Why the Book Is Always Better
- Thread starter Elizabeth Grunewald
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Very nice article! 
A lot of this is well said, and I think the main reason is because, as the article pointed out, it takes away the epic scale. No matter how awesome it may be on film, it will never even COMPARE to your imagination. Your imagination can do things that were never even conceivable with the technology currently available, so no matter what you do, if you've read the book the film adaption will never quite live up to it. Sure, some might come close; but they'll never live up to the wonders of the imagination.
A lot of this is well said, and I think the main reason is because, as the article pointed out, it takes away the epic scale. No matter how awesome it may be on film, it will never even COMPARE to your imagination. Your imagination can do things that were never even conceivable with the technology currently available, so no matter what you do, if you've read the book the film adaption will never quite live up to it. Sure, some might come close; but they'll never live up to the wonders of the imagination.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the fault for a bad adaptation falls with the screenwriter, or the executives who hired a bad screenwriter. "Wrote a movie that made a lot of money for us" does NOT translate to "understands the technical complications in adapting long-form narrative to film".
There's writing as an art, and writing as a technical craft, and while you can make a career out of either one on its own, you need a hell of a lot of both in order to adapt a story from one medium to another.
There's writing as an art, and writing as a technical craft, and while you can make a career out of either one on its own, you need a hell of a lot of both in order to adapt a story from one medium to another.
Another good example of a movie that holds true to the book is Michael Chriton's Andromeda Strain. No, not that stupid miniseries they put out a few years back, but the original 1970's feature film. Every small subtlety is captured from the original text, in terms of plot and imagery. The only major change is the gender of one of the character (from male to female), which IMHO actually improves the story.
They´re different mediums. Movie or tv adaptations should not be slaves to their source material...it makes them boring for whomever read them. They should however convey the spirit of the book and capture what made the book great.
Rather than waste a large amount of berated breath on this all too often discussed topic all I'll say is rather obviously (though a point some people tend to forget) is that books and films are different mediums; we can compare the two, we can debate the merits and pitfalls of one over the other and we most certainly can prefer one over the other whether generally or in particular cases, but, trying to objectively judge and jury them based on their quality is futile, they're just too different and neither can be said to be better than the other just as no one culture or race or religion can be said to be better than the other. It's all relative and there is no universal one absolute bar of quality.
The problem with adaptations from any medium to another is that different media have different strengths, weaknesses, and just place features in how a narrative is related.
The written word is better at displaying internal conflict. Reading a book can be like reading someone's private diary or journal where they convey their inner conflicts to the page, taking us through the labyrinth of their thought processes.
Motion pictures are better at displaying external conflict, being a visual medium. It can show a wider scope conflict such as people trying to survive a tidal wave or a war zone.
This is not to say that either medium can not do the other forms of conflict. It's just that they cannot do them in the same manner to the same degree of depth.
With the written word it is acceptable to be able to fart around for several pages on some seemingly irrelevant detail which can build up the internal conflict with nuance. Motion pictures do not have that luxury. Even on a television series where they could have hours, they still need to be brief and most internal conflict is displayed by the actor's external actions and expression. (they could use voice over narration, but this is cheating and usually not as effective) As such, much of the nuance is lost.
Similarly, the written word can show external conflict, but this can take pages of description that may take several minutes to read while motion pictures can show it in a few seconds. The immediacy is lost.
This does not mean that one medium is better than another. Just different. When adapting from one to another, it is best to keep in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Audiences will need to keep in mind that an adaptation will need to change, omit, and add things because of this. This can be a problem for many fans as often some small, largely irrelevant part is what resonated with a fan the most. The adapters may have made the correct choice to leave out this part, but the fan is still disappointed because they feel it was the best part of the original media version. Often, though, they are dead wrong about that as other fans felt deeper resonance with other parts. Some also left out. Some altered. In any case, such judgments are neutral.
That and the book is not always better than the movie. Jaws is an oft-cited example. The book is alright, but it farts around with a lot of things that seem to have been made to be jettisoned, such as Hooper's affair with Brody's wife or Mayor Vaughn's mob connections. The film removed much of this and polished the remaining material into a narrative of greater depth and nuance than the book.
The written word is better at displaying internal conflict. Reading a book can be like reading someone's private diary or journal where they convey their inner conflicts to the page, taking us through the labyrinth of their thought processes.
Motion pictures are better at displaying external conflict, being a visual medium. It can show a wider scope conflict such as people trying to survive a tidal wave or a war zone.
This is not to say that either medium can not do the other forms of conflict. It's just that they cannot do them in the same manner to the same degree of depth.
