Intramedial and Intermedial Adaptations in the Novelizations of Interstellar and Jumper
Adaptaciones intramediales e intermediales en las novelizaciones de Interstellar y Jumper
Adaptações intramediais e intermediais nas novelizações de Interstellar e Jumper
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15446/lthc.v25n1.105322Palabras clave:
Adaptation studies, American literature, novelization, novel, literary criticism (en)Estudios de adaptación, literatura americana, novelización, novela, crítica literaria. (es)
Estudos da adaptação, literatura americana, novelização, romance, crítica literária. (pt)
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This study aims at discussing how novels such as Greg Keyes’s Interstellar (2014), and Steven Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007) verbally construct a “transmedia storytelling” process (Jenkins) between literature and the films they transpose from the screen to the pages, namely Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) and Doug Liman’s Jumper (2008), respectively. The analysis, thus, centers on how both tie-in books operate diegetic, narratological, and psychological transformations (Baetens) on preexisting cinematic material. The discussion suggests that Keyes’ novel reworks the screenplay in an intramedial adaptation while making creative contributions to the story in narratological and psychological terms. Gould’s novelization, however, uses image as the generator, in an intermedial adaptation, to promote the verbal and psychological “reincarnation” of characters and to expand the diegetic universe. The study provides some grounds to support the contention that novelizations, through their interactive relation with new media, expand the scope and versatility of the novel as a genre.
Este artículo discute cómo los libros Interstellar (2014), de Greg Keyes, y Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007), de Steven Gould, construyen verbalmente una narrativa transmedia (Jenkins) entre la literatura y las películas que adaptan de la pantalla a las páginas, a saber, Interstellar (2014), de Christopher Nolan, y Jumper (2008), de Doug Liman, respectivamente. El análisis se centra en cómo ambos libros adaptados operan transformaciones diegéticas, narratológicas y psicológicas (Baetens) sobre material cinematográfico preexistente. La discusión sugiere que la novela de Keyes reelabora el guión en una adaptación intramedia mientras hace contribuciones creativas a la historia en términos narratológicos y psicológicos. La novelización de Gould, sin embargo, utiliza la imagen como generador, en una adaptación intermedia, para promover la “reencarnación” verbal y psicológica de los personajes y expandir el universo diegético. El estudio proporciona algunas bases para sustentar la afirmación de que las novelizaciones, a través de su relación interactiva con los nuevos medios, amplían el alcance y la versatilidad de la novela como género.
O presente estudo objetiva discutir como os romances Interstellar (2014), de Greg Keyes, e Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007), de Steven Gould, constroem verbalmente uma “narrativa transmediática” (Jenkins) entre a literatura e os respectivos filmes que estas obras transpõem da tela do cinema para as páginas, nomeadamente os longas-metragens Interstellar (2014), de Christopher Nolan, e Jumper (2008), de Doug Liman. A análise busca compreender como esses livros derivados de produções audiovisuais realizam transformações diegéticas, narratológicas e psicológicas (Baetens) a partir de materiais cinematográficos preexistentes. A discussão sugere que o romance de Keyes reelabora o roteiro fílmico por meio de uma adaptação intramedial ao passo que contribui de modo criativo com a história em termos narratológicos e psicológicos. A novelização de Gould, no entanto, utiliza a imagem como motivadora, no que se caracteriza como uma adaptação intermedial, com as finalidades de promover uma “reencarnação” verbal e psicológica das personagens e de expandir o universo diegético. O estudo nos permite afirmar que as novelizações, por meio de suas relações interativas com os novos meios de comunicação, ampliam o alcance e a versatilidade do romance como gênero literário.
Recibido: 31 de mayo de 2022; Aceptado: 17 de septiembre de 2022
Abstract
This study aims at discussing how novels such as Greg Keyes’s Interstellar (2014), and Steven Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007) verbally construct a “transmedia storytelling” process (Jenkins) between literature and the films they transpose from the screen to the pages, namely Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) and Doug Liman’s Jumper (2008), respectively. The analysis, thus, centers on how both tie-in books operate diegetic, narratological, and psychological transformations (Baetens) on preexisting cinematic material. The discussion suggests that Keyes’ novel reworks the screenplay in an intramedial adaptation while making creative contributions to the story in narratological and psychological terms. Gould’s novelization, however, uses image as the generator, in an intermedial adaptation, to promote the verbal and psychological “reincarnation” of characters and to expand the diegetic universe. The study provides some grounds to support the contention that novelizations, through their interactive relation with new media, expand the scope and versatility of the novel as a genre.
Keywords
Adaptation Studies, American literature, novelization, novel, literary criticism.Resumen
Este artículo discute cómo los libros Interstellar (2014), de Greg Keyes, y Jumper: Griffin's Story (2007), de Steven Gould, construyen verbalmente una narrativa transmedia (Jenkins) entre la literatura y las películas que adaptan de la pantalla a las páginas, a saber, Interstellar (2014), de Christopher Nolan y Jumper (2008), de Doug Liman respectivamente. El análisis se sentra en cómo ambos libros adaptados operan transformaciones diegéticas, narratológicas y psicológicas (Baetens) sobre material cinematográfico preexistente. La discusión sugiere que la novela de Keyes reelabora el guión en una adaptación intramedia mientras hace contribuciones creativas a la historia en términos narratológicos y psicológicos. La novelización de Gould, sin embargo, utiliza la imagen como generador, en una adaptación intermedia, para promover la “reencarnación” verbal y psicológica de los personajes y expandir el universo diegético. El estudio proporciona algunas bases para sustentar la afirmación de que las novelizaciones, a través de su relación interactiva con los nuevos medios, amplían el alcance y la versatilidad de la novela como género.
