William Golding‘s seminal 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies, has been adapted to the screen twice before, but you’ve never seen a version quite like the one that’s streaming now on Netflix. Expanded to four hours, this Emmy-contending serialized adaptation from Adolescence scribe Jack Thorne and director Marc Munden dares to make key changes to the text that has inspired praise from the likes of Stephen King as well as criticism from prominent authors like Junot Diaz.
That’s why Gold Derby wanted to hand the conch to Thorne and Munden to talk through their creative choices in re-telling Golding’s era-specific story of a group of upper crust British schoolboys who descend into savagery while stranded on a remote island while World War II rages in the outside world. Those choices include the addition of flashbacks that reveal more about the boys’s pre-island lives, as well as more remnants from what Golding described as “the world of grown-ups” and a very different fate for that “true, wise friend called Piggy.”
“My relationship with the book has changed markedly over the years,” Thorne tells us about his overall approach to crafting his version of the story. “Over the years, I’ve come to realize that much of what happens is rooted in confusion, not certainty, and those where the qualities we were trying to capture in this adaptation. We were trying to capture the brilliant confusion with which Golding wrote these kids.”
Back in a flash
Golding intentionally left the backstories of the novel’s main characters — Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack — vague, with only fleeting references to who they were before they crash-landed on the island. But Thorne and Mundun turned those scraps of information into longer storylines, most notably for our conflicted hero, Ralph. The fourth episode featured extensive flashbacks that depict the death of his mother due to illness and his relationship with his distant father.
Jack Thorne: What we wanted to do was use the flashbacks as little windows — not to illustrate, but to deepen. And apart from Ralph, all of the flashbacks are wordless. The Ralph material is something that Golding himself wrote into the book as Ralph is reflecting on his childhood as he’s becoming an adult in the middle of war. It felt like a nice opportunity to give extra weight to his decision-making in the last episode.
Marc Munden: From a visual standpoint, I treated the flashbacks the same as I did the island material. The visual grammer of the series changes as we go through it, and the look of things change as well because I wanted the ecosystem of the rainforest and the island itself to mimic the fragile ecosystem of the boys. As their society breaks down, everything becomes hallucinatory.
Dressed for battle
On the page, Golding is adamant about stranding the boys on the island without any sign of adults — save for the dead parachutist who they confuse for the Beast. But the series peppers the jungle with the debris of the adult passengers aboard the doomed plane, including luggage and the body of one of the pilots. That forces the boys to confront the specter of death immediately, and also allows them to use what’s left behind for their own purposes. It’s notable, for example, that Jack and his followers use the clothes of a female flight attendant in their hunter garb.
Thorne: The way they react to the pilot’s dead body gives an early insight where this story might go, and the different ways with which they want to deal with the dignity of the body. Because they don’t react like adults would to a dead body — their fascinated with death instead of being frightened by death. We also don’t see the first moment they encounter him, where I think there would have been some revulsion. By the time we meet them, they’re examining him like he’s a creature in the zoo, and they have to decide how to dispose of him. They’re almost treating it like a game, which is a really interesting way to establish where they are going to go while on this island.
Munden: It also gives you an insight into Jack, doesn’t it? Because it’s an existential moment for him; he says that the pilot doesn’t deserve a decent burial because he did a wrong thing. That gives you a big clue as to how Jack defines himself and where he’s going.
In terms of the clothing, we see one woman on the aircraft that’s very briefly keeping the boys under control before the plane goes down. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if they found her clothes?” The first thing that happens is the joy and fun that comes with dressing up in women’s clothes; one of the boys gets in her hooped skirt and swings it around, while another is wearing her fox stole. Then I thought about how the boys would change as these clothes changed them — the clothes almost became like armor in a way. And their use of her make-up changes as well, becoming more smeared and all these other things.
I was really influenced by the French photographer Patrick Robert, who photographed Liberian child soldiers in the early 2000s. Those boys were wearing fantasy costumes with angel wings and little Wellies, and they were all going into battle in this sort of extraordinary gear. I didn’t want to belittle that, because, it was horrendous what was being done to them, but in looking at those photos, I thought it would be a way to show how these boys to disintegrate along with their costumes.
Death becomes him
By far the biggest change to the novel is how the island’s lone voice of sanity meets his untimely end. In the book, Piggy’s death is sharp, sudden, and violent — he’s ripped from the world before Ralph has a chance to process his loss. But the series awards the boys a more extended farewell; after receiving a fatal blow to the head, Piggy lingers just long enough for Ralph to pull him to relative safety and have one last conversation with his friend.
Thorne: That change was about two things, really. The final episode is Ralph’s episode, and I didn’t want him to be on his own for too long a time. But I also saw Ralph’s thematic journey on the island as being about discovering the humanity of someone who is weaker than you. What I love about the book is that Golding sets Ralph up as this heroic figure, and then early on has him expose the cruel nickname of the boy he’s been nice to and who has been nice to him. No character in this story is simple, and none of them behave exactly as you’d expect. So I felt giving Ralph the opportunity to tell Piggy sorry was a really interesting thing to do. It also gives him two imperatives: he’s got to get Piggy to safety, and then when Piggy is gone, he has to work out how to be safe himself — or if he even wants to be safe.
Munden: For me, the significant thing about that scene is that they’re having to really step up and behave like adults. It’s also the first time that Piggy is irrational; he’s talking nonsense because of his wound, and Ralph isn’t understanding any of it. There’s this despair and loneliness in that moment with the two of them, and that’s what I love about it. I tried to leave as much unsaid as possible. You’re just looking at these two little souls looking at each other thinking, “What am I going to do?”
