If you have recently been bombarded with advertisements on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram to watch a movie based on Tom Clancy’s novel Without Remorse, you must have tried searching about him. Tom Clancy was a bestselling novelist who rose to fame with his political, military and espionage thriller. Honestly, even I did not care knowing about the brain behind blockbuster movies like Jack Ryan, Patriot Games, The Sum of All Fears and a few others. Recently, Without Remorse forced me to discover more about Tom Clancy and I got to know what this genius insurance agent could produce in terms of literature.
Though the idea behind this article is simply to portray that movies based on full-length novels (famous or otherwise) could render into wonderful, popular and profitable movies compared to movies based on scripts written by solely movie or screenwriters. Those who view it from the outside can argue that writing is writing and it doesn’t need to be distinguished, those who are in the field of literature will understand what it takes to envision the visuals while writing a novel and represent all those minute details on the pages of a novel – the dried blood drops on a knife’s edge or the marks of a wedding ring on a dead body. Tom Clancy, undoubtedly a master in all these, gave us the movies that could not be made otherwise.
Likewise, one can turn to the Harry Potter movies or even Jason Bourne movies. Talking about spies, espionage and intelligence organisations, how can one forget Sherlock Holmes or the greatest of them all, James Bond? Ian Fleming’s genius is all over the screen today – for many decades, his novels have been entertaining people on the screen and I bet that many people might not even know that who is the actual brain behind all those fancy moves by many Bonds in the movies… To cut things short, I think that novelists envision what they imagine with more force and much-needed depth in their imagination allows them to show the same to others. Kudos, also, to the moviemakers who could smell the profit on those pages and immortalised the characters we all adore today. Yes, it does take the craftmanship of movie-makers as well. That is why we have seen the greatest novels failing on the screens because of the idiotic movie management.
Well, to end with Tom Clancy, one needs to praise Tom More because, unlike Fleming, he was not even in the army or seals or CIA or any other political or military organisations. He still managed to represent the minute military and politics associated with it in his novels with a precision that his readers appreciated and enjoyed. He sold over 100 million copies of his novels and that’s why he rose to the screen, eventually. His movies are admired by the lovers of action and adventure movies as well as drama genre lovers. Have you watched Tom Clancy’s masterpiece yet? Have you read his novels? You can do both to spend your time well. All the best!
By Parakashtha for Literature News