Palabras clave
estudios de adaptación, literatura americana, novelización, novela, crítica literaria.Resumo
O presente estudo objetiva discutir como os romances Interstellar (2014), de Greg Keyes, e Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007), de Steven Gould, constroem verbalmente uma “narrativa transmediática” (Jenkins) entre a literatura e os respectivos filmes que estas obras transpõem da tela do cinema para as páginas, nomeadamente os longas-metragens Interstellar (2014), de Christopher Nolan, e Jumper (2008), de Doug Liman. A análise busca compreender como esses livros derivados de produções audiovisuais realizam transformações diegéticas, narratológicas e psicológicas (Baetens) a partir de materiais cinematográficos preexistentes. A discussão sugere que o romance de Keyes reelabora o roteiro fílmico por meio de uma adaptação intramedial ao passo que contribui de modo criativo com a história em termos narratológicos e psicológicos. A novelização de Gould, no entanto, utiliza a imagem como motivadora, no que se caracteriza como uma adaptação intermedial, com as finalidades de promover uma “reencarnação” verbal e psicológica das personagens e de expandir o universo diegético. O estudo nos permite afirmar que as novelizações, por meio de suas relações interativas com os novos meios de comunicação, ampliam o alcance e a versatilidade do romance como gênero literário.
Palavras-chave
estudos da adaptação, literatura americana, novelização, romance, crítica literária.As arguably the most important form of Western art, the novel, in its multiplicity of forms, has been thoroughly investigated by theorists, critics, and academics for centuries (Mazzoni 1-19). The emergence in the past few decades of new media that creatively interact with the novel has caused the field of Adaptation Studies to develop and flourish. However, there is a literary media-related subgenre that remains relatively under-researched: the novelization. These tie-in books tend to elude the taxonomic categories created by literary theory to promote a grouping of texts together.
Some commentators might disapprove of these film-inspired novels because they are believed to be “commercial grabs, unmitigated commodifications, or inflationary recyclings” (Hutcheon and O’Flynn 119). A recent investigation showed that about 1 or 2 percent of the total audience of a movie or a television series purchase the adapted or tie-in book. This indicates that a show or film “that draws two million viewers might sell 20,000 paperback copies” (Alter 1). The ever-increasing amount of these tie-in novels in every bookstore has become so overwhelming that they deserve some research, if for no other reason than to attempt to understand the fact that novelizations fascinate masses of avid readers and mobilize entire industries and authors.
One award-winning author who has recently published several novels tying into very lucrative franchises as Star Wars, Avengers, Planet of the Apes, Pacific Rim, Independence Day, and Godzilla is Greg Keyes. 1 His recent novelization of the movie Interstellar (2014) based on the screenplay written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan has sold thousands of mass market paperback copies worldwide.
Another author who created the Jumper and the Impulse franchises is Steven Gould. 2 Hired by Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron, he is currently writing novelizations for the three next Avatar movies, including the first one, that has never been made into a novel (Child 1). Although Steven Gould is not as prolific in terms of novelization production as Keyes, he wrote an interesting novel tying into the 2008 Doug Liman’s movie Jumper, with Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, and Samuel L. Jackson: the book Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007).
Given all these productive and lucrative developments of the genre, this paper concentrates on the categories of transformation in terms of the adaptation from film to novel present in both novelizations: Greg Keyes’s Interstellar (2014), and Steven Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007). The present analysis investigates the alterations (diegetic, narratological, and psychological) proposed by these novelizers when they decided to “translate” the stories creatively and critically from the screen to the written page.
Our research focuses on the critical processes of reinterpretation and coauthorship involved in the transposition from the showing mode (cinema) to the telling mode (literature). More specifically, this work intends to make the necessary distinctions between two models of novelization writing. By relying on two different books from two different authors, the use of contrasting techniques (i.e., intramedial and intermedial adaptations) is analyzed. 3 Drawing upon theories from Adaptation Studies, in what follows we try to examine the intricacies of these literary and audiovisual interflows in our contemporary era of media convergence (Griggs 1).
Methodologically, our analysis of Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story and Keyes’s Interstellar tries to take into consideration the relationship of these writers with the movie producers and screenwriters and how this collaboration might have impacted the resulting novel. The model proposed here incorporates theories from the areas of Adaptation Studies and Narratology (Jenkins; Cléder and Jullier; Reis; Baetens). In more specific terms, we use narratological means to examine the point of view, the plot, and the storytelling in the novelizations produced by both Gould and Keyes. Next, we interpret and analyze the processes implicated in the transposition between the source films and their respective literary recreations. The insights offered by Baetens’ categories of transformation were crucial to this investigation (74-75).
Given the relatively recent nature of the studies involving novelizations, it is important to delimit critically and terminologically this popular subgenre before going any further.
Novelization: a dé-généré subgenre?
In chapter six (“De l’écran au papier”) of their latest book, Cléder and Jullier suggest that novelization as a subgenre is a bit “dé-généré” (308) in part because of its lucrative nature, its industrial production, and its “bad” reputation. Historically, it has been known by a series of alternative labels as ciné-roman, cineromanzi, photo-novel, fotoromanzi, tie-in book, derivative novel, and numerous others (Newell 27-30). Each of these designations encompasses several variations from this subgenre. To evade terminological conflicts, this paper favors the term “novelization”, that has been adopted by major book retailers and many of their authors as well. For example, Keyes’ book exhibits the term on its front cover.
