Why the Book Is Always Better

[cabalistics]

The quote was from the booklet that came with the DVD when it was first released. I can't remember the exact quote but he said it was a much better ending than the book which I have read I thought the end was too ambiguous and sudden.

With Fight Club even the author has said the movie is better than the book

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.

 

[dogenzakaminion]

Interesting article, but I think that movie can be better than the book. I think it's like when you hear a song for the first time, the live version usually isn't as good, but If you hear the live version first, the studio version isn't as good. Whichever one you saw/read first will always be the favorite because it's the one that your mind has created the emotional link to. I will admit that the books usually are better though.

 

[Angnor]

With Fight Club even the author has said the movie is better than the book

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.

What are your feelings about the movie version of Fight Club?

The first time I saw dailies of the movie was when I went down to the film's location, and David Fincher would drag me off the set to his trailer to show me dailies. He would be watching me for my reaction, and I had little or no idea where these scenes fit together. Here were these wonderful reaction shots and things like that which seemed so random, beautifully composed, attractive and funny in their own way, but I had no idea how they went together. I felt so self-conscious with David watching me. Now that I see the movie, especially when I sat down with Jim Uhls and record a commentary track for the DVD, I was sort of embarrassed of the book, because the movie had streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective and made connections that I had never thought to make. There is a line about "fathers setting up franchises with other families," and I never thought about connecting that with the fact that Fight Club was being franchised and the movie made that connection. I was just beating myself in the head for not having made that connection myself.

From: http://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/chuck_palahniuk.html

 

[TiefBlau]

Mmmmmmmm films are a short time sensitive medium that has to share screen time with flashing bright explosions to keep the dimer half of the audience distracted from any semblance of depth,wit or story(kinda like modern games). What more do you need to know?

The irony, of course, is that you talk about it with more brevity and callous disregard for elaboration than the typical movie. Way to shine your intellectual superiority. You sure showed them.
[hr]640[/hr]
To capture the essence of a story, the details are not necessary. Hell, modeling an entire movie to be just like the book is a fruitless effort that will satisfy no one, and contrary to what the smug purveyors of True Art? will assert, vice-versa applies. No, to truly make a successful adaptation, you need only capture the essence of the film. The rest is all interpretation. But enough big words; let's give an example.

The Dark Knight is arguably one of the better films in adaptation history, and I have a feeling that its impact will be more lasting than Iron Man or 1978 Superman starring Christopher Reeves. Why? Because it doesn't try to be "faithful" to the original story. Instead, it plays with the idea and tries to create something new, keeping only the basic essence of the story. The most famous example of this would be the Joker. The basic idea is that the Joker is an insane guy with a clown face. But as scary as he is, a bright, purple-suited, green-haired swing dancer like him looks absolutely ridiculous in a film as postmodern as The Dark Knight and an audience as jaded as we. So instead, they took the concept and ran with it. He's dirtier, and less composed. His freakish smile is not a smile at all, but horrible scars, and his delighted cackling is replaced with Heath Ledger's sardonic sarcasm. It was an adaptation not for a medium, but for an audience.

That's what an adaptation is supposed to be.

 

[Anacortian]

I would posit that any work of art loses something in translation. Shakira sounds better in Spanish. Augustine and Aquinas read better in Latin. The Wizard of Oz is better as a book than a movie or stage production. In whichever medium that work was crafted, there you will find it at its best.

This works in the perverse reverse. A film-to-book translation has produced some awful tripe. While Latin-to-English can be done well enough, I can only imagine what English-to-Latin would be like, and my imagination brings forth a nightmare.

I feel confident in saying that something is always lost in translation in language, medium, or even when somebody retells a story he heard elsewhere.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I don't think the book is always better, but I think that there are a whole bunch of screenwriters and producers behind them who don't understand that some novels cannot be successfully adapted to film simply by replicating the plot and character development. In some cases, the spirit of the work runs far deeper in the sub-narrative. Case in point: the On the Road movie is going to struggle to really do any justice to Jack Kerouac, because his writing actually created a whole bunch of mimetic effects which gave the novel its charm. So unless they do the entire movie with a voiceover, it's just going to be a story about a neurotic writer following a conman across America, and will give more ammunition to the crowd who refuse to give the Beat Generation any credit for the incredible scope of literary vision they fostered.

 

[Korenith]

With Fight Club even the author has said the movie is better than the book

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.

What are your feelings about the movie version of Fight Club?

