Post #5 - Dinosaurs!

Have you ever seen Jurassic Park? I’m sure most of you have. Now have you read the book? I’m sure most of you haven’t. It’s not so much that they’re different, just that the movie could not incorporate the entire book, as is so with almost all book-to-movie adaptations.

Why do books become movies? I think they answer to that question is pretty easy. It’s to make money. Ok, maybe not always, maybe sometimes because a director loved a book so much he wanted to visualize it for everyone. But generally, after a book has gained phenomenal publicity, a director sees his chance to make something great for good money. That sounds very negative, but I don’t mean it in a bad way, nor am I stereotyping all directors into one category. What do you guys think?

Movies, in general, have the ability to create a physical manifestation of what we created in our imaginations when reading the book. Frankly, even if how you imagined something to be isn’t portrayed that way on screen, it can still make you feel different about that book/movie. A book, however, does something much more interesting. A book gives the details, a book allows for your mind to create the scenes any way you want. Obviously, you can tell I’m partial to books. But I always want to see a movie adaptation of pretty much anything I read, just because I think it’d be good no matter what. If I enjoyed the story of the book, I’ll enjoy it as a movie, even if not as much.

As mentioned at the beginning, the movie vs. book I want to bring up is Jurassic Park. More specifically, I want to take a look at this interview/article written by Steve Biodrowski in 1993 about Michael Crichton’s involvement with the production/screenplay of the movie adaption.

Click HERE to see the review! 

This specific circumstance set itself apart from other book/movie productions. The author was involved in the writing of the screenplay, but not because he wanted to “protect his work”. He didn’t even want to help with the screenplay. With previous experience with screenplays, he knew that, regardless of what he could do, only 10-20% of the book could be incorporated into a movie production. He only helped because Steven Spielberg needed the screenplay written fast. Crichton commented that the hardest part of this process was that he had already written multiple drafts for the book (including when he originally wanted it to be a screenplay), and rewriting a new one was very difficult. Personally, I loved the book, but I also loved the movie. After reading this review, I can understand more why certain parts of the book were left out. If any of you have read the book and seen the movie, what are your opinions?

Just because a movie adaptation of a book exists, I do not think that lessens the original value of a book. I think that can definitely popularize a book very easily, but that doesn’t mean the book isn’t as awesome as it was before the movie (assuming you read it before). If anything, movie adaptations make the book slightly more interesting, and if nothing else, show you one way of seeing the book.