Saturday Book Discussion: Is the book always better?
Most popular books are made into movies, and a large percentage of movies were based on books. So comparing a book and the movie made from a book is always interesting and sometimes painful.
Usually, when we say "The book is better," we mean that the book has much more detail, more depth, more characterization, more scenes, that can't all be fit into a movie, no matter how well made and how faithful the producer was trying to be. Even when a book gets a whole miniseries treatment, there are things that will be left out, and other things that will be changed to fit the conventions of film.
Sometimes the book gets completely butchered to make whatever the producer thinks will be a "better" (more salable) movie. Sometimes the movie bears almost no resemblance to the book.
Netflix FTW
If you have been reading my book reviews for a while, you know that I try to watch any film versions of books I read. In the case of classics, sometimes this means watching a lot of film versions. ( Bleak House: two seven-hour miniseries. Pride and Prejudice: four. Wuthering Heights: Seven. Jane Eyre: Eight!)
Besides giving me something of an education in film criticism as well as literary appreciation, I find that whether the adaptation is good or bad, it may add something to my understand of (and appreciation and/or loathing of) the book. Sometimes a film catches a detail I missed in my reading of the book. Sometimes the film shows the director's biases, as certain characters are made more virtuous or more villainous. (Or reveals the director's obvious shipping preferences...)
David Yates giving the finger to J.K. Rowling.
Wait, you mean that was a book?
Why won't anyone read me? I'm only a little over a thousand pages long...
There are of course movies that are far more famous than the book. Millions more people have seen Gone With the Wind than have read the book. To the dismay of Tolkien fans, The Lord of the Rings has probably now been more watched than read. And then there are the Disney cartoons which have indelibly fixed images of Peter Pan, Alice, and Mowgli, just to name a few, into our popular mythology in a form that is sometimes startlingly different from their original literary incarnations.
Reading a book after seeing the movie (sometimes many years after seeing the movie) is a different experience than seeing the movie after reading the book. You have a lot of baggage associated with the version you are more familiar with. I did not actually read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a child, so when I did read it (and Through the Looking Glass) as an adult, it was mostly with memories of the Disney animated film and several subsequent versions in my head. I was rather disappointed at how much I remembered from the Disney version that wasn't in the book, and conversely, there was so much in the book that would have been awesome if Disney had included it. But Disney was making a cartoon for children; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a children's book, but it's chock-full of humor for adults as well. (And of course a lot of children's cartoons also included humor meant to go over the heads of the juvenile audience, but Warner Brothers was better at that than Disney.)
When the book isn't better
Sometimes, the director actually improves on the book. This is rare, but it happens, especially when the book wasn't all that great to begin with, but the director is a master.
Some examples commonly cited: 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am not a huge fan of Arthur C. Clarke, as I've found most of his novels rather dry and lacking in characterization, but I've also never been as awed as some folks are by Stanley Kubrik's trippy adaptation, so this one is a wash for me. Stanley Kubrik gets mixed reviews from authors and audiences alike; his The Shining is another movie considered a classic, but Stephen King reportedly hated it, and Anthony Burgess wasn't pleased by Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange either.
In the books, I'm an asshole, but in the movies, I am the biggest dick who ever dicked.
My nomination would be The Godfather. I liked all three movies. Yes, even the third one. (The Godfather III was obviously the weakest film in the trilogy, but I still thought it was pretty good, because it still shows that no matter how much Michael Corleone tries to delude himself that he's a good man forced to do bad things, he is and always has been a fucking evil bastard.) I also really enjoyed the novel, but it's a guilty pleasure: Mario Puzo was a hack. A hugely entertaining hack, but his books were schlock and it was a stroke of luck for him that one of his novels happened to become Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece.
James Bond has also varied wildly in quality both in the movies and in the books. Ian Fleming is another one of my guilty pleasures, and sometimes I love his writing, and sometimes not so much. Which I would also say about the movies. I mean, there have been good ones (Dr. No, the reboot of Casino Royale) and then there are the rest... ranging from the merely mediocre (Quantum of Solace) to OhMyGodWhyDidIWatchThat?! (Moonraker). One thing that is consistent is that, with the exception of the aforementioned Casino Royale, the movies have usually had only the vaguest resemblance to Fleming's novels.
So, the topic of discussion this Saturday: What are some of your most memorable movie experiences with regard to a book you read? What books do you think made excellent movies, and what movies do you think SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE? What books do you think really should be made into movies, and what books do you pray never will be? Do you think movies usually do a decent job of adapting books? Should they try?
Poll Movie adaptations
Previous Saturday Book Discussions.