Peculiar Peculiarity within Tim Burton's Peculiardom

Picture taken from Pinterest

I have one golden rule when watching a book adaptation: never compare the movie with the book. Treat them as separate entities.

Paulo Coelho said once that "A book is a film that takes place in the mind of the reader." And of course, considering that ourselves are the best director/casting director/animatronic artist/composer in the world, we will almost absolutely be disappointed if we compare the book with the movie.

So far, only two book adaptation movies really disappointed me: Eragon and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

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First, let me just say that I'm heartbroken. Tim Burton is definitely one of my favorite director. And the fact that he cameo in the movie is awesome at the very least. However, even with all that awesomeness (added with the fact that Eva Green makes the hottest headmistress EVER), I still couldn't bring myself to like the movie.
 
Why, you say? I think it's mainly because I feel that the movie reduced a whole lot of elements in the book. The complexity of the plot, character, and even the peculiarity is reduce to a point that is almost nonexistent; which is pretty much depressing.

The book itself tells a story about a boy coping with traumatic loss that sends him to a roller coaster ride among the peculiar community, dragged into a generation-long war he didn't even know existed, until he finally realized that he is way more that he has ever think he was (and that he actually have a long lost crucial role to play in the peculiar community). Of course, the realization only came to him through a tumultuous hardship, as all good realization should be. The movie? Well, it's more of a classic boy-meet-girl story with a twisted twist.

All in all, the movie reminded me off this awesome
Venn diagram by The Oatmeal.

Second: characters. Some major characters got lost in translation. Olive is no longer an elderly women with elderly wisdom trapped in the body of a child. She is a mere lovestrucked teenager with pyrotechnic. Emma is no longer tormented and confined by her potentially destructive power and the fact that she is in love with both Abe and his grandson. She is Alice on shrooms. Enoch is no longer a sadistic necronomancer slowly growing his conscience with every step of the journey. He is a stupid and jealous teenager with the ability to bring toy story to life. The twins is no longer one conscience painfully ripped apart in two bodies. They are medusa offsprings who don't actually need to be twins for their peculiarity to work. Even the remains of Victor are reduced to ventriloquist's doll. And not even the scary ones like the one in my old Goosebumps book.

To be fair, both version of Miss Peregrine is a bit of a tyrant. But in the book, she is genuinely loved and needed by the peculiar children. Not a sexy-ghastly-and-slightly-OCD version of Hitler.

The conflict within the peculiardom itself is reduced significantly. The minorities' struggle for power inside the peculiardom that lead to the apocalyptic explosion that lead to the birth of abominations known as hollowghast that (given consumed enough eyes of peculiar children) turned into wights were lost; and replaced with a simple lab experiment went wrong. 

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Moreover, I got a sense that the movie is more like a culmination of Tim Burton's work rather than an adaptation of the book. The scenery inside the loop instantly takes you to Underland. Emma reminds you a lot of Alice (even her goddamned clothes has similar pastel blue hue). Miss Peregrine has to be the offspring of Mrs. Lovett and the white rabbit (I'm surprised that it's not played by Helena Bonham Carter). The hollowghasts are clearly Jack Skellington ver. 2.0 (now with added tentacles!).