Worthy of the Big Screen, But Not Without Its Problems - A Review of The Shards of Heaven

The Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Book-to-movie adaptations have been around almost since the beginning of moviemaking. One of the earliest book-to-movie adaptations was released in 1899: an adaptation of the fairytale Cinderella, as told by the Brothers Grimm. It was made by Georges Méliès, a pioneer filmmaker who is more famous for his 1902 release A Trip to the Moon, which is a loose adaptation of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon.

Since then the film industry has frequently mined literature for stories to make into movies, many of which become immensely successful: Gone With the Wind and The Lord of the Rings film trilogy come easily to mind. Both are some of the highest-grossing films every made, and are considered classics both as books and as movies. However, for every book-to-movie adaptation that makes it big, there are many, many more that fail. Take, for example, the film adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, which was almost universally panned by critics despite its powerhouse cast (which included Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich in important supporting roles, and Rachel Weisz voicing the dragon Saphira). There were plans to adapt Paolini’s entire series into film, but the sequels never materialised because of Eragon’s poor critical reception and relatively modest earnings.

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