The book or the movie?
By Link
@BambooPanda13 (867)
United States
August 6, 2010 3:23pm CST
I read a lot so I always end up watching movies that are based on books I read. Most of the time I am dissappoint, some of the time I'm okay with it, and rarely I am very impressed with how the book was interpreted into a movie. What is a book versus movie combo that you did or didn't like?
For example: I Am Legend. (Spoilers) This is based on a short story which in my opinion was very good. The movie was pretty good but in a different way. It was hardly like the short story it was based on though. In the book it is in the 1950's I believe and the main character is actually taunted by the vampires when they come out at night because they try to lure him out and he has built a gate around his house. He has even been studying on how to cure the disease that turned people into vampires. There is a whole part about how he makes friends with a dog and its so important because it is the only living thing he has seen in so long. Eventually he sees this woman coming toward him during the day. She looks very tanned like she has been traveling by day for a long time and he takes her in as she is very tired. He is distrustful of her for awhile but eventually that ends. Then she knocks him over the head and takes him away. She reveals that some vampires have discovered some sort of medicine so that they can be out in the sun. The tan and everything about her was faked so they could capture him. Since he was the last living human they want the world to be completely made of their new vampire race and they are going to hang him the next day at sunrise.
It is pretty profound, and so much more different from the movie. I thought the movie wasn't bad as long as you did not try to compare it to the book because it was WAY different.
So, any movies and books like that for you where the characters are depicted differently and the plot just isn't the same?
17 responses
@jamuls (530)
• Philippines
7 Aug 10
book or movie? easy... book, hands down. like you, i've been disappointed in many ways by these movies that are based on books. i actually haven't watched these kind of movies that i liked. Harry Potter was the closest... Lord of the Rings too but not god enough. i can understand how these turns out though, it would really be impossible for them dudes that are responsible for making the movie to really captivate the audience's full satisfaction. we each have our own imagination, say a novel that has a dog in it but forgot to mention what kind of dog. for me, i'd go for Labs automatically but for others, who knows. i'm not sure if i'm making myself clear. :) anyway, it is really impossible to make a 300 page book fit into a 2-3 hour movie, it is but it's would lack all the yummy details that are offered in the book.
1 person likes this
@shabarigirish (104)
• India
7 Aug 10
All 300-400 pages of a novel can't be put in to a 3 hr movie. If you want full story you should read it. To show a meaning full movies script writer has to slightly modify the main story, thats what always happen what we read may not be shown on the movie and what we see may not be in the book.
@celticeagle (159400)
• Boise, Idaho
8 Aug 10
All of them. Star Wars. My girlfriend reads all the books and is excited to see one on screen but says the books are so much more informative. the Twilight series I have heard the books are even better. There are several I saw on tv movies and theater type that are always better in book form. More explanation than in the movies.
@celticeagle (159400)
• Boise, Idaho
8 Aug 10
I started to read Twilight and lost interest. I like vamps and werewolves too. Mostly vamps for me. I like the sucky ones too. LOL I don't know who any of the characters in Twilight are. I hear them but don't keep track. I saw the first movie and didn't think much of it. Bella seemed bored and boring through out. I liked the Anne Rice vamp series and her witch one as well. I wish they had made more of them into movies.
@mabey1 (334)
• Romania
6 Aug 10
i always prefer the books. the movies the most of the time when i read the book simple just dispointed me. maybe because in my mind i already played the holemthing in a different way. and the ohther thing sometimes the actors simple just can't show the fillings that the carcter felt, and in a book you have the privilage to be in the caracters mind.
@BambooPanda13 (867)
• United States
7 Aug 10
I agree with you, in my head I always have played out the story like a movie. I live with the characters it makes the story come alive. And then when you see it on the screen sometimes it just can't live up to your imagination. But I think many times the movie creators try their best. Sometimes though they change things to make it more marketable.
@figurativeme (1089)
• Philippines
7 Aug 10
We do tend to get disappointed once you have experienced a story using two different media. Like Harry Potter. I am a movie buff myself and an avid reader. But one should enjoy the experience and try not to make comparisons. The experience from either reading or watching the same story elicits different wonders. But they are both wonders.
