Can some one explain this further? Thanks.

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When film adaptations of literary classics are lackluster it is often because they i)______ a certain ii) ______ to the cultural prestige of literature.


When the movies are not so brilliant is because they show (display) a certain adoration to the literature


The good ones, by contrast, succeed through the arrogant assumption that a great novel is not a iii) ______ artifact but rather a lump of interesting material to be shaped according to the filmmaker's will.

However, the positive thing is that those movies that are good is because after all they are suitable to make a movie itself. In the end, they are a good subject for a script

Hope this helps

for the third blank, the assumption is that a great novel is NOT a ______ artifact but rather a lump of interesting material to be shaped according to the filmmaker's will. so the novel is something which is malleable or changeable. then the "not" signals the opposite of malleable- sacred!. Sacred book is not allowed to be changed. so the statement will be " the assumption is that a great novel is not a "sacred" artifact but a lump of interesting material to be shaped according to the filmmaker's will. if we use the word malleable, the sentence will be "the assumption is that a great novel is NOT A MALLEABLE artifact but rather a lump of interesting material to be shaped according to the filmmaker's will. this sounds like a paradox!

Sir, you have two contrastors in the same sentence. please read carefully.
[NOT, BUT]

The third blank must be sacred because despite most of the movies treating the novel as reverential, the successful movies arrogantly assume them not to be sacred and able to be modified. Malleable doesn't fit there at all. 'The movies arrogantly assume the novels to be not malleable' nothing is arrogant here as they are also respecting the original piece of literature. 'but rather a lump of interesting matter to be shaped as filmmaker's will' so it is malleable now. a movie cannot be treated as not malleable and malleable at the same time.