This week, a trailer for a movie adaptation of The Giver was released. Before I even watched it, I was repulsed by the very idea. To me, The Giver is too cerebral to make a good mainstream movie. I just couldn’t understand how it could be done. Then I talked myself down.

I’m usually very patient with adaptations. I don’t expect them to be exact copies of the original material. In fact, that would be boring. There is very little point in making an exact copy. An adaptation needs to do something to justify its existence. So I talked myself down and watched the trailer. I mean, it has Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges. There must be something good about it. Maybe?

OK, so it’s not enough to go by. It’s not in black and white, though, and it feels like it should start in black and white with color being added Pleasantville-style as Jonas begins to experience it. But the world as most people see it does appear to be drab so maybe it’s OK. Many people might have an impulse to go “Ugh, Katie Holmes” but her flat affect will probably be great for Jonas’s mother. I do feel like I should go “Ugh, Taylor Swift”, though. She’s playing Rosemary and it doesn’t feel right. Also, they show Jonas trying to escape with Gabriel. That’s kind of a big thing to show in the trailer.

I will certainly reserve final judgment until we have an actual movie to see but since my initial instinct is that The Giver shouldn’t be made into a movie, especially now when it seems like it’s just being lumped in with the current YA post-apocalyptic craze, I’ll admit that I will be going in biased.