I love reading and sometimes I am very excited when a book becomes a film, other times I am not. What about you all? Any thoughts on this? I grew up with the Harry Potter series and I loved the books, but the films are another story. They always omitted scenes and characters from the films, and they usually kept in things that could have been cut. I know that when a film is made from a book they change an ending, remove characters, and they completely change the story around for the audience. I just get disconnected from the film because I'm picking out things that aren't the same. How do you all feel about that? I'm always hesitant to see films because of this fact.
Books are always more descriptive. Plus, it gives you the creativity to come up with your own mental image of what's happening in the story based on what is said in the text. Be it the appearance of people, appearance of places, or just the interpretation of the situation, it gives you that chance to mentally put your unique spin on what's going on based on what you understand. Movies kind of take that away. The interpretation's based on the director's vision. It might not fit what you personally envisioned.
Movies adapt the premise of the book and unless the screenplay is written by the author then it is an interpretation. I always prefer the books, but the movies allow for a different audience and can explore emotions and images that a book can only suggest. They complement each other well, but the book is where it all started and the movie can only depict aspects of it.
The main difference (in my mind) is that movies keep going even if you fall asleep halfway through them (although maybe there's some technology that will pause a movie when you 'rest your eyes' for too long while you're playing it ). Oh, books have the advantage/disadvantage of leaving some small conditions up to 'the ultimate theater' (the human imagination). I call that an advantage because it allows you to imagine better & more-fittingly than reality or 'someone else's imagination' will allow for, but I call it a disadvantage as it requires 'work' on your mind's part and -as others may have different imaginings that make their story different from yours.
I love to read as well, but oddly enough its rare that I've read a book that was turned into a movie so its hard for me to really make this call. The only case that I can remember is when I tried to get into "where the heart is" and for some reason I was not feeling it but I really enjoyed the movie. In the book they describe the main character as redheaded and over weight which was the opposite of the movie. The book to me just seemed odd, but the oddity was more interesting in the movie.
I usually prefer the book version than the movie version. Books are so much richer into the story than movies, that movies often cut off importante and meaningful parts to fit itt into a 2 hour slot or even less. Also, they sometimes change up parts of the book and that usually upsets me, because I like movies based on books to be the most truth to the story as possible.
Most of the time I prefer books over movies. Movie adaptations almost always falls short of my expectations. It is understandable that they cannot fit everything in a couple of hours. But I hate it when they change something completely. There are some adaptations though that are really good. The most recent one I watched was Perks of Being a Wallflower and I thought they did a great job.
It depends. Most often than not, I prefer the book version unless I haven't seen the book. In most cases, the movie would appeal to me when I don't have prior knowledge of the book's plot. I would have to give exception to certain movies, though. Take for instance Harry Potter 3, 6 and 7. I read the books and they were amazing. The movies made re-reading those books even more amazing. Not to say, I wasn't aware of the cuts and deviations. I understand that the producers couldn't fit the entire storyline in a single movies. The places described in the book as well as the live action version of different characters were fully captured by the movie. So I'd say I love both the movies and books of Harry Potter. I'd say the same for LOTR and GOT (though the latter's a series).
To be honest, it totally depends on which medium reached me first? I have read books that then went onto be movies, and I didn't like the movies very much. I liked being able to give faces to the characters that were described in the book and found myself being overly critical of how these characters looked in the movie. They were nothing like I imagined, which kind of ruined the book for me. Same goes for if I see movies first, and then read the book. I tend to like whichever version reached me first.
I prefer movies because you can watch them in one sitting even if some of them can be pretty long like the LOTR movies. With books though, it could take a bit of time to read the whole story especially if it's one of those thick books with over 1,000 pages. Adaptations make it possible for those like us who hate reading large books to also enjoy the stories.
It will depend really. But for the most part I judge the quality of both mediums. I first watched the movie adaptation of Fight Club before reading the novel and although the novel was great the movie was also great and I think it's better than the novel but that's a different case after all. Same thing for the more mediocre films and books, like Twilight for example, I've read the book and I thought it was not that bad as most people accuse it of being but the movie adaptation is just bad.
I usually prefer books because they give you the whole story the author intended to tell. There's only so much of a book you can cram into a two hour period and it always shows in the final product. That said, I do like to watch the movie of a book I'm planning to read before I start reading it. This helps me imagine the characters and setting better because I already have a visual representation in my memory.
Give me the book any day of the week! I agree with your assessment. I am not a huge fan of big screen adaptations from books. A book I absolutely love is Flowers For Algernon. The film version is call Charlie, I think, and it was okay. I understand why movies omit certain parts in the book. First we are dealing with 2 different realms of entertainment. Books are always going to have more detail to add to our own visuals of the story as we read it. Movies have to be fast pace and interesting without losing the audience. Therefore a lot of descriptions will be left on the floor once a book is translated into a Hollywood script.
I've always seen movie adaptations as summarizations of socially important and easier understood concepts of a book, novel, short-story, etc. If one wishes to understand a more in-depth any story, fiction or non-fiction, its best to read the book itself. When I saw the LOTR movies, I decided to read the whole trilogy myself, and I enjoyed the whole story Tolkien wrote more after reading the books, than simply watching the movies. So if one wants a deeper understanding of a movie adapted book, best get to ordering it from some business or checking out the book at the local library.
Most of the time I prefer the books because they're more detailed and they don't miss anything but every now and then there's a movie based from a novel that's really good. But it rarely happens and for the most part most movie tie ins fall short on delivery so I prefer the books more than ever.
I agree that it's hard to cram an entire book into a two hour film, though sometimes there are scenes and characters cut that needed to be kept. Though it always depends on who is directing and writing the film. I do like to read a book before the film version comes out. It helps complete the story for me, and I feel like I know more about the characters and their actions because of what was put into the book.
Books all the way! I remember Flowers for Algernon, I read that in school for one of my Honors classes. Everyone else hated it but I thought it was great. Movies and books are so different and I think that is where the problem is. It's hard to completely convert a book into a film and vice versa. I've seen some adaptations that lose the audience halfway through, and some that move too slowly. I think it all depends on who adapts the book into a script.
Always the book. I can think of very few occasions where the movie version of the book lived up to the excellence of the book. The only one that comes to mind immediately is the LOTR series. It's not always fair to compare the two though as movies only have a couple hours of film time to tell the story of books that amount to hundreds of pages. So they're forced to cut out everything except the absolutely necessary plot points, or we'd be watching 5 hour movies.
I think nothing beats the original. The books are always more descriptive and has more finer details than the movie. Some movie adaptations often leave out some key scenes from the book in order to make way for length or budget. Also, some movie adaptations tend to change a lot from the book which in terms kind of twisting the whole story in a different way than what the book originally intended. Also the books allow your imagination to flow so you can picture the characters and scenarios in the book to your liking rather than rely on the limits of the movies and directors imagination and version of the scene.
I usually end up watching the movie over reading the book, just because a lot of the books I've read don't end up being made into movies. But, if I have read the book when a movie about it comes out, I've always preferred the book, just because they're a lot more detailed/in depth, I mean, doesn't make the movie bad, but it always ends up being a little bit of a disappointment when they didn't add a certain detail from the book into the movie.