Cléder and Jullier also believe that the fact that novelization is a form of adaptation cannot be denied. The novelization as a “rewriting of a film as novel” (Clüver 459) has gained some prominence lately, but quick research through bookstore websites shows that it can also include literary adaptations of videogames, TV shows, role-playing games, among others. For example, Keyes gained notoriety for writing The Infernal City (2009) and Lord of Souls (2011), two novels that transition to the verbal (written) medium the characters and elements from the action role-playing game The Elder Scrolls (1994).
This example clearly demonstrates that novelization also involves the principle of transmedia storytelling. According to Jenkins, this is the case when a story “unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (95-96). To fulfill that objective, this same “story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics” (Jenkins 96). Therefore, novelization nowadays could be placed (with its “old” and traditional verbal medium) into the crossroads interconnecting multiple new creative medial and technological formats and modalities. As Hutcheon and O’Flynn put it:
The most commonly considered adaptations are those that move from the telling to the showing mode, usually from print to performance. But the flourishing ‘novelization’ industry today cannot be ignored. Like the readers of earlier popular ‘cineromanzi’ or ‘fotoromanzi,’ the fans of Star Wars or The X-Files can now read novels developed from the film and television scripts. (38)
The theory of transmedia storytelling has faced some criticism due to its relative waning of medium and genre specificities. As it tends to be —especially when it comes to these popular international media franchises— a celebration of never-ending facets of the same story and characters across several products and universes, the lines and spaces between texts and platforms are subjected to a supposed “blurring” (Corrigan 33). While relying on principles from the theory of transmedia storytelling, it is possible, however, to maintain the importance of the medium and genre specificities when we analyze these highly popular novels in which there is an artistic convergence between performance and print.
It is no easy task to define this subgenre. In Clüver’s terms, novelizations “recast configurations in other media such as film and television and even videogames to fit the dimensions of a novel, adjusting the transmedial elements realized in the source text to their own conventions and their objectives” (472-473). For instance, if the source movie being transposed
contained dialogue, it may be included. In the case of films, this may often involve the expansion of a film script, which may in turn have been based on a novel or short story, so that novelization becomes a case of multiple intramedial adaptation. 4 (473)
Given such intramedial/intermedial complexity, critics who are too ready to dismiss novelizations on the grounds that they are mere kinds of “reverse adaptations” might be incorrect in their assumptions. Conventional adaptations from page to screen and novelizations include a series of distinctive processes. Although they share a few similar traits, the two different operations involve contrasting elements and techniques.
A regular adaptation from the telling mode (literature) to the showing mode (audiovisual performance) can be defined as “the audiovisualization of written words or symbols / drawn images / musical compositions / moving images / abstract images / mind images / objects in all their forms” (Kaklamanidou 14). 5
On the other hand, a novelization from the showing mode (audiovisual performance) to the telling mode (written text) could be summarized as a kind of “pathway from film to book, […] fundamentally a transmedia passage from filmic to fictional narrative” (Baetens 135). By the same token, Archer believes that a novelization could be best understood through
the terms of ‘the novel’ as a structuring interpretive framework: a persistent, and quite possibly traditional, concept of media that may be employed, not necessarily to ‘improve’ or ‘revise’ the adapted source but to legitimize it through a particular media paradigm. […] My point here is that conceptions of the novelization as merely the rewriting of screen narrative into prose narrative may overlook the particularity of ‘the novel’ as a process, and even as an ontology, and not just a commercial object or simply another narrative platform among many. (216)
As mentioned above, the term novelization, that gained some critical attention recently, can be used to refer to numerous products that execute the literary expansion of film (Pardo 52) or “translate into book form, generally as novels, a preexisting cinematic work, original or otherwise” (Baetens 1). As we shall see in more details shortly, both Keyes’ and Gould’s novelizations use the framework of the novel to give a verbal literary treatment to characters, fictional universes, and situations that only existed previously in audiovisual film. The literary reincarnations of these characters and circumstances into book form involve two different procedures. Keyes’ novelization implements techniques of an intramedial adaptation to transpose an original preexisting cinematic work. On the other hand, Gould’s book uses devices of an intermedia adaptation to translate into written fiction a preexisting cinematic character inserted by movie producers into a movie adaptation of Gould’s own work. In what follows, we discuss each one of these novelizations and the specificities of their adaptive processes.
Interstellar: a novelization by Greg Keyes
As briefly noted earlier, novelizations can be a very lucrative occupation for hired authors and their publishers. Although not disclosed, it is believed that Greg Keyes received a considerable amount of money to produce “the official movie novelization” of Christopher Nolan’s multi-award-winning feature film Interstellar (2014), starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine. The book was written before the movie production was concluded and they were both released almost simultaneously as part of a coordinated commercial campaign. As expected, Greg Keyes’ book Interstellar is a novelization that reworks the original screenplay written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan based on the film from Warner Bros Pictures and Paramount Pictures.
The novel follows the movie plot very closely. In the future, there is no place on Earth for astronauts and dreamers. Farming has become again the most important occupation in a world devastated by dust storms and crop blights. Joseph Cooper, a former NASA pilot turned farmer, after the death of his wife, lives with his children and his father-in-law in a dilapidated farm. One day, Cooper’s daughter Murph notices strange patterns drawn on the dusty surface of her bedroom. She believes they were put there by a ghost but Cooper identifies binary code coordinates in the dust that lead him to an underground NASA facility.