The first time I saw dailies of the movie was when I went down to the film's location, and David Fincher would drag me off the set to his trailer to show me dailies. He would be watching me for my reaction, and I had little or no idea where these scenes fit together. Here were these wonderful reaction shots and things like that which seemed so random, beautifully composed, attractive and funny in their own way, but I had no idea how they went together. I felt so self-conscious with David watching me. Now that I see the movie, especially when I sat down with Jim Uhls and record a commentary track for the DVD, I was sort of embarrassed of the book, because the movie had streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective and made connections that I had never thought to make. There is a line about "fathers setting up franchises with other families," and I never thought about connecting that with the fact that Fight Club was being franchised and the movie made that connection. I was just beating myself in the head for not having made that connection myself.

From: http://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/chuck_palahniuk.html

Oh wow. Interesting take. I guess he does kind of have a point. Thanks for showing me this.

 

[Korenith]

The quote was from the booklet that came with the DVD when it was first released. I can't remember the exact quote but he said it was a much better ending than the book which I have read I thought the end was too ambiguous and sudden.

With Fight Club even the author has said the movie is better than the book

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.

See I liked the ambiguous ending simply because it left the narrator with a choice at the end between the two alternate lives he could lead. I also felt more connected to the narrator than I did to him in the film but I can definitely see where you are coming from.

 

[Clunks]

Both mediums are different, demand different things from an audience and are enoyed in different ways. This article doesn't really seem to be about whether original books are better than their movie counterparts, though. It seems to be more about books being a better artform than movies, period. Which is fine - it's an opinion, well enough supported here - but it doesn't take into account that each book vs movie argument is entirely individual. It's an article that doesn't allow, for example, cases in which the book had severe flaws that the movie could reject. American Psycho, Harry Potter 7a*, Battle Royale, Audition, Carrie (and a few other Stephen King books besides)...all examples of flawed writing that was fixed in the movie adaptations. And none of those are even bad books.

Not that I haven't encountered a few examples of books that lose too much in translation to the big screen. Let the Right One In, for example, has been adapted into two separate movies, both very good pieces of work in their own right (the Swedish one being the better of the two), but neither able to even get close to the original.

ps I feel bad about including Ryu Murakami's Audition in that little list. There's only one bit of writing in the whole book that doesn't work, but it REALLY doesn't work.

* I know it's all personal opinion and whatnot, but you do lose a certain amount of credibility for specifying the first Harry Potter as the better adaptation. It's the weakest movie of the whole bunch.

 

[the Dept of Science]

Movies can portray action a lot better than books can. A car chase or a fight just isn't as exciting in a book as it is on screen. A description of an explosion cannot compare to the visuals of an explosion.

Books will always, always have the upper hand when it comes to this debate. Because a book can be as long as it damn well wants to and allows the person to create their own scenes with the characters.

On the other hand, I find that there are certain books I didn't enjoy because I found them too long were much more enjoyable when adapted for film.
I've tried to read LotR a few times but have never managed to make it through even the first one. Bilbo Baggin's birthday for example I found a terrible bore to read, whereas in the movie its cut down to a fairly enjoyable 5 minutes.

 

[Neotericity]

I find that one of the only instances that the movie is far superior than the book is the tale Forest Gump, the book is ridiculous.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Mmmmmmmm films are a short time sensitive medium that has to share screen time with flashing bright explosions to keep the dimer half of the audience distracted from any semblance of depth,wit or story(kinda like modern games). What more do you need to know?

The irony, of course, is that you talk about it with more brevity and callous disregard for elaboration than the typical movie. Way to shine your intellectual superiority. You sure showed them.
[hr]640[/hr]
To capture the essence of a story, the details are not necessary. Hell, modeling an entire movie to be just like the book is a fruitless effort that will satisfy no one, and contrary to what the smug purveyors of True Art? will assert, vice-versa applies. No, to truly make a successful adaptation, you need only capture the essence of the film. The rest is all interpretation. But enough big words; let's give an example.

The Dark Knight is arguably one of the better films in adaptation history, and I have a feeling that its impact will be more lasting than Iron Man or 1978 Superman starring Christopher Reeves. Why? Because it doesn't try to be "faithful" to the original story. Instead, it plays with the idea and tries to create something new, keeping only the basic essence of the story. The most famous example of this would be the Joker. The basic idea is that the Joker is an insane guy with a clown face. But as scary as he is, a bright, purple-suited, green-haired swing dancer like him looks absolutely ridiculous in a film as postmodern as The Dark Knight and an audience as jaded as we. So instead, they took the concept and ran with it. He's dirtier, and less composed. His freakish smile is not a smile at all, but horrible scars, and his delighted cackling is replaced with Heath Ledger's sardonic sarcasm. It was an adaptation not for a medium, but for an audience.

