Do You Ever Get Sick Of "The Book Is Better Than The Movie" bit?

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So my usual phrasing when I've read a book and enjoyed a film adaptation but still think the book is the better experience is to say "If you liked this film, I highly recommend checking out the novel it's based on. It really [insert character or plot that gets more depth or whatever]".

When I say "the book was better", snippy-like, it often is because something about the film has made me feel negatively toward it.

But I've also said some variation on "the book was better" many times without it being a slam on the film.

I do hear what you're saying, though, that it can be more about being dismissive (and maybe even feeling a little superior?) than about genuinely wanting to compare two versions of a story.

I don't think that books or films are superior. They're different mediums with different strengths.
I get you. We’re speaking in generalities. There are times I’ve certainly preferred the novel (I went on a big Lonesome Dove tangent to my family over the holidays after they lead me to believe the mini-series was an excellent adaptation. It both is and REALLY is not.)

But I’ve encountered pithy dismissal with this path of discourse far more often than someone voicing an appreciation for both, usually quickly and easily nothing all the ways in which the adaptation is “wrong.”

Like with TV, with novels, I frequently find the case of “more” really not meaning “better.” For instance, I quite like the novel of Let The Right One In. It’s very good.

However, the film (scripted by the novelist) towers over it. It’s subtle and streamlined interpretation elevates a pulpy vampire story into something truly masterful and artistic. I think there’s something to be said of the brevity (the soul of wit, right) that feature length demands. It can often lead to poignant choices.

While I agree that they are very different mediums, with different strengths, many novelists don’t exploit the strengths of the medium and try to write what are tantamount to verbose scripts (the “page turners” most people gravitate towards). I almost always find a comparable genre film more impressive, due to the aforementioned and relative complexity of making a film vs writing one of those paper backs.



But I’ve encountered pithy dismissal with this path of discourse far more often than someone voicing an appreciation for both, usually quickly and easily nothing all the ways in which the adaptation is “wrong.”
I do sometimes think that an adaptation is "wrong". And when I say that I'm talking about choices/changes that in my opinion detract from the story. For example, I read all of the Dark is Rising series from Susan Cooper. I couldn't even bring myself to watch the (also very poorly-reviewed) film when it came out, because a shot of the main character going "WHOA?!" when he learns he has magical powers was an instant turn-off. I don't care if Sam Spade has dark hair despite being described as a "blond Satan", but I don't like it when characters I love are mangled just for marketing purposes.

I agree that in the adaptation process, things can be streamlined or even re-imagined in a way that is much more coherent with a visual form of storytelling.

While I agree that they are very different mediums, with different strengths, many novelists don’t exploit the strengths of the medium and try to write what are tantamount to verbose scripts (the “page turners” most people gravitate towards). I almost always find a comparable genre film more impressive, due to the aforementioned and relative complexity of making a film vs writing one of those paper backs.
I'm not judging by the difficulty of production, but rather by the impact each art form has on me. I find that books and movies equally have the power to move me deeply. I mean, I'll say this for books: when I read a bad one, I don't often grumpily think "The budget spent on this could have fully funded my school district!"



I do sometimes think that an adaptation is "wrong". And when I say that I'm talking about choices/changes that in my opinion detract from the story. For example, I read all of the Dark is Rising series from Susan Cooper. I couldn't even bring myself to watch the (also very poorly-reviewed) film when it came out, because a shot of the main character going "WHOA?!" when he learns he has magical powers was an instant turn-off. I don't care if Sam Spade has dark hair despite being described as a "blond Satan", but I don't like it when characters I love are mangled just for marketing purposes.

I agree that in the adaptation process, things can be streamlined or even re-imagined in a way that is much more coherent with a visual form of storytelling.



