Chels

(Spoilers below for The Devil Wears Prada book and film series, and the Bridget Jones’ Diary book and film series)

I have to begin with a confession that might be a bit controversial. On first watching The Devil Wears Prada, I didn’t like it. In my defence, I had not long since read and loved the book, and there were quite a lot of differences between the book and the film. Also in my defence, I was around 12 years old, and we were in the middle of a very strong the book was better mindset. While that was largely reserved for fantasy series and the adaptations that were popular (or unpopular) in online fandom spaces, the rhetoric was all around me. On reflection, I actually do like the film. It’s full of iconic moments that have seeped into the public consciousness. Florals for spring? Groundbreaking has taken on a life of its own as a meme, among many others.

It’s not that the book was better, or that the film was better, they’re just different. And, after having it hammered home during my adaptation studies that being ‘faithful’ to their source material is not the main purpose of an adaptation, I’ve learned instead to celebrate the differences that come with different mediums.

Around the same time I first watched the film, a sequel book came out – Revenge Wears Prada felt very different to the first book and film. I personally remember enjoying it – in the story, set around a decade after the first, Andy and Emily are now best friends, no longer working for Miranda, and instead both work for a bridal magazine. Of course, Miranda does find her way back into their lives. My own enjoyment aside, when the sequel film was announced, my immediate thought was that people would not enjoy the plot. And, by the time the sequel had been announced, the film had become the behemoth that it is – iconic lines, iconic fashion, iconic characters. As it turns out, though, the film takes a completely different route, which I think was probably for the best. As much as I liked the sequel book’s plot, I don’t think it would have translated well to the screen, and I don’t think it’s the kind of plot that fans of the first film would have wanted to see.

The same phenomenon happened with the Bridget Jones series. Originally, there were two books, and two films made in quick succession, and the plots for the films stayed largely consistent with the books. Years later, a third book, Mad About the Boy, was released. The book was fun – while it, like its film counterpart, killed off Mark Darcy, it was still consistent with the concept for the first two books. The only issue is that the book was very set in its time, by which I mean it was written in 2013, and you can sense that in the references. Most glaringly, Bridget frequently gets into arguments on Twitter (which had already rebranded to X by the time the film was produced). The third film was announced, and was notably not Mad About the Boy.

I really liked Bridget Jones’ Baby. It was certainly a departure from the previous films – the Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver love triangle had been replaced, as Hugh Grant ‘felt that his character didn’t fit into the film’. Instead, Patrick Dempsey’s Jack became the Cleaver figure in the love triangle. 

Following the success of the film, Helen Fielding released a Bridget Jones’ Baby novel. It fits neatly between the second and original third story, and keeps to the book love triangle, with Daniel and Mark as the potential fathers of Bridget’s baby. I think that was the best choice when adapting the film back into novel form – but it also marked the divergence between the book series and the film series. I enjoy both equally, but I would now consider the books and the films separate franchises. Mad About the Boy, too, differs from the book – but as I said above, I think it had to change. The book was rooted in 2010s culture, and the film could have come across as dated, rather than timeless, as the first films do. There’s still the two children, and the death of Mark, and, in fact, the new love triangle with a younger man and a teacher, though some of the finer details differ. Daniel returns to the film franchise, having revealed he’d not actually died, and the relationship between Daniel and Bridget has really shifted – it’s all very familial rather than romantic, a shift that’s quite fitting for the two decade gap since they last shared a screen. 

I think in the past decade we had a tendency to dig in our heels a bit when it came to adaptations – we really wanted them to be faithful to the books, and divergences were seen as inaccuracies. These days, with all the remakes, sequels, and adaptations being released, films and TV shows are starting to outnumber their source material, so stories are expanding. It’s also a testament to the different audiences and different popular tropes between the mediums – what works in a book doesn’t always translate to the screen, and vice versa.