John Doesn't Die at the End

[Spoilers are included in this article. If you haven't read the book, then fucking do it.]

Is that you, David?

I decided to watch the movie adaptation of John Dies at the End last night, after finding it in a local supermarket, something I was pretty surprised at. The book is among my favourites, and as anyone in this situation I was kind of excited but also worried that it'd trash it and leave a bad taste afterwards. Luckily for me it wasn't the case, but it certainly wasn't perfect, either. One thing it did do however, was give me more of an insight into the way adaptations work. It essentially taught me what I already knew, put a lot of things into perspective; definitely a good thing. But overall it was unsatisfying.

The first thing I noticed, and for this I actually had to pause the film to explain where it had gone wrong to my long-suffering girlfriend (who is also a fan of the book, however); it hadn't followed the actual wording in the intro, and thus changed and actually ruined the opening point of the story. This segment is our sort-of-hero and surrogate Arthur Dent, David Wong, posing a question about whether an axe that has had both it's head and body replaced due to it breaking is still technically the same axe. It's a great little intro to the book, and later in the novel it becomes more apparent what he meant, in the context of other events that aren't included in the film adaptation. However, in the film a small change of wording changes everything. Originally, he had shot and killed a huge man, then beheaded him with the axe. Later, once both parts of the axe are replaced, the same (now zombified) man appears at his flat, head sewn back on, and shouts "that's the axe that beheaded me!", to which David asks, is he right? But in the film the man says "that's the axe that killed me!" – thus negating the paradox, because in no circumstance is that the axe that killed him. He was shot. And this kind of sets the bar for the film for me; although stylistically it's impressive, the little faults drag it down.

I wasn't too sure about their choice of actors. John in particular really just didn't click for me. It's like whoever did the casting really hadn't even bothered to read the descriptions of him we get in the novel, which presents him as being tall, and pretty scruffy, with "a head of curly long hair like a deflated afro". A perfect image, I thought, but in the film he's far more clean-cut and almost jock-ish. Again, these small details left me unfulfilled; his band is similarly unrecognisable, only having the one bassist and not having John as the guitarist. Even the song structure of 'Camel Holocaust' is different. I understand artistic license but when it changes something from quirky and hilarious to generic it's quite frustrating. The portrayal of David isn't altogether hopeless, though. Again, not spot on in my mind (I imagined him being more snarky, sarcastic deadpan than crazy, wide-eyed deadpan), but it did raise an interesting point in my head: the film is showing the events as they happened, as opposed to the book, where David is telling us the story, so is more liable to make himself seem less freaked out than what he would have been. My realisation of this made me far more accepting of the film overall, too. One other way I thought of it was not to think of it as just a movie adaptation of the book, but an in-universe film of David and John's story. Maybe they had to change some of the real names (Amy Larkin?) and trim some of the characters (perhaps Jennifer Lopez refused to allow them to use her name or likeness). And perhaps the film producers left out the Shadow Men because they didn't want to be 'disappeared' themselves. This adds an interesting layer to the film and certainly makes it easier to watch as a fan of the book.

The whole intro to the characters, the party in the field, and particularly the Fake Jamaican, I all thought was done pretty good. The Fake Jamaican was definitely fake, all right. He was even pretty creepy, I can imagine for a first-time watcher he might even produce the same dread-chills I got when I first read it. But once it all starts kicking off, it's like it has realised that it hasn't given itself enough time to get anywhere, and after the pretty good first half it starts to get a bit muddled up in itself, stuffing as many of the essential plot details in as possible without really developing them much, i.e. Robert North, Marconi, Shitload, riding with Shitload, Detective Appleton/Morgan Freeman, the Ghost Door, Shit Narnia etc. etc. Most of my favourite bits of humour were absent, although I did appreciate Morgan's eyes exploding. But when you are adapting a novel such as John Dies into a film, where do you start with it? It's a novel in two parts, so it's difficult to make it into more than one film because most film companies are only interested in trilogies or tonnes of sequels, rather than two-parters. The novel has enough plot for three films easily, but not enough plot markers. Vegas would have to be the ending of the first one, Shit Narnia the second. But I'd much rather have seen two films rather than one rushed one. Leaving out the entire "Missing Girl" segment is the real shame, because in my mind that is the pinnacle of the book; it's scary, it's tense, everything comes together and it's also fucking funny. You could make just that bit into a film, if it were possible without having to relay tonnes of backstory to the viewer. Instead, not even Vegas made it, and even the main characters are no longer the real heroes of the tale.

To me, it is inevitable that a movie made of John Dies would be sub-par; it's simply got too many brilliant details for it to flourish in the same way the book does. In fact, as I made the transition from watching too many films to reading more books I've realised it's all too easy to miss the point of a book when adapting it. Among the more modern books I've seen adapted, only a few, such as Fight Club, have brought the feel and attitude of the book to the big screen while still giving itself artistic license and doing well with it. But most of these films are big-budget affairs that can afford to put all the money it likes into it. John Dies retains an incredibly B-Movie-like feel, some of the effects being really quite impressive with others being suitably laughable. Although, I say suitably; in the book, although the situation is usually bizarre, the danger is real. In the film a lot of that is taken away by the FX being done in a similar way to Tim & Eric's Awesome Show, and once I made that connection in my mind there was no going back; I'd kind of ruined it for myself.

I could go on and on about the elements I thought were misrepresented, but in the end it's all personal opinion. I'm sure some of the fans of the book thought it was great, but I can't imagine any were overall completely satisfied, and I find it a shame that people reading it after seeing the film may have the film's imagery stuck in their head. But I have to give the film some credit, as the settings were basically exactly as I imagined. Undisclosed looked great, but it was nonetheless still sadly underused. But this is how it goes with films; you have a limited amount of time to work with and have to get the essential elements in, and have to keep the pace up to keep it interesting for first-timers to the story. But I can't help but think it'd have benefited from having David Wong/Jason Pargin more involved in it. He'd have no doubt written a far more cohesive screenplay for it, he'd have been able to include the most humorous parts without sacrificing the excitement. Overall, all it really did was provide entertainment; not a failure entirely, then. I haven't seen director Don Coscarelli's other work (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), but his unique B-Movie style has definitely gotten me interested and I'll be watching his other work soon no doubt. He clearly really enjoyed John Dies and really wanted to do it justice, and in all fairness, he probably did the best he could personally. But without Dave Wong himself involved, it felt like it was not aimed at the fans of the book, but instead just acting as a standalone project aimed at fans of silly and over-the-top movies, but I do consider it worthy enough to own the DVD. If you love the book and haven't seen the film yet, then watch it, and take it all with multiple pinches of salt. If you haven't read it or seen it yet, then get the book; absorb it, and let it absorb you, because it's one of the funniest and most original horror/comedies of the last few decades.