Cooper is recruited by an elderly NASA scientist, professor John Brand, to pilot a spacecraft (the Endurance) and travel through a wormhole placed near Saturn by extraterrestrial beings almost fifty years earlier. This wormhole is a path to another galaxy containing habitable planets. Dr. Amelia Brand, Professor Brand’s young daughter, explains to Cooper that several volunteers had already traveled through the wormhole years earlier to survey these new planets. Three of these pioneer astronauts —Drs. Mann, Miller, and Edmunds— reported positive results from three habitable planets. Saying goodbye to her father breaks little Murph’s heart but Cooper promises her they will be eventually reunited. He gives her his wristwatch so that they can compare the relativity of time when they finally meet again.
When Cooper and his crew (including Dr. Amelia Brand) traverse the wormhole, they get to Miller’s planet, a world where time is dilated. This means that one hour in this system equals seven years on Earth. They find the wreckage of Miller’s spacecraft. An enormous wave hits Cooper’s ship and it kills one of the crewmembers. As this water planet does not present favorable conditions to sustain life, they must move on to the next possibility. Cooper’s crew travels to Mann’s planet. Mann is a NASA scientist who has been hibernating for years in cryostasis. After they revive Mann, he tries to kill Cooper and reveals he sent the American space agency false data just to be rescued. This means that Mann’s planet is also inhabitable.
With the spacecraft Endurance damaged, Cooper and one of the crew robots eject themselves into space to save fuel and to warrant that Dr. Brand can get to their destination, Edmund’s planet. She reproaches him for sacrificing himself. When they enter the black hole (Gargantua), the robot and Cooper are mysteriously contained in a four-dimensional structure (the Tesseract). Within this fantastic structure, Cooper can access multiple moments in time and interact with his daughter Murph in the past. This proves that the so-called “ghost” in Murph’s room was her father trying to communicate with her in the future from another dimension through the bookshelves and the patterns on the dust.
He uses Morse code to transmit data about the blackhole as processed by the robot. Now an adult space scientist, Murph decodes her father’s message and solves the gravitational theory that enables mankind’s mass exodus into space. After the Tesseract disappears, Cooper recovers conscience on a massive spacecraft orbiting the solar system. Onboard this new ship, he is reunited with his daughter Murph, who is now very old and dying. They are happy to see each other again. Cooper, who is still as young as he was when he left earth decades ago, is now ready to join Dr. Brand on Edmund’s planet and help her settle this new viable planet with the 5,000 frozen human embryos that the Endurance was carrying. This guarantees that humanity has a second chance to survive as a species (Keyes).
From my descriptions above of the novelization plot, it should be clear that Keyes did not make alterations to the film’s story. In the “Acknowledgments” of his novel, he even thanks “Christopher and Jonathan Nolan for a fantastic screenplay” (279). This means that in terms of the first category proposed by Baetens (74-75), which is the diegetic transformation, the book feels like a rewriting of the screenplay by sticking to the same story the audiences see unfold on the screen instead of introducing innovations. Compared to the film, the book is, in this sense, a redundant product. This is regular procedure since “most novelizations adapt the screenplays of a film and not the film itself; however, they are marketed as prose adaptations of films and readers read them as such” (Newell 26).
A few interesting features emerge when we analyze Baetens’ second category: the narratological transformations. It might be said that Keyes’ book adds a few layers subtextually to the story because of his storytelling choices and the change in point of view. Every process of verbalization of an audiovisual production —even if it is closely attached to a preexisting screenplay— inevitably will incorporate a work of selection and interpretation. A sequence in the film that is very emblematic and difficult to understand, let alone to verbalize in a novel, is the episode of the Tesseract. Although it follows Jonathan and Christopher Nolan’s script closely, the narrative style renders the passage scientifically and linguistically intriguing. As Keyes tells the story, a sense of magnitude emerges, which is caused not only by the uncanny interstellar voyage but also by a certain elevated tone that we find in literary epics.
Cooper’s desperately dangerous expedition in Keyes’ narrative reminds readers of other canonical hero’s journeys like, for instance, the ones in Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Luís de Camões’ The Lusiads. Cooper fictionally follows in the footsteps of great navigators as the Portuguese Vasco da Gama, who was the first maritime explorer who successfully discovered a sea route to India in 1498. On the other hand, in Cooper’s futuristic world, he is chosen to find a new home for mankind. Like da Gama, whose expedition faces a violent opposition from the mythological god Bacchus, Cooper must confront several intergalactic dangers and the real threat of annihilation. He struggles with brutal time discrepancies, deadly massive tidal waves, an attempted murder, equipment malfunction, and the risk of disintegration inside a supermassive black hole just as bravely as da Gama faces the conspiracy of treacherous gods, a few deadly ambushes, the hostility of natives, an epidemic of scurvy, and the fury of a storm.
It is interesting to add another example that clearly demonstrates a certain epic tone suggested by Keyes’ narrative that is comparable, mutatis mutandis, to the great classic Portuguese epic published in 1572. It might intimate that an epic pattern emerges when Keyes narrates Cooper’s magnificent accomplishment in space. There is a moment in The Lusiads in which a furious storm materializes as a mythological monster (the giant Adamastor) when Vasco da Gama’s fleet crosses the Cape of Good Hope. Adamastor and his sea storms are just as menacing as the gravitational pull from Gargantua, the black hole in Interstellar. However, Cooper is just as favored by unknown bulk beings (possibly, future humans) in his quest as da Gama is helped by the goddess Venus. After so many tribulations, she prepares a gift for the Portuguese explorers: the Isle of Love, where they can rest in the arms of beautiful ocean nymphs.
