I'm sure we've all heard this before.
We go and see a movie
with a friend, or two, or more -- the number doesn't really matter. What
does, is that after the credits roll and you walk out to the car,
someone in your party will pipe up and say "I liked it..." or "It was
ok..." or something along those lines, and then finish off their
insightful comment with "...but it wasn't as good as the book."
Granted,
not all movies are based on books, but with Hollywood's seeming
shortage of creativity these days, more often than not, movies are based
on something. So which version was better?
First, a brief history lesson. Let's go back through the past few Best Picture winners of the Academy Awards.
~The Departed, based on a Chinese movie, which was original
~Million Dollar Baby, based on a short-writing
~Lord of The Rings, based on the Tolkien books
~Chicago, based on the play, which was based on another play, which was based on a book
~A Beautiful Mind, based on a biography
I
could go on and on, but (with the exception of The Departed), it seems
as though Best Picture winners -- that is, supposedly, the best that
Hollywood can do -- are based on books. So are these examples of film at
its finest not as good as the pieces of paper they were originally
written on? I doubt it.
Lets take Lord of the Rings as an example. Here it is as a book:
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Wow,
feel the excitement. It really makes me want to cook up some popcorn
and relax while getting my buttery fingers all over the pages. Now here
is the Lord of the Rings as a movie:
Scene from The Two Towers
This
isn't to say that the Lord of the Rings isn't a good book. They're
great...at least what I read of them. But when it comes down to it,
would I rather read the book or see the movie? Not a hard choice.
So
why do people always insist that the book is better than the movie?
Well, since I used to be one of those types, I can think of a few
reasons.
The first is that the person is living like its 1900.
They may be the type who tends to think TV is responsible for ruining
our youth, since its supposedly been proven to rot one's brain. Because
there's no such thing as smart TV. Movies can't make you think. Books
own a monopoly in that. Ok, sure.
The second theory is a matter
of time. If you wanted to watch all 3 Lord of the Rings, it'll set you
back a good 9 hours (closer to 12 if you watch the extended cuts). Thats
quite a bit of time, but nowhere near as long as it will take you to
read all those pages. For other movies, the difference is even greater. A
400 page book which will take the average person days to read (if they
put in an hour or two a day) will take 90 minutes on a screen. So if a
person happened to put in all that time reading the book, of course they
are going to justify that it was worth their time. They somehow got
more out of the story, by committing a month to reading it, than their
friend did who saw it recapped in under two hours.
When I read
Jurassic Park in the summer of 1993, it took me well over a week. Mind
you, I read this on a road trip, where I often sat in a car for
countless hours every day. So when I saw the movie later that summer, I
wanted to feel like all the time spent reading the book meant something.
Anyone could see the movie, but I actually read the book, AND it was better! Yeah, sure.
This
isn't to say that all books fail in comparison to their movie
counterparts. Some actually are better. It's just that most aren't.
Unless you are on drugs and/or have an active imagination, why strain
yourself to try and visualize the story in your head if you can just see
it on a screen in front of you. Lets face it, books (though not all of
them) were written for entertainment. You read them to be entertained.
At least I did, as a kid. But the problem is, at some point the TV was
invented, and has replaced the book as the preferred form of
storytelling entertainment. There is nothing wrong with that, that's
just the way it is. If I want to be entertained, I'll always pick a two
hour movie over putting two hours into reading a book, only to find that
I still have 500 pages to go.
There will always be a use for
books. If you want to read a book, read Plato. Read Stephen Hawking.
Just read something that will make you smarter. If you read anything
else, you're just wasting your time. If you want to argue with me that
David Copperfield, or some other classic piece of literature, was better
than its screen adaptation, then fine, though I doubt even if it was
slightly better that that somehow justifies the added time. Just don't
go and watch Bridget Jones' Diary, only to tell me the book was better.
Because now you're wasting my time.
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