1 person likes this
@anncherry (406)
• Philippines
7 Aug 10
The novel-based movie I'm most disappointed with? The Time Traveler's Wife. Urgh, it was like they were cutting off more characters as much as possible, and so, a lot of the juicy, interesting, and moving scenes were cut off, too. Or maybe I was just imagining it to be "The Notebook" type of movie, but I think regardless of my expectations, it's still a waste.
Though I personally think that making such a confusing novel into a movie is quite hard. .
1 person likes this
@Theresaaiza (10487)
• Australia
7 Aug 10
There's always a slim chance that a movie can do justice to how it was written on the book. And it's rather silly for us to believe that it can. MOvies are a totally different media. It is a product of somebody else's imagination. Not to mention production costs, the way the actors acted, and finding the elements that matches to how it was written in the book.
My bestfriend is a Dan Brown fan as well as a Twilight fan but she was really impressed with how Angels and Demons, as well as the Da Vinci code was portrayed. Twilight just sucked.
That was accdg to her. I have never read any of those books she had.
@christiana81 (717)
• Romania
7 Aug 10
I prefer the book. A movie get sometime another vision....of the director in all the times.
@Memnon (2170)
•
8 Aug 10
I actually enjoyed the film 'I am Legend', but agree that a book is usually more descriptive than a film. I suppose that an audience would become bored with some films if the film maker included everything in the book.
We have the full set of extended coverage DVD edition of Lord of the Rings- 12 DVDs, which roughly takes 24+ hours to watch. And there are still tracts of the story uncovered. Imagine running that at the cinema!
@Memnon (2170)
•
8 Aug 10
I actually enjoyed the film 'I am Legend', but agree that a book is usually more descriptive than a film. I suppose that an audience would become bored with some films if the film maker included everything in the book.
We have the full set of extended coverage DVD edition of Lord of the Rings- 12 DVDs, which roughly takes 24+ hours to watch. And there are still tracts of the story uncovered. Imagine running that at the cinema!
@ReViewMeMedia (3785)
• United States
7 Aug 10
I think that the books are always better than the movie, because they're far more detailed and the characters are always better in the books than they are in the movies, and you use your imagination and the movies always take out something you wanted to see from the book.
@ledifdynasty1994 (184)
• Saudi Arabia
7 Aug 10
I prefer movies as much as the director give every detail of the book.Because in movies you can really see in action and you are the one if all the details has seen in the movies.And I think movies is much cheaper than the books.
@GloomySky (35)
• Bulgaria
6 Aug 10
I think it's only natural that books are always ways better than the movies based on them. The movies are made only for the profit and it's so sad. I feel like the people doing the movies are joking with us, the readers.
I've been disappointed so many times that I intentionally try not to watch the movies.
And the opposite is true too. There is no good book based on a movie.
@BambooPanda13 (867)
• United States
7 Aug 10
You make a really good point! Thank you for your response.
@vinaysudhir (113)
• India
6 Aug 10
A book or a movie is not, in and of itself, bad. But the idea that some how a movie is always better robs the child of his or her opportunity to help create the world of the story.
One suggestion is to encourage the child to read a book first and then watch the movie. When it comes time to see the movie,watch it on video rather than go to a theater.Creativity is always worth building in children because creativity is what makes our world a more interesting place.
@lulu1220 (1006)
• United States
6 Aug 10
I have read quite a few of the books written by Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend). They are very different from the movies. Sometimes his books are better and sometimes the movies are better.
I think since he wrote some of these books a long time ago that the movies are going to be somewhat different.
@grvdubey11 (1879)
• India
6 Aug 10
I think the book looks much better than movie in most of the cases , because the movie based on book is director's representation and imagination of the book, while every reader of book makes his own imagination and version in his or her mind, which normally does not matches with thinking of movie maker and his representation.I think that's why book looks way better than movie based on the book.