During the banquet that the sea-goddess Tethys presents to the Portuguese, she offers Vasco da Gama the privilege of a vision that only the gods were able to have before: she shows him the machine of the universe (máquina do mundo): “This is the great machine of the universe / Ethereal and elemental, as made / By the deepest and highest Wisdom, / Who is without beginning and end” (Camões 213). This fantastic device is a divine miniature of the universe according to the Ptolemaic creation and it enables da Gama to witness all the inner workings of the planets, the intricacies of the stars and their orbital cycles, as a nymph sings prophecies about Portugal’s deeds after Vasco da Gama’s voyage.
The passage in which Cooper during his interstellar journey through space lands inside the Tesseract, a massive four-dimensional structure analogue of the cube, is very reminiscent of the Camões’ episode in The Lusiads. The Tesseract is a species of máquina do mundo in which time is represented as a physical dimension:
Then, without warning, something like a great invisible hand seemed to take him, pull him to the side, away from the stream of debris. And toward — something. Something that somehow didn’t seem to belong here. A grid of some sort — an infinite series of cubbyholes, each square opening nearly identical…
No, not cubbyholes — tunnels, he realized. […]
Desperately, he looked around and realized that he was in something like a cube, and each wall of the cube looked into [his daughter] Murph’s room from a different angle, as if the room had been turned inside out, reversed, and put back together. And it wasn’t just the one room, the one bookshelf. Now he saw the matrix of light held multiple iterations of the room, maybe infinite, tunnels and passages going in every direction, framed, held together by the light streaming from the books, the walls, the objects in the room. (Keyes 253)
Unlike the Christian Camões, who believed the “machine of the universe” was built by an omniscient and ubiquitous God, Cooper believes that this secularist miniature version of the universe was created by humans in the future, “people who’ve evolved beyond the four dimensions that we know” (Keyes 265). Just as the machine presented by the gods in the Portuguese epic enables Vasco da Gama to see the different dimensions of the universe and understand the journey of his people, the Tesseract that was offered by bulk beings who appear to be looking out for mankind in Interstellar has the power to make Cooper access a specific portion of the universe —his daughter’s dusty bookshelf— and to “exert a force across space-time” (Keyes 256). Through this line of gravitational communication, he manipulates the multiple iterations of time and manages to help her save humanity.
Up to this point, it seems clear that the larger-than-life nature of Cooper’s suicide mission, as narrated in Keyes’ novelization, invites the reader to think of the journey in epic terms. What emerges from the narrative is an intriguing mix of scientific fact and fantasy that contributes to the epic tone of the story. Keyes’ use of the third-person narrator with omniscient point of view enhances the sense of objective reliability and truthfulness, which is very important in a science fiction novel. The narrator’s illimited knowledge of the story that he is telling places him in a transcendent position from which he can comment on every detail of the plot (Reis 180-181). Despite its apparent objectivity, it sometimes even takes a subjective approach, especially when describing the main characters’ feelings and thoughts. Such a capacity is very adequate to narrate not only a magnificent voyage but also the internal journey of self-discovery for the unexpected hero, Cooper.
With that observation in mind, let us expand on this topic because it relates to Baetens’ third category: the psychological transformation. As mentioned above, Keyes’ repurposing of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay creates within his text a powerful literary voice who has control over the whole world of the story. Adapted films have always been criticized for their supposed audiovisual flattening of complex characters and their emotions. On the other hand, a novelization might go deeper than the movie into characters’ emotions and feelings, as conventional literature often does. Cooper’s psychology seems a bit deeper and more complex in Keyes’ book.
Cooper, from inside the Tesseract, desperately tries to warn his younger self that abandoning his kids was a terribly bad decision. From another dimension he shouts between the mysterious tunnels containing iterations of the past hoping to get his own attention through space-time. When he realizes that this is impossible and he is about to leave for space and abandon Murph, the narrator’s choice of words and imagery to describe his sensation of complete isolation and regret reveals a complexity of perception of the human nature:
Cooper spun around to another wall [of the four-dimensional cube], and saw his earlier self on the other side of the door.
“Don’t go, you idiot!” he yelled, as the other Cooper closed the door. Going to let Murph cool off. Precisely the wrong move. “Don’t leave your kids, you goddamn fool!” he shouted.
He began punching at the walls [of the Tesseract] with everything in him […]
He broke down and began to cry, the sheer frustration of having to watch it all, and not be able to do anything. It was way too much to handle. Once again, he wondered if he was dead. If this was Hell.
Because it damn sure felt like it. (Keyes 255)
Cooper’s wondering if he was dead and locked up in Hell, forced to rewatch endless reiterations of himself making mistakes and losing his family, is certainly an addition to Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay. This specific sensation of feeling like he is in Hell is not in the Interstellar movie. Even though the book is a redundant repetition of the film, the structuring interpretive framework of the novel adds a few psychological layers to the plot.
