dramas always present characters as, like, so far removed from the way modern people behave, and that is just not accurate at all. People may have had to put on more ridiculous airs in previous time periods, but everyone has always teased their sisters or gotten nervous around pretty girls, no matter how many undergarments they're forced to wear.

And Jane Austen's writing just did not convey that any of these people really liked each other. That made me sad. Don't tell me I was reading it wrong, either. I know how to read a book, motherfuckers.

Anyway, just a few days ago, I realized that this is why I really liked the Narnia movies: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian showed the Pevensies as a real family, siblings who fight and tease and love each other. That was largely absent in the novels, which were mostly about the plot. I guess you just have to take it on faith that the Pevensies are fond of each other in the books--I mean, there are a few scenes, of course, where you see how close Peter and Lucy are, for instance, but it's just not enough. Mostly, they feel like strangers thrown together on an adventure. In the movies, the kids got to be playful, to act like real kids, and the best part, for me, was that Susan was included. Susan feels much more like part of the family in the movies than she ever did in the books. Even Edmund, who full on betrays them in the first story, gets to belong to the family more fully than Susan.

So, you know, if The Last Battle actually gets made, and the director wants to let Susan into heaven? Totally fine with me.