That's what an adaptation is supposed to be.

*shakes head* An adaptation seeks to simplify and stream line story and events, to not only make it more palatable to the drool masses but be enjoyed by them, which means more crap it brought out from the gutter or someones hidden drug stash to write up nonsensical filler that dose not need to be in the adaptation regardless be it themes,dailog or changing the focus of the film to the human cast rather than focusing on oh I dunno the stars of the film....

/Transformers rant

The Dark knight was good but it is more the exception than the rule of adaptation, one can not remove or change 40-70% of the themes and fiction just to adapt it, if you do you will fail more often than not. Then again a bad film that sells well is not a failing.... its the status quo....

 

[Mr0llivand3r]

the book isn't BETTER every time.

the movie is simply DIFFERENT every time.


I'm a huge LotR fan and I have to admit while the books are absolutely marvelous and rich and vibrant, I'd prefer to watch the movies.

I always prefer to watch the movie over the book. The movie takes 2 hours, reading the book takes a significantly more amount of time. The films also give you a physical representation of the images. Sometimes you may read the books and be confused as to how certain people, places, things, ideas interconnect. The film clears up those problems for you (if the film is made properly).

I always prefer the film over the books.

"My teacher wanted us to read the JAWS book and she said 'Oh it's an amazing experience.' Let's see... the movie has explosions, a twenty-five foot mechanical shark, guns. The book has... pages. I'm not gonna sit with my back against a tree and become lost in a magical world of wonderland and become gay. I don't want to do that." ~ John Caparulo (comedian)

 

[RvLeshrac]

The allusions to historical figures, the mathematical and chess-based allegories, and the darker tones of the lighthearted work have never successfully made it to film. Indeed, most of these jokes and allusions are visual wordplay, and cannot translate accurately to the spoken word.

It isn't difficult to translate these concepts to film - other countries have been doing it for decades. In the US, however, the film industry caters to the barely literate.

"Know your audience," as it were.

 

[Strain42]

More story, better details, the characters can look and sound however you want them to and you don't have to worry about bad directing.

Plus usually stuff gets changed. Look at the movie for Holes. The main character in that book was supposed to be a fat sweaty disgusting slob who slowly grew into shape over the course of the movie.

Not Shia BeBeouf...

 

[Jaded Scribe]

As others have said, it's about the fact that in print, you can make it your own world, and envision it however you want. You also can get deeper into the heads of the characters, and see more of the story

One of my favorite things in the Harry Potter series was the day-to-day in their classes. The movies cut out a LOT of that. Not that I blame them. Movies are time-sensitive and a lot of that kind of "filler" has to get cut.

The only movie I've seen where I'd read the book and found the movie significantly better was Jumanji.

 

[Anachronism]

The book is the book. The film is the film.

I completely agree with this. The only fair way to judge the film is on its own rights; comparing it to the book just isn't a good way of deciding its quality.

If the film is bad because it changed things from the book, then complaints are fair enough, I suppose. However, if the film is good despite being different from the book, then I simply don't see the issue. The Lord of the Rings films are great films in their own right, and criticising them because they don't accurately transcribe every detail from the books is completely pointless. The same goes for Blade Runner, which, quite frankly, is better than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It changes a lot of plot details, but it keeps most of the book's themes and ideas, and ends up not only being a great film, but being better than the book it's based on. Why complain that it's different?

The article appears to be of the opinion that "adaptation" means the same thing as "transcription", in my opinion. Copying every little detail from the book will almost inevitably make the film feel bogged down and turgid, but more to the point, it completely misses the point of adapting the book in the first place: so that someone else can express their own unique vision of the source material.

 

[jspheonix]

List of films that are better than the books (this is not to say the books are necessarily bad by the way) - Fight Club, Lord of the Rings (all of them, ESPECIALLY extended editions), Goodfellas, Forest Gump, and The Godfather. Other adaptations come close, Scott Pilgrim for example (arguable but I loved it).

 

[Brandchan]

I'd say most of the time the film version of something doesn't hold a candle to the original but sometimes I think the adaptation can truly out shine and/or become a work of its own. My example for this is the movie Kamikaze Girls [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvTxyok0j2o]. I have read the book and enjoyed it, but the movie outshines it every way possible.