Why We REALLY Need to Stop Comparing Movies to Their Book Counterparts

I love books and I love movies. I am well aware that there are literally no books out there that can be read in 2 hours unlike movie counterparts. Books based on movies has been a staple of the industry for decades and I am very adamantly for the continuing practice of turning good books into good movies. My rant today is not directed at the movie industry primarily, but in only how we talk about books and movies. We as consumers have to face the facts of life that the movie will never ever, ever live up to the book, and that might not be a bad thing. To see this more clearly, this post will look at a few classic book to movie situations and where they went right and where they faltered. From this we will draw a few conclusions as to why you really need to separate books and movies. Also for this post I will speak only on the works that I have both read and seen in their entirety.

I will begin with The Princess Bride. My reasoning for starting here is to attack the poster child for "good" book to movie transitions and show that even this one should be reconsidered. Let me first say that The Princess Bride is one of the five best comedy movies ever and is in a class basically all its own in terms of fan-favorite classic status. Sadly the book does not have this reputation.

It should be noted that both the screenplay and the book The Princess Bride were written by William Goldman (even though he credits the book to the fictional S. Morgenstern). This means that the movie writer knew the source material pretty well since it initially came from his own brain. It follows then that absolutely all of the greatness of the movie can be found in the book, but sadly the converse is not true. The movie leaves out many things from the book most notably the backstory of Florin and Guilder, the amazing stories of Fezzik and Inigo and the Zoo of Death. I promise you those three attributes make the book well worth your time, not even to mention my favorite thing about the book which is simply the tongue-in-cheek style of Goldman. I promise you the book takes nothing away from the greatness of the movie but only gives you many more reasons to love it.

In all the conversations I've had with people about the differences between books and movies, The Princess Bride always comes up as a primary example usually from people who haven't read the book. So go read the book AND love the movie because they compliment each other perfectly.

The next example...not so much. Here I am speaking of Hunger Games (the first one not the others under the Hunger Games brand because the studio wanted to be "hip"). I loved Hunger Games as a book and absolutely, vehemently despised the movie. I have a lot of reasons for this loathing but the strongest reason is the movie's tone. In my years of watching and reading I have noticed that the tone of a book is one of the hardest things to communicate on the screen, yet it is also one of the absolute most important to making a movie "feel right". This was my primary problem with Hunger Games movie. In the book Collins communicated a clear, tangible sense of survival. Even though the actual games took only half the book, that half felt like a tense life and death struggle for Katniss. She didn't just "find" shelter or water super easily like in the movie, but had to struggle for everything. When I read the book, I felt Katniss was in the greatest danger of simply starving or freezing to death, but in the movie her only danger was the other tributes. Also the movie had such a total disregard for small details like the color of the bag at the feast that I have no respect for the integrity of the movie.

In summation I have the following thoughts and tips for helping us all better appreciate movies and books in the future.

1. As often as possible if you really care about a movie coming out, read the book first. 99 times out of 100 the book will be more enjoyable than the movie.

2. Pay attention to how involved the author is in the process and how much they care about the project. Good examples here are J.K Rowling and John Green (in addition to the aforementioned Goldman) who were and are very involved in the process of making their books into movies. After The Fault In Our Stars came out I saw an article listing the two dozens things they didn't get exactly right from the book and they were all too minor for mention. If the author cares to make a good movie and is involved enough to make that happen, it's usually a good movie. An example on the other side of the spectrum would be the infamous Percy Jackson movies. I speak of these movies almost like they speak of Voldemort and may refer to them from time to time as "The movies that will not be named". I'll probably rant about them some day when I'm really upset.

3. Realize that things like tone simply can't be communicated across platforms very well, but the movies might still be okay. Also don't judge non-book readers too harshly because there are a lot of books out there worth reading. However if they speak like they HAVE read the book, put them in their place.

Movies are awesome and books are awesome, but most of my favorite movies would make terrible books and my favorite books would make terrible movies. They are really REALLY different disciplines with entirely different codes that should be judged gently. That said if they pretend like they did a good job (Hunger Games) or make a total mockery of the source material (The Movies that will not be named), they need to be criticized accordingly. But when they totally nail it like The Fault in Our Stars, they need to be praised accordingly.