I'm not judging by the difficulty of production, but rather by the impact each art form has on me. I find that books and movies equally have the power to move me deeply. I mean, I'll say this for books: when I read a bad one, I don't often grumpily think "The budget spent on this could have fully funded my school district!"
I’m not saying that adaptations can’t get things wrong (most of my criticism of the Lonesome Dove miniseries is that via omission and tone changes, they completely undermine the essence of the novel) BUT that it’s an easy point of criticism to label everything different as “wrong” or to treat every omission as a loss. It’s frequently a short hand to not engage with an adaptation in good faith.*

Let me put it this way, you’ve either got to watch a terribly written movie or a terribly written book. Which are you choosing?



I see that come up as well from time to time, but that argument doesn't do much for me. I think that books and movies (which are two entirely different mediums) have such wildly different goals and ambitions that comparing them seems to miss the point. Both films and books come with so many masterpieces and failures that comparing the two mediums to determine what the better one is seems like a wormhole of a discussion to me.
I agree that just comparing the mediums of film and literature in terms of overall quality isn't all that useful, given how fundamentally different they are (though that's partly my personal preferences talking), but when it comes to comparing individual works that tell the same story, don't you think it's at least partially legitimate to compare the two to see which one did the better job, regardless of their medium?



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There's a difference between saying "The book was better" and saying that a movie adaptation is bad.

There are also times that a film changes elements of a story to suit market purposes. I really love The Big Sleep. Like, I really love it. But it lacks some of the oomph of certain sections of the book, like when he finds the sister high and naked in his bed and he's so angry at the violation of his space. Again: it's just down to which experience with the story you prefer.
Yeah, this is a great example. I like the film, The Big Sleep, a lot but the book has so much stuff that just makes it edgier that it'll fairly shock you. I mean, I didn't know people wrote books like that in those days.



Question for anyone in book message boards... Do people come in to say "The movie is better than the book?"

The plebes stay in their lane and imagine that they are cinephiles. They're not on our boards -- many of which are paper letter exchange programs, complete with news letters. They cannot devour texts as we do, and must passively watch their screens, having everything spoon fed to them with framing, lighting, sound, performance. They could not begin to penetrate the erudition of our discussions. Those of us equipped with a "theater of the mind" already know that the book is better than the movie, so we are not scandalized by the constant reminder that we embrace a lower and derivative form of art. We are wine to your Kool-Aid, cocaine to your crack, Scooby to your Scrappy, Mozart to your Mumble Rapper. And now if you'll pardon me, I must sip my tea before it gets cool and comb through Joyce for allusions no one has yet detected. Good day, sir or madame.



I think in most cases the book usually is better.
Not every case, but most.

I've found movies either water things down a lot for an audience... for instance, LOTR.
They had to do it though, simply because the novel is unfilmable in its actual structure.

Or, they add content that's not in the book to bulk out some scenes, or failing this they change the narrative massively because the book simply can't be put into a live-action format.
Jurassic Park is one that did this.
The book has a lot of expositional text, especially in scenes that it has nothing to do with the scene it's in.
Example is Nedry. They're at the park, Nedry is in the control room... and the book tangents off into talking about Nedry's past.
Said scene then takes a good 15 minutes to get through, but in movie form, the scene wouldn't and couldn't include this, and there would be only 15 seconds of footage.

The only way to have everything in the book included in the movie, would be to have that expositional narrative as a newly written scene at the start of the movie. Basically an origins scene for Nedry.
They'd also have to do this for every other character, meaning the first half of a Jurassic Park movie, would be 14 or 15 origins scenes of 14 or 15 characters.
And nobody is gonna sit through that in a cinema.

LOTR however, Jackson tried to do something close to that.
He moved scenes around in the screenplay to make the movie play out chronologically... even going as far as moving the Samwise VS Shelob scene to a different chapter in the trilogy because technically that was where it took place in the story's timeline.

Still though, just from my two examples of JP and LOTR... are the novels better than the movies?
Yes, in both cases the novels are better than the movies.