Although the novelizer does not expand the story already told in the screenplay, there is space in the literary text to explore the inner workings of the characters’ minds. As the final product (the Interstellar novelization) has a verbal pretext (the script to the film Interstellar), Keyes’ work involves an intramedial adaptation since he wrote his novel by transposing a preexisting screenplay. Operating on this premise put forward by critics as Baetens, the adaptation process took place within similar art forms, media, or genres. In other words, the fictional content moves from one written genre to another. The characters, the plot points, and the situations get transposed artistically from the pages of a screenplay to the new pages of a novel. But that does not mean necessarily that Keyes’ refunctioning of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay constitutes a process devoid of creativity and co-authorship. The mere “reincarnation” of characters adapted from one genre to another is undoubtedly an activity demanding a great deal of talent and imagination (Newell 25-62). But, as a reworked script, it inevitably presents redundancy.
As the next section will explore in more depth, there are instances in the novelization process that require a completely different creative approach to the movie.
Jumper: Griffin’s Story: a novelization by Steven Gould
Unlike Keyes, who was not involved with the production of the film Interstellar, the American author Steven Gould worked closely with the director Doug Liman and the producers of the movie Jumper. In fact, the production is loosely based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Steven Gould. As his book Jumper was in the process of being adapted from the page to the screen, Gould lost creative control of the production and a succession of executives and directors changed his original story. They introduced characters and situations in the film that were not present in his book (Wagner 1).
In the Jumper movie, a secret confederacy called the Paladins, currently led by Roland Cox (Samuel L. Jackson), hunts and kills people who have the power to teleport from one place to another. Due to religious reasons, this organization sees these teleporters (called “jumpers”) as an antinatural and demonic phenomenon. Cox learns from Mark, a detained criminal, that a boy named David Rice whom he used to bully in high school possessed such telekinetic ability.
In the past, David (Max Thieriot) is an awkward teenager who learns how to control his powers after being terrorized by bullies and his abusive father (Michael Rooker). With his mother out of the picture and a dysfunctional family, he decides to leave home. The story flash forwards to New York City in the present. David (now played by Hayden Christensen) is an elegant adult man who robs banks by secretly “jumping” into their vaults. The money he steals is enough for him to have an expensive lifestyle and even take his high school crush, Millie (Rachel Bilson), for a vacation in Rome. She is unaware of his telekinetic abilities.
During a visit to the Colosseum, David meets Griffin (Jamie Bell), another young jumper. Both teleporters are confronted by two Paladins. Griffin fights and kills them. David is detained and questioned by the Italian police in connection with the deaths, but he is set free by his mother, Mary (Diane Lane). She left the family when he was five to follow the Paladins. She knew that if she was to protect her son, the best course of action would be to join the secret organization. David is very confused because, on the same day, he found his long-lost mother, learned about the Paladins, and met another jumper (Griffin).
As Griffin is very evasive and David wants answers, he follows him to his hideout in a cave. Tired of being followed around by David, Griffin reveals that the Paladins killed his family and now he is obsessed with revenge. After noticing that Roland Cox is personally looking for David, Griffin decides to help him because he expects to have a chance to kill the leader of the Paladins. Cox captures Millie and sets up a trap to David at her apartment. Griffin wants to bomb the apartment to kill the Paladins but David objects. They engage in a fight while teleporting through several countries. Eventually, David overpowers Griffin and leaves him trapped in Chechnya.
After saving Millie, David is trapped by Cox. David uses all his telekinetic powers to teleport Millie’s entire apartment to a river. Except for Cox, the other Paladins drown. David spares Cox’s life but leaves him stranded in a very tall cave at the Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River. A few days later, while visiting his mother, David finds out that he has a half-sister, Sophie (Kristen Stewart). Mary tells David that leaving him was the only option to keep him safe. When David leaves Mary’s house, Millie is waiting for him. He jumps with her to a romantic sunny beach.
A few months before the release of the Jumper movie, Steven Gould published a book intitled Jumper: Griffin’s Story. In the preface, Gould writes “A note about this novel”:
My previous novels featuring teleportation, Jumper and Reflex, are the basis for the upcoming New Regency/Fox movie Jumper, to be released in early 2008. Like most novel-to-movie projects, the story’s events and circumstances mutate through the process of adaptation. This novel was written to be consistent with the movie, and, as a consequence, there are differences between its world and the world of the previous novels. (Gould 9)
Therefore, Jumper: Griffin’s Story is a special kind of novelization because it was not only “written to be consistent with the movie” but also produced to detail the back story of Griffin, a character in the 2008 film adaptation. Although Gould was the creator of the original Jumper franchise, the character Griffin was created by screenwriter David Goyer specifically for the film. 6 Thus his novelization selects one character from the film that was introduced in the story by someone else and develops a whole back story for him. 7 Since producers had made so many alterations to his novel while adapting it to the screen, Gould decided to write the following story in an attempt to reconcile the differences between his book and the movie adaptation.
In Jumper: Griffin’s Story, the title-character, Griffin O’Conner, is an innocent English kid who leads an atypical life. After accidentally teleporting in front of a lot of people when he was very young, his family had to run away to America to avoid the attention and keep a low profile. In San Diego, California, a nine-year-old Griffin is homeschooled by his mother and learns how to control his telekinetic powers with the help of his father, who is also a jumper. While escaping an attack from a bullying karate classmate, Griffin jumps to the Empty Quarter, where he used to practice teleportation with his father. This attracts the attention of the Paladins, who murder his parents in front of him. After running away from the people who killed his parents, a dehydrated Griffin is rescued and taken in by a Mexican woman. He lives with the family for a while.
