After viewing the Into the Wild movie, do you feel that this is a successful adaptation of the novel? Consider the casting, the cinematography, the music, or other parts of the filmmaking process.

     The answer to this question mostly boils down to how you might define a film adaptation as "successful." If a "successful" adaptation is a film which instills viewers with the same sorts of feelings and information that a book gives its readers, I think there are very few people that would call Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" a successful adaptation of Jon Krakauer's cult 1996 book. Still, I don't believe this is what Penn was after. The director made a very clear choice; he took a relatively non-biased and journalistic profile of Chris McCandless' life and created a visual celebration of it. And thus, if you are someone who views the life of McCandless similarly to the way Penn does, the film might feel to you like a success.      To quote critic Tasha Robinson, "McCandless himself was a highly polarizing subject." Americans seem to either love him or hate him, judging by the oceans of letters that Krakauer received after publishing his accounts. Many celebrate him as an anti-capitalist poetic hero in the legacy of John Muir, Walt Whitman, and Jack Kerouac. Others (particularly, Alaskan natives) can be quick to call him a dumbass or idiot that didn't know what he was getting into.       Krakauer's novel managed to propose elements of both, without firmly committing to either. It includes flattering descriptions of his ambition, willpower, and fearlessness. It also hints at McCandless' naïve and self-aggrandizing nature. And in Penn's romantic and warm visual storytelling, we see something completely different. 
      What we're offered here is a wonderful opportunity to explore the ways bias subtly (or not so subtly) plays into filmmaking. Where do we feel Penn's voice in the film? Is it the ways the camera greedily drinks up the gorgeous American landscape? Is it the tender and bittersweet soundtrack (from Eddie Vedder) that threads musical poetry through the story? Is it the heroic portrayal by lead actor Emile Hirsch, or the ways in which so many characters seem to form an instant bond with his character?     Krakauer's novel is dense and complex, but overall, it is composed of theories and speculations. But something happens when a story is told in narrative filmmaking. Theories either get accepted as truth, or tossed aside. Speculation is presented as fact. It is inevitable; for how could a director say "what I am showing you only might have happened this way."
     Into the Wild is a problematic novel and a problematic film. Certain choices must get made, and certain opinions must get revealed. But at the end of the day, isn't this what our best literature and film does? It asks questions, it catalyzes discussion. 
    Now, discuss.

I do think the 2007 movie version of Into the Wild was a highly successful adaptation of the book. The casting was excellent, especially in the cases of Emile Hirsch as Chris McCandless and Catherine Keener as Jan Burris. Hirsch physically resembled Chris and lost 40 pounds for the role. He captured Chris's youthful charisma, his good looks, and the intensity of his desire to live a vital life away from the world of money and consumerism. Catherine Keener conveyed a strong—and sometimes wistful—maternal feeling toward Chris. Her sad eyes seemed to foreshadow Chris's end.   
Like the book, the movie cuts back and forth in time rather than merely offering a chronological narrative of Chris's life and death. Moments in the movie such as Chris cutting up his driver's license and burning his money in a small bonfire  capture and vividly convey the independence Chris sought as he severed ties with mainstream society. 
The cinematography has a lyrical quality in the way it lingers on the splash of a wave and the porous texture of a rock. It captures, perhaps in a way words could not, the moments of sheer, unadulterated joy Chris experienced. One example is the scene of Chris jumping, swimming, and playing amid the waves. Like Chris, the camera was both openly in love with nature. 
The move was also successful at capturing the bittersweet quality of Chris's quest. This is underscored by the song, "Guaranteed," a folksy, American, on-the-road song played on the guitar. It communicates a sense of the wistful in its twanging chords. It also highlights Chris's place in the larger tradition of American wanderers seeking more than the conventional. Its tone is not joyful so much as full of soul and longing. Some of its lyrics are haunting:

Everyone I come across in cages they bought / They think of me and my wandering, but I'm never what they thought.

These lyrics communicate the spirit of the book, which discusses ways Chris might have been misunderstood. It also conveys Chris's mindset, determined not to be shackled by the "cage" of materialism.
Overall, the film has a quality of underlying bittersweetness because of how Chris's real story ends. It was highly commendable that—unlike an earlier adaptation of Chris's saga in the 1990s TV series Millenium, in which the Chris figure is saved at the end—the movie showed Chris dying. It would have been easy to tack on a happy, heroic Hollywood ending, but the movie, fortunately, stayed true to the book.