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Translating the written word to the big screen is a tricky business. From brilliant literary works turned into dreadful films to movies that not only do justice to their source material but sometimes even surpass it, adaptations can be a mixed bag. John Green, celebrated for his young adult novels filled with poignant coming-of-age and romance themes, can breathe a sigh of relief; none of his stories have yet met with disastrous adaptations.
However, the six adaptations of Green’s works that have hit screens so far reveal an undeniable variation in quality. This collection includes five films and a television miniseries, each drawing from Green’s narratives, whether faithfully or with creative liberties. Here, we delve into a ranking of these six projects, considering personal insights, critical reviews, and audience feedback. For clarity, this assessment focuses solely on the adaptations, not the original novels themselves.
Among these, “Paper Towns” tells the story of Quentin “Q” Jacobsen, portrayed by Nat Wolff, and Margo Roth Spiegelman, played by Cara Delevingne. Once childhood friends, the pair drift apart in high school as Margo becomes a popular figure. Q finds himself unexpectedly reunited with Margo one night, embarking on an exhilarating escapade of retribution against her adversaries—a night that rekindles their bond, at least for Q, in a deeply romantic sense. Yet, just as suddenly as she reappears, Margo vanishes, leaving Q to unravel the mystery of her departure through a trail of cryptic clues.
“Paper Towns,” released in 2015, emerges as the least successful of Green’s adaptations to date. It holds the dubious distinction of being the only one with a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an even less favorable audience response. At the box office, it stands as a cautionary tale of a young adult novel adaptation that failed to captivate audiences. Despite its shortcomings, “Paper Towns” is not without merit. It’s a film that admirers of the book and Green’s broader oeuvre may still find worth watching, helped along by strong performances. Just be sure to temper expectations before diving in.
6. Paper Towns
“Paper Towns” centers around childhood friends Quentin “Q” Jacobsen (Nat Wolff) and Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne), who had lost touch with each other by high school — during which time, Margo became one of the most popular girls at school. Q is surprised one day when Margo reaches out to him out of nowhere and recruits him for a fun, magical night of revenge on her enemies and a reconnection of their former bond — a bond which, for Q, leans heavily romantic. But Margo disappears from Q’s life just as quickly as she had re-entered it, and leaves him to piece together the clues she left behind as to where she went, and why.
There was little debate in choosing 2015’s “Paper Towns” as the least effective of the John Green adaptations released to date. It is the only one with a “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes, and its audience rating is even lower. In terms of box office performance, it’s an example of a YA novel movie adaptation that ended up flopping hard. All that being said, “Paper Towns” is far from a terrible movie, and fans of the book and Green’s work in general should still check it out and will likely get some enjoyment out of it. The strong performances definitely help in that regard — just make sure expectations are adjusted accordingly.
- Cast: Cara Delevingne, Nat Wolff, Halston Sage, Austin Abrams
- Director: Jake Schreier
- Rating: PG-13
- Runtime: 109 minutes
- Rotten Tomatoes score: 58%
- Where to watch: Prime Video, Apple TV
5. Let It Snow
John Green threw his hat into the holiday story ring with his contribution to the 2008 anthology “Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances,” alongside authors Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle. That anthology was in turn adapted into the 2019 Netflix movie “Let It Snow,” which follows the book’s approach of having three interconnected stories of young love and friendship set during the Christmas season.
The framing device is that a huge blizzard has snowed in a bunch of teenagers on Christmas Eve, and the close proximity tests existing bonds and forges new ones. As it usually goes with stories like this, a lot of the people are of different social circles and wouldn’t normally give one another the time of day, but the storm forces them to realize they have much more in common than they thought. And of course, some of the connections are of the romantic variety.
By Christmas morning, everyone leaves a different — and in most cases, better — person than they were at the start of the previous day. It doesn’t reinvent the Christmas romance movie wheel, but “Let It Snow” nonetheless warms you up like a cup of hot chocolate.
- Cast: Isabela Merced, Shameik Moore, Kiernan Shipka, Odeya Rush
- Director: Jake Schreier
- Rating: PG-13
- Runtime: 92 minutes
- Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%
- Where to watch: Netflix
4. Dil Bechara
Translated as “The Helpless Heart,” “Dil Bechara” is a 2020 Hindi-language adaptation of John Green’s novel “The Fault in Our Stars” as well as its previous English-language movie version. The plot is much the same as the book and original movie, following the developing romantic relationship between a woman named Kizie Basu (Sanjana Sanghi) and a man named Immanuel “Manny” Rajkumar Jr. (Sushant Singh Rajput). Kizie has thyroid cancer and Manny is in remission from bone cancer, which casts a tragic shadow over their love. But they decide to pursue it anyway and to enjoy as much of a relationship as they can in the face of an ever-present ticking clock.
