The Movie Is Better
The timeless debate is more evident than ever: which is better – the book or the movie? As novels and plays continue to be adapted into films, the audiences continue to argue if the adaptation is better than the book itself. It boggles my mind that there’s even a debate about this; the movie’s are obviously better. If there was a competition between double-spaced times-new-roman words on a page and filmatic creativity and genius, it’s obvious which one would take home a trophy.
Firstly, people need to understand the limitations that films face when adapting a book onto a screen. Movies are at an obvious disadvantage in comparison to novels. For starters, there is a limited running time, and therefore, cuts are necessary. Those who criticize film adaptations need to understand that not every scene, character, and line is going to fit in a 120 minute script. However, some audience members see this is as a positive characteristic of movies, as books tie in too much information that is useless to the overall plot. It’s evident that the ability of creating a visual medium of the character’s inner thoughts and appealing to the audience’s emotions is exceptionally difficult and perhaps more rewarding than writing a book. Additionally, movies have expectations in terms of ratings; audience members are obviously going to enjoy the movie more thoroughly if it incorporates several action scenes, rather than two characters sitting down to coffee while discussing the forecast.
A key fact that a lot of people apparently fail to understand is that movies aren’t created as exact replicas of a book. It’s often explicitly stated in the opening or closing credits that the movie is based on a book- not an exact imitation of every scene and character and word count and punctuation mark in a book. Directors and producers have creative license; they often want to put their own twist on plots and characters, and their interpretations are obviously not going to match every other audience member. For example, in Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan, the characters range from ages 11 to 13. However, in the movie adaptation, the screenwriters changed the ages to 18, plausibly to appeal to a larger audience and to avoid child actors.
But even disregarding the disadvantages of films, the movie adaptations of the books are notoriously known to be more captivating than the novels themselves. In fact, according to Zabisco, a digital user experience agency, it is statistically proven that visual content drives engagement, and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual which is processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. Visual representation is ultimately more intriguing than text, and in most cases, films do the novels justice and beyond.
A suitable example of this is prominent in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter”, a series of seven fantasy novels that chronicle the life of a young wizard. The combined worldwide box office take for the first seven movies added up to 6.37 billion, and the final movie made $476 million over the course of only opening weekend. Although the eight film adaptations did leave out some information and characters, the movies overall were huge filmatic successes – and the box office numbers were proof. The characters that did not appear in the movies were irrelevant and ultimately inconsequential to the overall plot. Although some readers might argue against this claim, the author of the script obviously is incapable of pleasing everyone; most of the audiences of the series will agree that only the significant and relevant material from the books was incorporated into the movies.
A primary reason the films are a more enjoyable form of entertainment is the usually vivid visualization of the normally boring words on a page. Throughout the film series of the wizard’s adventures, we see the casted spells come to life, we see the epic battles, the flying broomsticks, the magical creatures. Without the film adaptations, the audience never would’ve been able to view the chemistry between Ron and Hermione, or the family bond among the Weasley family. Reading the book, how could anyone ever accurately imagine the pure hatred on Draco’s face when he catches sight of Harry, or the look of horror in Harry’s eyes when Dobie is stabbed? The movie brings to us all the components of Harry’s story that the novels fail to provide.
While I can agree that some books should be left as only books because the movies obviously fail to do them justice, the majority of film adaptations that have been produced in the past are evidently more enjoyable than the books. Being able to see words come to life is a pleasure that films are able to give to the audience members. Seeing happiness, distraught, fury, embarrassment, relief, melancholy, and every other emotion imaginable in a character’s eyes is a joy that a book will never be able to give to it’s audience. Books are good, but films bring that kind of genius to a whole new level.
I think we know who’s taking home the trophy for this round.
The Book Is Better
It’s raining out. You make yourself a hot chocolate and curl up in bed, wrapped in a blanket. All you have is your hot coco, and a good book. What could be better?
The book is better, it always has been, and it always will be. I will admit that not all book to movie adaptions are bad. “Harry Potter” did a great job sticking to the plot of the books, even if some things were altered to fit the time frame, as did “Paper Towns” and “The Fault in Our Stars.” But this isn’t the case for all movie adaptations. And there’s a few reasons why this is.
First off, the books are more detailed. Usually, if you watch a movie, and there seems to be a giant plot hole at the most dramatic part, then it’s explained in the books. There is a psychological theory called the completion principle. This idea states that “We [humans] seek to complete that which is incomplete.” This explains why humans have to finish a puzzles and listen until the end of the song, as well as why we want to know everything about something we enjoy, such as the plot of a movie. Humans need to have the complete story, and only the book hold those answers.
Also, reading the book for yourself allows you to imagine the setting and the characters as you want. Once it’s put on the big screen, you are forced to watch the story through one person’s interpretation, and it’s very likely that their ideas conflict with your own. For example, when the casting for the original “Hunger Games” was released, many fans were disappointed at the casting choices. Many fans were disappointed that the part of Rue went to Amandla Stenberg, a African-American. The fans said they imagined Rue as a little, blond, white girl. Also, the book described Katniss as having “olive-skin,” but Jennifer Lawrence, a white actress, got the part. Fans were upset by both of these casting choices because it ruined the image they had of the characters they had in their head. The book allows you to view things as you want, not as others see it.
Another reason why the books are better is they cannot be ruined by bad acting. Personally, for me, a story is only as good as the characters in it, and when a character is ruined by poor acting, the story loses some of the magic. For example, Twilight. Twilight was not a bad book series (not that it was great, but it wasn’t bad). Millions of people read the series and loved it. It was not until the movies that Twilight really started getting criticized. And, a lot of that, was because of the bad acting. Between Kristen Stewart having no emotions, Robert Pattinson mumbling all of his line and Taylor Lautner only being there for his body, it’s no wonder everyone hated the movies. However, the books portrayed the characters of the most well known supernatural love triangle as flawed characters who do truly care about one another, and this was lost in the movie due to the poor acting.
Lastly, there are two arguments that go hand in hand, books last longer, and movies have a limited run time. According to studies done by Stables, the average reading speed for high schoolers is 300 words per minute. Based on this and the word count of the books, reading the “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy would takes just over 26 hours to read them all, assuming you read them all in one sitting. One the other hand, the movies, uncut, take 11 hours and 20 minutes. Some people would probably argue that this is an argument that the movie is better, it really isn’t. Books are easier to take with you, like on a bus or when you go to school. Besides, when you find a good story, you never want it to end.
Books give a more complete story, allow you to imagine the characters as you want them, can’t be ruined by poor acting and last longer. That’s not to say movies are bad. An explosion-packed action movie, or a touching Rom-Com are nice on occasion. However, the book is always better.