Books and Movies

The text I am analyzing supports the position of books nearly always being better than their movie counterparts, and the link is provided here: http://www.wordandfilm.com/2011/06/why-books-are-almost-always-better-than-movies-plus-a-giveaway/

In a world that is often run by who has the most money, it comes as no surprise that most celebrated books are turned into movies. Often times, it is simply good business to turn a book with a significant fan base onto the big screen because it translates into sales. However, this does not mean that the transition from book to movie is always smooth. In my experience, books are nearly always better than their movie counterparts, and the article I am reviewing explains a key points on why that is. First off, as it states, a movie must condense a book (usually meant to be read in days, if not weeks) into a few hours. This means that most of the books intricate details are cut out, which in my view help make the book so great in the first place, so that hurts the movie’s quality. In addition to that, it must cut out all long speeches, which are often an essential part of a book to understand a character. In Harry Potter, for example, most of Dumbledore’s epic speeches are cut of the movie and undercut his value as a character.

            However, a movie interpretation does have a few advantages over its book counterpart. One of those advantages is to be able to visually represent the book, in a way that a book never could. In a movie, you actually get to see the book play out in front of you, rather than simply imagine it in your head, and that is a powerful tool. Even with that being true, in my opinion most movie adaptations simply don’t do a good enough job of living up to the expectations of the fans. In fact, most of the movie adaptations of books I have seen disappoint when the movie comes out because it didn’t live up to the scene in my head. I find that this is a common occurrence coming out of the theater, where people will say, “That was NOT how I imagined it happening.” In essence, that ability to visualize a book on the big screen can become a disadvantage as well if it doesn’t live up to expectations.

            I believe that a fan of a book is more likely to watch a movie than a fan of a movie is likely to read the book, however I have seen it happen both ways. The influence of either book or movie (whether it is extremely popular and gets a lot of advertising or plays to little fanfare) can have an effect on the crossover. It does say something about society that most people will refuse to read a book even after watching a movie that they enjoyed. This is because people in our society enjoy instant gratification, and seeing as most books take longer than a few hours to complete, they won’t read them. The reason most people say is that they don’t have time to devote to reading a book, but I don’t buy it. If something is important to you, you will find the time to do it. However, our society simply doesn’t value long-term gratification as a whole. Personally, I love reading books (movie adaptations or not) and will continue to do so because I believe they are more enriching as a whole. Movies can be great as well, but I believe they offer different types of gratification. Have you ever seen a movie and then read the book?