Adapting My Book: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

I have read the book, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. This book was written in a way that making the book into a movie would be difficult. Not impossible, obviously, but challenging. The main plot of the book is that Oskar, a nine year old boy who lives in New York, finds a key that belonged to his father, a man who died in the 9/11 tragedy, and decides he wants to find out what the key opens. He goes on this adventure, taking him all around the city where he meets new people and even discovers the truth. This book would be difficult to make into a movie because the hard to understand subplots. This book could be classified as a book written in 3 points of views.  At many times, it’s hard to understand who is “thinking” what.  Oskar, the main character, is a unique character. He thinks differently compared to most people I know or have read about. Most of the time in the book, he speaks through his thoughts. He keeps to himself a lot, though he is not shy at all, and his brain is an adventure by itself. Finding the right person to play Oskar would be difficult, and then portraying all his thoughts through scenes in the movie seems even more difficult to me. The creative nature of the book makes it one of my favorites, but transferring it onto the big screens would be a challenge.

I think the movie, would defiantly need to include the scene where Oskar gets home from school and listens to the voicemails from his dad, and even the scenes where Oskar goes into his closet and pulls out the voicemails just to listen to them again. I think it helps explain how Oskar is feeling. In the book, you can tell that Oskar is hurting, but these parts in the book really tug at my heart and I feel like I really felt sympathy towards Oskar. Another scene that needs to be in the movie that will make the adaptation work would be Oskar meeting his new friend Mr. Black. Even though Mr. Black wasn’t a main character, I feel like he was Oskar’s best friend through the whole experience. He helped Oskar go to all the places Oskar wanted to go so he could find the home of the key. He was important to Oskar and he should be important enough to be put in the movie. Another thing that should be included is the story behind Oskar’s grandmother and grandfather. In the book, letters were written explaining their story, but I feel like the movie should add to it because without it, the movie would be too short. The whole book is a puzzle to me. To be honest, I would say that a lot of the things in the book would be important when it comes to making it into a movie. Making the book into a movie would just be using all the “pieces” in the book and fitting them together in a way so that the movie makes sense.

Some things that I would cut out of the book would include the relationship between Oskar’s mom and her friend Ron. The book never explained that whole situation very well and Ron was very minor character that just isn’t needed in the book. Personally, I would take out the scene where Oskar is bullied at school. There’s this one scene where Oskar is at school and all the kids pick on him. It’s towards the end of the book and it’s random to me. Even if it didn’t need to be cut out, they should move it to make the scene more relevant and helpful to the story.

There is a movie that was made from the book. I haven’t seen it yet, but I also haven’t decided if I want to watch it either. I really liked this book, and usually once I like a book and watch the movie, the movie ruins it for me. Maybe this movie will be different.