With the written word it is acceptable to be able to fart around for several pages on some seemingly irrelevant detail which can build up the internal conflict with nuance. Motion pictures do not have that luxury. Even on a television series where they could have hours, they still need to be brief and most internal conflict is displayed by the actor's external actions and expression. (they could use voice over narration, but this is cheating and usually not as effective) As such, much of the nuance is lost.
Similarly, the written word can show external conflict, but this can take pages of description that may take several minutes to read while motion pictures can show it in a few seconds. The immediacy is lost.
This does not mean that one medium is better than another. Just different. When adapting from one to another, it is best to keep in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Audiences will need to keep in mind that an adaptation will need to change, omit, and add things because of this. This can be a problem for many fans as often some small, largely irrelevant part is what resonated with a fan the most. The adapters may have made the correct choice to leave out this part, but the fan is still disappointed because they feel it was the best part of the original media version. Often, though, they are dead wrong about that as other fans felt deeper resonance with other parts. Some also left out. Some altered. In any case, such judgments are neutral.
That and the book is not always better than the movie. Jaws is an oft-cited example. The book is alright, but it farts around with a lot of things that seem to have been made to be jettisoned, such as Hooper's affair with Brody's wife or Mayor Vaughn's mob connections. The film removed much of this and polished the remaining material into a narrative of greater depth and nuance than the book.
On of the best changes was the line "A guy who came to Fight Club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood." The book used the term "white bread" instead of cookie dough. In the DVD commentary, Palahnuik asked the scriptwriter John Uhls is he changed it because it sounded racist. Uhls said, no he just thought it was funnier.Falseprophet said:
It isn't always true that books are better than the films they inspire. Blade Runner blows the SHIT out Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?... and I'm a huge Philip K. Dick fan!
Well, then it must suck to be you, because Scott Rudin and the Coen Brothers are making that film, and Michael Chabon was psyched about it, as am I (also having read the book).Elizabeth Grunewald said:
The trick with adaptation, in my opinion, is not to be bound to the book. Novels are incredibly complex works, which require a lot of careful pruning for transition, and even then, you're pretty solidly guaranteed to cut some key elements. You have two real choices: attempt to faithfully adapt while cutting as much as you can in order to keep the book down to film length and risk losing important details, or use the book merely as a roadmap, but ignore parts that will produce an overly complex film.
It's arguably better for film makers to ignore novels altogether. I've yet to hear a single person say that Brokeback Mountain was a better short story than it was a film. Short stories allow film makers enough space to alter plot and character to their desire.
I would also say, though, that if you're going to a film in order to have choice about the story, than you're in the wrong medium of story telling. Film and Comics have the ability to restrict imagination, forcing viewers/readers into a uniform viewpoint of the action, creating a shared experience. If you'd like choice in your story telling, read a book or play a videogame.
So, I've never thought it terribly constructive to compare the film to the book, except to note what parts of the book were cut that would have been better in the film than the parts that weren't. The book is not the film. The book is the film's source material, in the same way Shakespeare's plays are based on sources, but have altered a lot of the plot and characters. This is the key to adaptation, really: the source-text is not sacrosanct. To treat it otherwise is a self defeating process.
Ultimately, I'm excited about the Coen Brothers' adaptation for Yiddish Policemen. Their take on No Country For Old Men was great, specifically, in my opinion, because they did not allow Cormac McCarthy's book to overwhelm their knowledge of how film should be structured. In fact, for No Country, I would argue that you have a case where the book isn't better than the film. Not that the film is better than the book, but that they're incredibly equal works of art.
Maybe so.. but the fact that it's been done makes me think there is a trick to surpassing its roots, what did they do no other film is managing?VulakAerr said:This was exactly what I thought when I saw this topic.Baneat said:
Yeah, almost every other instance though.
Well, I would say that's it's really mostly the GOOD books whose films just aren't as good (I say mostly here because I'm sure there are exceptions to this). There are a huge number of mediocre or downright bad books that have worked quite well as movies. Heck, I'm not crazy about some of the movies they've chosen to make from books, but I don't think the failure rate is as high as we think it is.
I personally was too bored to get very far into LOTR yet I enjoyed the films. The Godfather, Fight Club, Psycho, Shawshank Redemption, Gone With the Wind, Grapes of Wrath, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and many others are films which many would agree surpassed the original writing that inspired them.
I get the impression that if we actually knew how many of our films are adapted from other sources we might be surprised at how many of them are better for it.
I personally was too bored to get very far into LOTR yet I enjoyed the films. The Godfather, Fight Club, Psycho, Shawshank Redemption, Gone With the Wind, Grapes of Wrath, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and many others are films which many would agree surpassed the original writing that inspired them.
