Books vs Movies

It’s commonly expected that when a book is made into a movie, the original is typically better. There simply are things that are better expressed in writing than in visuals.

Feelings for one.  Books allow readers access to the character’s thoughts and motivations. A lot of personal conflict is internal, something that is hard to transfer into movies because it is such a visual medium. And a lot of the beauty in writing is the arrangement of words on the pages, the metaphors and mental images that have no business in film.

At once she was looking right through her with a sharp inscrutable expression. Chihiro jolted as it felt like someone kicked open the back door to her soul, tromping through her insides with muddy feet, ripping open closets and overturning tables while anxiously searching for something.
~A Road to Somewhere

This image is very vivid;  how would it be able to be transferred on to film and still make the images on the screen coherent? It’s not possible.  And what about other times, where an experience is described in relation to a past one, such as using a story of getting kicked in the balls for the first time in the character’s life to talk about the now sudden and overwhelming feeling of helpless pain he feels? Some things just do not translate.

Others do so surprisingly well.  J.K. Rowling’s descriptions of Hogwarts are only solidified and made more real to the reader because of the movie, and I will never be able to view the Balrog in the Fellowship of the Ring in any other way except as rendered in the movie.

Though perhaps Peter Jackson was too good at imagery. I have been unable to match the fulfillment I got from reading Tolkien’s books since I have seen the movies–all my mental images are replaced by Elijah Wood and Viggo Mortinson. And then there are others like the The Seeker, based on Susan Cooper’s amazing book The Dark Is Rising that are just so completely wrong. Nothing is as I imagined it.

And that is another beauty of books over movies, they allow you to see things the way you want them to seen. They are a more active medium of entertainment than cinema and that is why there will always be a market for them. And that is why books are better than the movies based off of them.

But what about cases where it is the other way around? When the movie predates the book? Or at least the production of it; it’s not uncommon to release the book as a promotion for the movie.

Because  cinema is visually driven, there is usually a lot of action. And I don’t just mean car chases and explosions, but dance numbers in musicals and the day to day hustle in chick flicks. Dialog is important, but there are very few times where we actually know what the characters are thinking. It has to be said aloud and when it’s not we are just taking a guess.

This of course can be remedied through a narration, such as JD’s usual narration in Scrubs. But it’s a rather uncommon use of sound and sometimes seems like an old fashioned Dragnet episode. But then again, Dragnet typically was spewing a metaphor of some sort and not personal feelings.

Because of this, ideas and aspects of the characters are left out of the film. When a younger sister protects her older sibling, is she doing it to help her family member or simply to one-up them? When someone hesitated to pull a gun, was it because of the face of the person it was pointing at or an inner moral struggle? The production crew may know and you can make an educated guess, but things really only become more clear when it’s expressed verbally.

This can be done through guide books, interviews with cast and crew, or novelizations of the movie. The novels add a whole other layer to the story, answer so many different questions, and perhaps explain what went on behind the story followed on the screen. How did so-and-so know where to show up and how did he get the information he has?

The books can answer such queries and make a more rewarding and realistic integration into a world whose characters you enjoy.

Your bookworm blogger,

Jenny