movies vs. books

[pce]

i'm really tired of people responding with a matter-of-fact tone, "the book of course, it's always better," when asked "which was better: the movie or the book?"

first of all, i'm going to give some examples when this is not true. (some of these i know of personally, others i've heard/read about)

-Forrest Gump
-The Last of the Mohicans
-The Shining
-2001: A Space Odyssey (I know, the movie and book were made at the same time, but regardless, the film is better)
-Apocalypse Now (based on Heart of Darkness)
-Lawerence of Arabia
-Catch-22 (both equally good in my opinion)
-Lord of the Rings (i hate the movie and refuse to read the book - but pretty much everyone else in the whole WORLD likes them equally)
-Papillon
-Malcolm X (the autobiography vs the biography are equally good as a book and movie in my opinion)
-Jurassic Park (in my opinion)
-and for God's sake, The Godfather! JESUS! why does everyone forget that one?

See! It's not always true. Good books adapted by POOR filmmakers make bad movies. Good books adapted by GOOD filmmakers make equally good or better movies.

You might say that a higher percentage of adapted movies are worse than the books, and i must admit you'd be right. however this shouldn't come as a surprise. film and literature are very different mediums. one's more dependent on thoughts while the other's more dependent on actions. one gets you at a cerebral level while the other gets you at a gut level. (and don't forget, one's a verbal and the other's a visual art form) adapting a book into a movie is just as hard as adapting a piece of music into a painting or drawing. the adaptation can come out worse, different, better, equally good, irrelevant, etc. besides, original films are often adapted into novels which are NEVER acceptable by any measure of quality, whether in comparison to the movie or by itself. so the fact that film can even compete with such a vastly different art form (while literature cannot) is a testament to it's power and range.

p.s. i think one of the reasons people assume a book is better than the movie is that the book simply has more information. people see a movie, are interested and read the book and are thrilled that they have learned so much more about the characters they fell in love with, so they automatically assume the book was better. conversely, people often read the book, are so intrigued by the intricacy of the characters and plot that when they see the movie and discover missing events, characters, characteristics, etc. they are dissappointed. however, i say and you must agree, just because a novel has more information, it doesn't make it better. quantity of information doesn't rule over quality of information and quality of presentation.

p.p.s. a lot of times poor filmmakers or money hungry producers will try to adapt a film instead of coming up with fresh ideas. these people give the adapted film a bad wrap just as a novelist who doesn't care about literature or art and therefore adapts a movie.

i think my rant is over now....so i'll stop

(damn that's a long post....oh well)

(Edited by pce at 10:34 pm on Aug. 25, 2002)


(Edited by pce at 10:36 pm on Aug. 25, 2002)

[Valkyrie]

Hmmm. I can barely read the book if I see the film adaption first... but I can see the film adaption always after I read the book. :(

[RedLibertad]

The thing about Malcolm X's autobio (which was actually just dictated and processed through Alex Haley) was that Haley made Malcolm's views, which some considered to border on anti-white, more subtle. And Spike Lee made even this gentler form even more subtle. Otherwise, the movie was dead on.

As for catch 22, I personally thought the book was better. This is one of my favorites. However, the movie did portray the part where he accepts the medal "out of uniform" was hilarious though. The way I played it out in my head was a lil more hysterical. I liked how timid the commanding officer was.

[suffianr]

Sorry if this comes across as a little on the cynical side of things, but imho most people probably claim to like the book better just to sound all artsy-fartsy and intellectual...in the same way that some people stock their shelves with classical literature that they've never read or

True, the two different mediums employ different approaches to story-telling, which is what it's all about. I think it largely depends on individual preference as to which of the mediums is the more satisfying...not all books can be made into movies and simply not all movies can be accurately adapted into books...there's just too much mood and emotion that can be lost in the process of transubstantiation, er, transformation from one medium to another.

For example, movies like romeo+juliet, LOTR, the Godfather, Minority Report etc. probably achieved commercial success because substance was not lost, but manifested by a greater visual dimension. The Lord of the Rings is still the greatest epic I've ever finished (discounting anecdotes from the Mahabharata), and I must admit, Lothlorien, Hobbiton and Gandalf looked more splendid on-screen than anything I could have visualized under the influence of 2 litres of Smirnoff...Well, I'm ranting too here, but essentially, the lucidity and emotion in the telling of a story does not have to be bound by any medium or restrictions other than those in your own head, imho.

p.s. Ever heard of books that are so emotionally powerful that they have been described as being "alive"?

[Menshevik]

The book, almost always, is better (excluding classics) and thats because you can express and develop so much more on a page than you can on a roll of film. Often, you understand and relate to characters from a novel better than ones from a movie, simply because their thoughts can be made tangible; most movies can't do that. The written word possesses a totally different kind of magic that touches you in infinite ways. With all this said, I'd like to say that I love movies and agree that the cinema has the power to evoke emotions, too, but movies based on books just can't accomplish more than the original masterpiece.

[andresG]

Beautifully said Menshevik.
I couldn't agree with you any more.

Writing has a way of expressing thoughts, ideas and emotions that a film could never accomplish.

[Maaja]

I don't know is there a book 'Lawrence of Arabia'. I've seen the film and I like it a lot. And I've read the book 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' that Lawrence wrote himself about what he did in Arabia. And the book was very good too. But I can't compare them because the books considered much more than the film. But both were wonderful.