I get the impression that if we actually knew how many of our films are adapted from other sources we might be surprised at how many of them are better for it.
Whichever came first is always better. If a movie becomes a game, the movie was better. If a game becomes a movie, the game was better. If a book becomes anything, the book was better. If a song gets translated to another language, it was better in the first language. There are two pretty big reasons for this:
First, any artistic work is an idea long before it's made into something. You take your perfect idea, and chip away at it until it fits into a new medium. When you're making a "new version" of something, it doesn't start as an idea, it starts as something with parts already sacrificed to fit into it's medium, and more will get sacrificed to fit into the new medium.
For example, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The book was good because it had descriptions like "he inched his way up the corridor as though he'd rather be yarding his way down it". You can't actually put that into a movie, the format doesn't allow it.
Second, and a bit more obviously, if we're talking about a good work of art, it needed a good artist to make it, right? A good artist will probably be making his own work of art, not almost mechanically refitting someone else's vision to fit a new scenario.
First, any artistic work is an idea long before it's made into something. You take your perfect idea, and chip away at it until it fits into a new medium. When you're making a "new version" of something, it doesn't start as an idea, it starts as something with parts already sacrificed to fit into it's medium, and more will get sacrificed to fit into the new medium.
For example, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The book was good because it had descriptions like "he inched his way up the corridor as though he'd rather be yarding his way down it". You can't actually put that into a movie, the format doesn't allow it.
Second, and a bit more obviously, if we're talking about a good work of art, it needed a good artist to make it, right? A good artist will probably be making his own work of art, not almost mechanically refitting someone else's vision to fit a new scenario.
But on the other hand if you watch the film first you can still enjoy it and then enjoy the book even more rather than enjoying the read and then finding the film to be a massive disappointment. It depends how much the visual stuff in the film interferes with your imagination. For example when I read I Am Legend after the film it was never once Will Smith who I imagined in the role. When I read American Psycho however Christian Bale fit the bill perfectly in terms of appearance so that definitely influenced my imagination.Simulated Eon said:
Really? Don't suppose you could find out where he said that for me could you? I'd love to read what he said because I thought the book was better personally. It's a close run and the film is fantastic but I just prefered the way Chuck played the ending in the novel. Felt a little more open to me.cabalistics said:
They cast Morgan Freeman to a role in which voice-over played a large part. I'd buy into that in pretty much any film.Baneat said:Maybe so.. but the fact that it's been done makes me think there is a trick to surpassing its roots, what did they do no other film is managing?VulakAerr said:This was exactly what I thought when I saw this topic.Baneat said:
Yeah, almost every other instance though.
It's true 98% of the time, be it novel or comic. But I've read the book versions of Labyrinth, The Bad Seed, & Mary Reilly, & they pale compared to the movies.
The Bad Seed was painful to read, but the ending was at least better that the movie.
Gone with the Wind was an excelent movie addaption; of course it was an incredibly long movie & it followed the book faithfully.
The Wizard of Oz is so-so. In the book, Dorothy is a bossy blonde ***** who insists she's never wrong & anyone who disagrees with her is stupid, the Scarecrow turns into a moron who thinks he's a genious, the lion is a bully with low self esteem, & the tin man is a flamboyant & violent narcisist who really really likes Scarecrow a lot. While the movie was an unfaithful addaption, at least it made the characters likable.
I gotta say that Disney is probably known by more people than me for it's dreadful sequels, but of all the movies that actually DESERVED sequals, they never bothered making Alice Through the Looking Glass, probably because they botched it by combining a few parts of the two books into one film. But Alice in Wonderland is in the Public Domain (so is Oz, & they never made an animated movie of that), so it's not like they need anyone's permission.
The Bad Seed was painful to read, but the ending was at least better that the movie.
Gone with the Wind was an excelent movie addaption; of course it was an incredibly long movie & it followed the book faithfully.
The Wizard of Oz is so-so. In the book, Dorothy is a bossy blonde ***** who insists she's never wrong & anyone who disagrees with her is stupid, the Scarecrow turns into a moron who thinks he's a genious, the lion is a bully with low self esteem, & the tin man is a flamboyant & violent narcisist who really really likes Scarecrow a lot. While the movie was an unfaithful addaption, at least it made the characters likable.
I gotta say that Disney is probably known by more people than me for it's dreadful sequels, but of all the movies that actually DESERVED sequals, they never bothered making Alice Through the Looking Glass, probably because they botched it by combining a few parts of the two books into one film. But Alice in Wonderland is in the Public Domain (so is Oz, & they never made an animated movie of that), so it's not like they need anyone's permission.