Old wine, new bottle

Book adaptations are great, aren’t they? Your favourite characters breathing and walking on the celluloid? Love them or hate them, but you just can’t ignore them. Especially if the adaptation is from a classic! We have seen numerous adaptations of classics from Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and so many more. The adaptations are sometimes good and can be real painful to watch sometimes but what is most fun is watching these adaptations with a twist. Yes, modernised classics.

Anyone who loves classics would be totally hooked once they find out that the high school coming of age story that you are about to watch is a original screenplay based on your favourite classic. Young adult films have always adapted classic novels, given them a twist and made it into box-office hits. Remember Easy A starring Emma Stone? Or 10 things I hate about you with Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger? Both of them are high school romantic comedies based on actual classics. While Easy A was based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, 10 things I hate about you was a modern twist to William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. In fact, Shakespeare has been a favourite when it comes to modern adaptations and the most strange adaptations have been made on the Bard’s writing, The Gnomeo and Juliet, Tromeo and Juliet and whatnot!

From Bridget Jones’s Diary (adapted from Pride and Prejudice)  to Aisha (Emma), Jane Austen’s books have been the best plot for modern adaptation, but as far as my favourite is concerned, it is the Jane Austen’s Book Club which has modern-adapted not one but all of Austen’s classic.

The beauty of adapting classics is that the stories are being preserved in one way or another, even fairytales. Fairytales have also been given a real life twist and made into modern films. Beastly is a modern day magical story adapted from the Beauty and the Beast, and with Emma Watson soon to play Beauty and the Beast’s Belle, the tradition of modernised classics seems to be continuing.