Picture this: you walk into the cinema to see an adaptation of your favourite book, and just as your favourite character walks on screen for the first time, a song plays that shatters the moment. The music gives an impression which is the opposite of how you imagined their personality. Wouldn't that be awful? Think of Katniss Everdeen walking on to some 80s cheese or a Jane Austen character coming on to a rap song!
A good soundtrack can make a film. It can help you get a thorough insight into the world of the book, and reveal depths to characters you didn't even know existed. Imagine a film with no music, how different it would be without something there to set the tone. But what about when the soundtrack actively changes the storyline? What if the music playing over the top puts a different spin on the actual events, or changes the essence of a character? Situations like this could be when bad soundtracks really start to ruin a good film – and ruin your memory of the book. Because, what is the point of soundtracks anyway? To set the mood during a film, to help construct the atmosphere and reveal what characters are feeling, even if they don't say anything; you might lose the narrative voice in the transition from page to screen, but music can more than make up for that. And if it goes wrong, things will never be quite the same again...
The Fault in Our Stars is a good example of a film with a soundtrack that brilliantly sets the mood (and ensures you will use all of the tissues you brought with you!). Ed Sheeran's All Our Stars is great, but I think the artist Birdy provides some of the best songs on this soundtrack, such as Not About Angels. This song is played during one of the most emotional and heartbreaking scenes in the film, and perfectly portrays not only the extreme sadness, but also the hope that imbues John Green's book. The lines "We know full well there's just time/So is it wrong to dance this line", for example, completely captures Hazel and Gus's attitude to life: they know they don't have much time together, but still try to live full lives. Birdy also provides the song Tee Shirt, which focuses on the romance and how they really are normal people underneath the cancer, "sick lit" narrative.
Moving on to the slightly lesser known, and certainly less commercially successful, adaptation of Veronica Roth's Divergent. The soundtrack for this film had next to no publicity, with the exception of a few Ellie Goulding songs,. and music does not feature in this film as much as in The Fault in Our Stars, but this is in itself true to the book; one of the marks of this dystopian world is the lack of music in abnegation and dauntless. My favourite song, Beating Heart by Ellie Goulding, has the lyrics: "I can't face this now everything has changed/I just wanna be by your side, here's hoping we collide." This fits nicely with the theme of Divergent because Tris is shocked at the sudden change of Dauntless, and the second line fits because she's hoping she will be able to get to know Four better. It fits perfectly with how I imagined Tris when reading the trilogy.
My third example is Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, the adaptation of Rick Riordan's series that again had mixed reviews. This is a rather different example because it uses mainly instrumental pieces which sound almost like they should come from an older adaptation of Greek myths. This soundtrack isn't as good as the other two films we've mentioned because it does often over-dramatise some scenes, but sometimes this seriousness is needed and the books are so interested in the legacy of the Greek myths and ancient history that the music is a nice nod to that. I think these films would have benefited from some titles by higher-profile artists.
Another side to this debate is the role of trailers. The trailer has a crucial impact on how the film is received: either it will really worry fans who fear that the adaptation will ruin the story, or it will reassure them that it will be faithful. An example of a trailer with music is The Maze Runner by James Dashner. The film of this comes out in the UK in October this year and its trailer uses the song Heavy Melody by End Scan, which is excellent for building up the tension and mystery of the glade. It does suggest that this will be a film where the events are over-dramatised a bit, but that could work well with this book, where everything is pushed to the extreme. If you haven't read The Maze Runner, it is an excellent dystopian story – a must=read before the film comes out. And then you can judge for yourself how well the music works!
What do you think of the soundtracks to The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent, or any other book-to-film adaptation? Email us, tweet us @GdnChildrensBks or comment on Facebook and we'll post your thoughts below!
