I've always thought that trying to adapt a novel, just about any novel, into a single movie is impossible to do in a way that captures the entirety of the story. There is just too much plot in even a short novel. In some rare cases, that can actualy improve the story when the author created something over complicated or just cluttered. Generally though movie adaptations are going to have disappointing gaps for those who've read the book first.
The solution of course is adapting a single book into multiple movies or, even better, a television mini-series or full series. The Brits have been way ahead of American media on this. They've had this approach to adaptation for decades, but we are catching up. I've been noticing more series based on novels in the past few years. In fact, it seems like about half of the things I watch lately turn out to be based on novels. While this is great, it tends to add to my reading stacks because I always want to then read the source material.
That's what happened with Leviathan Wakes. I watched the first season of "The Expanse" first. Ryan had heard of it, and in fact gave me the first four books in the series for Christmas. These are massive books that are absolutely full of plot. Leviathan Wakes is half intrigue story and half interstellar action caper. There's no way to turn something like that into a single movie.
James Holden, the main character, is just a guy working on a ice-hauler running ice between the belt and Ceres station. A distress call changes all that. The ice hauler is destroyed while Holden is off-ship investigating the distress call which catapults him and his small crew into a war between Mars and the citizens of the belt. Even Earth gets involved.
Holden is this half-naïve idealistic character who has perhaps too much faith in people's tendency to do the right thing which makes him a perfect foil for the other Point of View character, Joe Miller. Miller is a semi-corrupt cop on Ceres Station. He thinks of himself as a pragmatist rather than corrupt, but a life time of working in a corrupt system has hardened him. Miller has no faith in the inherent goodness of individual people and is well versed in doing what he needs to, to get the job done. When his boss assigns him an off-the-books job to find the wayward daughter of a wealthy Luna based exec, Miller is expected to just go through the motions. It's the case he just can't drop though, and pursuing it launches him on a convoluted investigation that loses him his job and has him facing off against an alien menace.
Thematically, there's an interesting thought that comes through better in the book about how optimism and cynacism are attitudes fostered by environment. Additionally, those attitudes are strongly divorced from ideas of good or bad which makes for an interesting effect.
This is a big story and, while obviously changes were made, the series adaptation is fairly faithful to the book. Changes, where they appear, seem to have more to do with translation into a different media rather than the usual cuts to simplify for time. Over all, both the book and the series is excellent and it doesn't hurt to watch the series first. The book is obviously deeper and more nuanced so they layer well.