A few years later, a twelve-year-old Griffin is forced to leave his Mexican “family” because he notices that Kemp, one of the men who murdered his parents, is tracking him down. Griffin moves to a lair in the San Diego Park mountains. The following years he makes new friends while learning how to fight harder and to prepare his revenge.
It does not take long for Kemp to start catching up with him again. To lure Griffin out of his hiding place, Kemp kills two members of his Mexican “family”. When Griffin tries to get the police involved, he is ambushed and stabbed. While recovering from the injuries, he falls in love with a girl named Elaine Vera (“E. V.”). But then she confesses that she is being used by Kemp as bait to get to Griffin. She was forced to do it by the Paladin fanatic, who killed her father and kidnapped her mother and brother. Griffin manages to capture and interrogate Kemp. He reveals that there are other Paladins looking for Griffin in Europe, especially in France. Griffin kills Kemp to avenge his parents, and then jumps to France to locate the other Paladins.
From my summary above of the novelization plot, it should be clear that Gould introduced considerable differences in relation to the film’s story. Unlike the Interstellar film and novel, that shared the same plot, Gould’s novelization uses characters and elements from the movie Jumper but he creates a different story. This means that in terms of the first category proposed by Baetens (74-75), the diegetic transformation, Gould’s book expands the Jumper movie universe considerably while introducing innovations. Compared to the film, the book is not a redundant product because it provides readers and viewers with some explanations. Gould creates a back story to an intriguing new character presented for the first time in the movie. Although he is not the creator of the Griffin character, in his novelization he makes him his own. Part of the protagonist’s emotional predicament has biographical origins in Gould’s experiences as a child (Blaschke 1).
To forge a strong diegetic linkage with the movie, Gould not only repurposes the movie character played by Jamie Bell but also uses the revenge motif suggested by the screenwriters and prepares the narrative, by teleporting Griffin to France in the end, for the climactic confrontation with the Paladins in Italy that happens in the film.
Another trope that was introduced in the movie for the first time is incorporated in Gould’s novelization: the jump rots. When jumpers like David Rice or Griffin make a jump, they tear a hole in reality. It looks like an energy portal. This kind of electrical scar that they leave behind when they teleport resembles a crack or deterioration in the very fabric of reality. These jump rots or “jumpscars”, that last just a few seconds, are dangerous because they create minor gravitational instabilities. In the movie, the Paladins led by the Samuel L. Jackson character (Roland Cox) have developed a technology that allows them to move through the jump rots and pursue the teleporter wherever he goes.
In his novelization, Gould wrote passages in which these jumpscars appear prominently. Through the characters’ dialogues, the author explains the phenomenon in more detail than the movie was capable of. While training teleportation skills with his father in the desert, Griffin gives an account of an incident with a jump rot:
I spun and jumped at the same time, sideways, ten feet, sloppy — there must’ve been ten pounds of dirt falling away from me and jump rot hanging in the air where I’d been. Twisting, fading jump rot. […]
Dad was perplexed. ‘Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it do that before.’ Dad had this theory that the jump rot was like, well, like the wake of a ship, the disruption of the water when a vessel passes through. It’s like the turbulence or maybe even a hole I leave behind.
When I jump in a hurry, sloppily, there’s more of it and I carry more crap with me. When I’m focused, if there is jump rot, it’s tiny, and fades away almost instantly. (Gould 18-19)
On April 24, 2014, Steven Gould twitted from his official account (@StevenGould), in response to a question made by a reader, that “Jump Rot (from Griffin’s Story) is something from the movie”. This is an example of how novelizations manage to move fictional content from an audiovisual medium to a completely different written one. A visual trait —that was originally a series of luminous “scars” introduced digitally by the special effects department in the movie Jumper— is incorporated and explained in the literary text.
In terms of narratological transformations (Baetens 74-75) from screen to page, Gould chose a more intimate point of view for the title-character. Throughout the movie, Griffin is shown as a somewhat cold, heartless killer. When viewers start to finally understand his predicament, his character is suddenly out of the picture. But in the book Jumper: Griffin’s Story, the first-person narrative makes him the focal character and readers are granted access to his mind’s eye view of the fictional universe.
As he tells the unfortunate events of the tragedy that broke his heart, readers experience the frustration and despair of a boy who is too young and naive to deal with such extreme powers. As popular entertainment, Gould’s novelization follows the prolific tradition of escapist literature. In his narrative fiction, the idea of escapism is central since the main character can literally escape the cruel realities of bullying and violence by transporting himself physically to another place. But instead of misleading readers into denying the harsh truths of reality by immersing them in a new world of fantasy, Gould’s novel offers only a momentary escape from the difficult circumstances. Eventually, the hero will have to face reality. Escapist fiction has been criticized because it gives the masses fantastic entertainment rather than addressing serious issues and provoking critical debate. Gould’s book tackles difficult questions all the time, from bullying and violence to family dysfunction.