One of the biggest changes in “Dil Bechara” from the book is that both characters are in their early 20s, rather than being teenagers. This obviously reframes their relationship a bit, making it more of an adult romance than a teenage one. The ways this changes them as individual characters and as a couple is fairly subtle, but it ends up meaning something drastically different depending on the age of the viewer. If you’re someone who has had trouble getting into John Green movies because they are always about teenagers, “Dil Bechara” might be just what you are looking for. It’s inferior to the English version for sure, but only a little, and is still a worthy adaptation of one of the best-selling books of all time.
3. Turtles All the Way Down
The Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus for the 2024 film “Turtles All the Way Down” — adapted from the 2017 novel of the same name — seems to not only speak for the movie itself but John Green’s overall handling of stories about youth and their struggles. “John Green once again nails the intricacies of adolescence and the importance of mental health in ‘Turtles All the Way Down,’” it reads, while adding that the movie is “a dynamic drama held together by a stellar cast.”
In this case, the mental health issue being explored is anxiety, as experienced by 17-year-old Aza Holmes (Isabela Merced). Aza’s inner thoughts are her own worst enemy as they work to keep her distracted by and obsessed with things that aren’t at all productive.
It’s hard enough tempering those thoughts while trying to get good grades, be present among her friends, and make things easy on her mom. But when Aza starts exploring her romantic feelings for Davis (Felix Mallard), those thoughts really begin to hammer down on her and try to convince her she is unworthy of love and wouldn’t make a good partner. The fact that Aza is played by Merced, so stellar in “The Last of Us,” should make you feel confident that the character is being handled with the utmost of care and nuance.
- Cast: Isabela Merced, Felix Mallard, Cree, Maliq Johnson
- Director: Hannah Marks
- Rating: PG-13
- Runtime: 111 minutes
- Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%
- Where to watch: HBO Max
2. Looking for Alaska
Arguably the least known of John Green’s books to be adapted to the screen thus far, “Looking for Alaska” was also his first, published in 2005. It is also the first to be adapted not into a film, but a TV miniseries, with all eight of its episodes released to Hulu in 2019. The choice allows the story and characters to really breathe in a way that they wouldn’t be able to if they’d been confined to a single 90-minute or two-hour movie, which would do them a disservice. In fact, “Looking for Alaska” actually uses the miniseries format to both expand on and also deviate a fair amount from its source material.
That said, the significant critical acclaim it received, much of which praised the series specifically for the way it actually improved upon the book, proves that it’s not always a bad thing to not just directly copy onto the screen what’s on the page. The series follows teenager Miles “Pudge” Halter (Charlie Plummer), who feels too smart and creative for the life he’s been living and decides to fix that by enrolling in a prestigious boarding school the next state over. Among the new friends he meets is the titular Alaska Young (Kristine Froseth), and his journey to broaden his academic horizons soon becomes equally focused on figuring out love. It is very nearly the best John Green work put on the screen yet, but a certain undeniable classic just couldn’t be overtaken.
- Cast: Charlie Plummer, Kristine Froseth, Denny Love, Sofia Vassilieva, Timothy Simons
- Created by: Josh Schwartz
- Rating: TV-MA
- Runtime: 53 minutes (per episode)
- Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%
- Where to watch: Apple TV, Fandango at Home
1. The Fault in Our Stars
20th Century Fox
Most films take a while to start tugging at our heartstrings. Meanwhile, some movies made us cry within the first 15 minutes, and that includes “The Fault in Our Stars.” The overall plot was already touched on in the entry for “Dil Bechara,” and it’s pretty clear why it would make audiences tear up both shortly after the opening credits roll and right up until the end credits begin. The original 2014 adaptation of “The Fault in Our Stars” sees Shailene Woodley play 16-year-old thyroid cancer patient Hazel Grace Lancaster, while Ansel Elgort is Augustus “Gus” Waters, who currently has eye cancer and has already lost his leg to bone cancer.
In case you are reading this for recommendations, and not because you are an existing fan, we won’t spoil “The Fault in Our Stars” for you. We’ll just say that it is indeed as heartbreaking as you think it will be, though it does manage to be surprising in a few of the ways that it achieves that goal. This is thanks in no small part to the performances by the leads, Woodley in particular, and it’s no surprise that she went on to become one Hollywood’s most in-demand young actors during that decade. Of course it’s melodramatic at times, but crucially, it never feels manipulatively so. It earns the emotions that it stirs, and that’s no small feat for a movie like this.
- Cast: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Nat Wolff
- Director: Josh Boone
- Rating: PG-13
- Runtime: 126 minutes
- Rotten Tomatoes score: 81%
- Where to watch: Disney+