[pce]

"the written word possesses a totally different kind of magic that touches you in infinite ways"

i doubt you can argue that the written word (no matter how masterful) is more magical/powerful/immediate/etc than a glimmer of hope/sorrow/joy in the eye of a human being.

[MAN with a RED face]

ang taong hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay masahol pa sa malansang isda---Jose Rizal

Life is like a box of chocolate, youll never know what you will get next---Forrest Gump

Hasta La Victoria Siempre---Comrade CHE

[Anonymous]

Dont forget that many of those films were books, and they are only films becasue the book was good!

[Conghaileach]

I haven't read the book myself, but I've been told that the Jaws film is far better than the book.

I have to disagree with pce, though, on Jurassic Park. Both films couldn't hold a candle to Crichton's books - the first film mainly because they didn't have the money or technology to pull off a lot of what happened in the book.

I haven't read the LOTR book, but I thought the film was crap; it was too overrated.

the anarchist, Planet of the Apes was based on a terrible book; and I'm told that "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" (the basis for Blade Runner) is also pretty bad.

[Menshevik]

ok, Forrest Gump sucked. The movie was much better. In the book he becomes a pro-wrestler--a wrestler, people. He also carries a naked Rachel Welch around Hollywood, becomes a grandmaster chess champion, and other rediculous things like that. So I have to agree there that the movie was better. You have to understand that movies based on books are often very good, but most of the time they just can't outshine the real thing.

[vox]

"...I'm told that "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" (the basis for Blade Runner) is also pretty bad."

I've got to disagree with that. I liked the book quite a bit. Philip K. Dick may not be for everyone, of course, but it should be noted that the movie was very, very different from the book. If someone is expecting to read the same story that was told in the movie, he will be very disappointed.

vox

[Conghaileach]

That's just what I was told. I think I may read it myself sometime, but unfortnately I already have a pretty large pile of books to go through.

[Anonymous]

CiaranB: planets of the apes is a prety lamy movie let me say you this!

Plus you are selceting a few of them proving that the movies were bether than the book, most Steven King books were bether than the movies!

[Conghaileach]

I agree with you on King.

[pce]

hey thanks ciaranB, i forgot about Jaws. The book was terrible! get this, (if you want to read the book, stop reading) at the end of the book, the shark simply dies from exhaustion from all the barrels they shoot into him. granted this is what would really happen, but it's boring. so steven spielberg says, i'm gonna have the shark blow up. peter benchly (the author) says: no way, no one's gonna buy that. and spielberg replys: "give me an hour and a half and they will." isn't that great? and they did

anyways, the thing is, you can't go into a movie expecting to see the book. you have to be ready for a totally different experience, because there are new artists' influences and new iterpretations, etc.

and the reason i say jurassic park the movie was better is because no matter how hard you try in a book, i don't think you can get the full impact of what it looks like to have a t-rex's jaws clamped around your car. or what a raptor looks like RIGHT before it jumps. yeah, the book had more character developement and more plot, but who CARES! i wanna see dinosaurs!

[Menshevik]

I realize now that books are often completely changed when theyre made into movies. For example, I really liked The Thin Red Line as a movie, so I read the book. It was a good piece of writing, but a totally different story. The book was about male identity in war and was your basic war story, but the movie wasn't about that at all. It had much deeper philosophical implications concerning all life in and out of war. Though, I was pleased with both works, they had almost no similarities--it's as if they were two entirely unrelated concepts, but obviously the film makers had to get the idea from somewhere.

I guess thats an example of when you can't really compare the movie and the book that it's based on.

[RedCeltic]

Well, I was talking to Paris about this last night. Most of the fiction I've read has never been made into a movie. I don't have much time to read fiction these days, however a good book always seems to stick in my mind more vividly than any movie can. I have an active imagination, so maybe that's part of it.

Anyway, to go through your list here PCE:

-Forrest Gump

I've seen the movie, I didn't know there was a book before the movie... interesting..

-The Last of the Mohicans

Eh.. the book is an all time classic and one of the best pieces of literature about Native Americans in New York. The movie was well done, but the book was much better.

-The Shining

Any Steven King book is more riviting than the movie. The movie's a great classic, and one of my all time favorates. However, King's writing style is something best exprianced in writen form.

-2001: A Space Odyssey (I know, the movie and book were made at the same time, but regardless, the film is better)

I was under the impression that you needed to read the book in order to understand the movie.

-Apocalypse Now (based on Heart of Darkness)
-Lawerence of Arabia
-Catch-22 (both equally good in my opinion)

I've only seen these as movies.

-Lord of the Rings (i hate the movie and refuse to read the book - but pretty much everyone else in the whole WORLD likes them equally)

I read the books along time ago... great trilogy... I haven't seen the movie yet... kinda hard though to put three books into one movie if you ask me..

-Papillon

never heard of it.

-Malcolm X (the autobiography vs the biography are equally good as a book and movie in my opinion)
-Jurassic Park (in my opinion)
-and for God's sake, The Godfather! JESUS! why does everyone forget that one?

All good movies (expecally the Godfather).. never read the book.

[Felicia]

"don't judge a book by its movie" -anon

[Anonymous]

well although i rpefer a good book, we cant say whats bether since its two diferent types of culture, one thing is movies other is books, we cant say much about it since they are two diferent types of culture!