Another narratological transformation from the movie to the novelization can be detected in a passage evoked by the narrator who tells his story in medias res. In the book, the O’Conner family had to leave the United Kingdom forever because Griffin, when he was only five years old, teleported from the steps of the Martyr’s Memorial in Oxford in front of a busload of tourists. This preamble scene was introduced in the book in the last minute due to decisions made by the Hollywood screenwriters and the movie producers who worked in Jumper. Gould explains in an interview that he had to make the literary character British because the director asked Jamie Bell, the English actor who plays Griffin in the movie, to say the lines of the script in his own accent:
[Writing Jumper: Griffin's Story] was interesting, because I had to send those chapters out to one of the executive producers […] who would verify whether or not I was going in places that were explicitly contradicted by the movie. […] I knew roughly where they were going before they started filming, but then they started making decisions as they were going along. For instance, partway into the very first scene with Jamie Bell, who can do a perfectly fine American accent, and I’d written a third of the book at this point with an American character whose name is Griffin, [the director of the Jumper movie] Doug Liman says, “Try that scene in your own accent,” which is this Northern England accent from Leeds, near Scotland, and Doug says, “We’ll just go with that.” Fortunately, I could make Griffin’s family expatriates; I didn’t have to uproot them from where they were in San Diego. It did change the shape of the book to a certain extent. 8 (Wagner 1)
This change of accent from American to British caused Gould to make other narratological “accommodations” in his novelization that impacted the whole story. 9 This resulted in a hasty inclusion of some “British” traits in Griffin’s personality like, for instance, his eccentric complaining about the difficulty of getting authentic Mexican food in London (Gould 120), his outdated use, in the 1990s, of the slang “bobby” (135) or his reference to shillings (62), a coin that was superseded in the 1970s.
Except for these minor improprieties, the novelization seems successful not only in expanding the diegetic universe of the movie but also in suggesting new associations for the character. These associations are connected to Baetens’ third category of transformations from screen to page (74-75), which is psychological.
As Griffin tells his story, we are privy to his thoughts and actions, and we get to have a warmer look into the psyche of a misunderstood teenager with paranormal powers. Unlike the Jamie Bell character in the movie, who can be very aggressive and hopeless, the book portrays the young Griffin as a lonely, desperate expatriate who can be everywhere but does not seem to belong anywhere.
Although it is a popular form of entertainment novel with no pretention of passing itself for artistic fiction, at times the book evokes the great tradition of the Bildungsroman because of its focus on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from innocence to experience. During his coming of age, Griffin is forced to change due to the challenges and dangers linked to his paranormal abilities. Traditionally, a Bildungsroman presents the protagonist with an emotional loss right at the beginning. This pattern is strictly maintained in Jumper: Griffin’s Story since fate prepares the most traumatic tragedy for the title-character right at the end of the opening chapter: the double homicide of his parents. This unimaginable experience splits Griffin in two: the naive and innocent part of himself dies, and a tough fighter begins to emerge.
In general, a traditional Bildungsroman like, say, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1849-1850) ends with the conclusion of a journey and the protagonist being ultimately accepted into society. This does not seem to be the case with Griffin —the novelization suggests— because his personal and emotional journey is completely atypical due to his paranormality. In the end, he does not get many answers to life’s questions and the only reparation he can envisage is retribution. Despite the disappointments and the harsh ending, Gould’s narrative provides readers (even if they are either Jumper viewers or not) with more warmth by enabling Griffin to tell his sad story using his own voice through the grammatical mechanisms of the first-person narration.
Conclusion
In our earlier discussion of the novelization, we presented the argument that the two novelizations examined in this paper (Greg Keyes’ Interstellar and Steven Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story) were motivated by two different adaptive processes. Although both promote the creation of a sense of transmedia storytelling (Jenkins 95-96) by developing stories that unfold across multiple media platforms, the second novel analyzed seems to add a more significant and distinctive contribution to the source story.
Keyes’ novelization of the film Interstellar implements procedures and techniques of an intramedial adaptation to transpose an original preexisting cinematic work into the framework of the novel. It is intramedial in the sense that it does not use the film image as a generator. The novelization is ultimately generated by a verbal pretext since it was written before the release of the movie. Although Keyes’ novelization follows the preexisting screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, he adds a few layers narratologically as well as psychologically. The third-person narration of the main character’s heroic journey endows the narrative with an elevated epic tone, slightly comparable to classic poems as Virgil’s Aeneid or Luís de Camões’ The Lusiads. This shows that even though the novelization tends to be critically seen as a popular sub-literary form, it might have connections with canonical literary traditions.
If we move from considering Keyes’ Interstellar to consider Steven Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story, however, this allegiance to traditional literature begins to appear more vividly. This is because Gould’s written narrative was not motivated by another verbal pretext. The movie Jumper, as an intense, problematic, and collective audiovisual effort, directly impacted his manuscript. Instead of following the final version of a screenplay, Gould deliberately used his memory, his personal interpretation, and his original creativity to innovate the character treatment, the style, the themes, and the concept of the movie. Cinematic characters (Griffin and the Paladins), cinematic images (like the jump rot visual effects), motifs (revenge), and the accent an actor used during filming were incorporated into his narrative. For these and other reasons, Gould’s novelization is an intermedial adaptation because ideas, images, contents, and influences interflow between different media. In other words, fictional contents move from an audiovisual medium to a completely different written one.
Narratologically, the novelization Jumper: Griffin’s Story constructs, through an intimate first-person narration, a diegetic universe compatible with a long line of escapist literature. This confessional sense of intimacy in the book, emphasized by the accounts of the inner workings of his mind, evokes the canonical tradition of the Bildungsroman because of its focus on the coming of age of the protagonist from a naive and innocent kid to an experienced adult fighter.
In conclusion, it is important to mention that novelizations represent a flourishing industry that does not necessarily undermine traditional literature. They popularize and expand even more the versatility of the novel as a genre by integrating with new emerging media and new futuristic technologies. They also allow for linkage across media. The study of novelizations might prove fruitful for academics and critics to examine these products and develop new theories to properly interact with media-related texts.
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