Blade Runner is the same I think.
The novel simply wouldn't work as a movie. They have to change certain things, move things around. Change lines between characters because some characters were omitted from the movie.
I read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? a long time ago, and I remember thinking, in one of the rare occurrences, that the movie was better.
Might need to get a copy and see.



I agree that just comparing the mediums of film and literature in terms of overall quality isn't all that useful, given how fundamentally different they are (though that's partly my personal preferences talking), but when it comes to comparing individual works that tell the same story, don't you think it's at least partially legitimate to compare the two to see which one did the better job, regardless of their medium?
Absolutely so. I don't have an issue with that at all. My post was mainly talking about a different subject though.
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Still holding out for an adaptation of Are you There God? It's Me Margaret.
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Oh yeah, heard the "book is better than movie" mantra more times than I can count. For the record, I love both. IMO, it makes little sense, since a book is all text, a non-visual medium. I don't need a lengthy description of a character's behavior or a scene or an event if I can see and hear it, otherwise, what's the point of making a movie. In addition, if a book is worth reading, I will probably spend a good many hours with it, may reread parts and will read it in sections, not all in one sitting. Unless it's an epic like the LOTR movies, I generally expect that it will be finished in 2 hours or less and that sound and imagery will probably be more important than words.

I don't understand why some people harp on this, except to portray themselves in a more literate way, but I also don't really care. They're different media that make different demands on their fans and that's all you need to know.



We should note that the book is usually better because the story was designed to be a book. It was a book length idea. It was a project well suited for prose. How do we know? Well, it is already a known "good book" by time we get around discussing adapting it for film - if the idea is to adapt a "good" book, then you have a known success which has to be followed. A really good book is like a Michael Jackson or Abraham Lincoln or Richard Pryor - imitated, but not replicated.


So, we have a double disadvantage for the film adaptation.

  • First, the story was not intended to be a film, so alterations have to be made to make the glass slipper fit.
  • Second, there is a sampling bias in terms of "good books" being selected for remakes (remakes themselves being of varying quality and, by definition, being an attempt at imitation).
The second point raises a statistical argument. Statistically, therefore, we would expect the "average unknown" (will this film project of uncertain quality be good) to lose out to the "average known" (i.e., we try to adapt books that are already known to be good).



Beyond this, we should consider obvious biases that book fans bring to film projects (primacy effect, brand loyalty, confirmation bias), although I must confess that quite often the film is what led me to the book and I have usually found the book to be superior.



Finally, how many terrible books are poor adaptations of movies? I own a novelization of The Empire Strikes Back, but I haven't felt a need to reread it since the 1980s. If we are to play fair, then we should also include book adaptations of films to see how they perform.



Finally, how many terrible books are poor adaptations of movies? I own a novelization of The Empire Strikes Back, but I haven't felt a need to reread it since the 1980s. If we are to play fair, then we should also include book adaptations of films to see how they perform.
I’ve read many in my youth and never encountered any that come close to the quality of the film.

Even Tarantino’s recent foray, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a pale, schlocky shadow of its filmic self.



I’ve read many in my youth and never encountered any that come close to the quality of the film.

Even Tarantino’s recent foray, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a pale, schlocky shadow of its filmic self.

If we're really trying to get to apples-to-apples, then we should compare the quality of

  • the average book vs. the average film,
  • the average film adaptation vs. average original book, and
  • the average film vs. the average book adaption.
and I don't think we would find a decisive trend either way. However, I also accept that it is a truism that a book adapted into a film will almost always better. A lot depends on the framing of the question, I think



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I'd like to know why each person prefers one over the other.. I love the video/audio and the stream, but I can also understand those who read and imagine it themselves. Unfortunately, I've read fiction after the movie, and the rest were not made into a movie, like Catcher In The Rye, which I read over a decade ago. I know I didn't read it all at once, which might influence the experience. I can't imagine liking a movie that I don't finish in one sitting.



it’s an easy point of criticism to label everything different as “wrong” or to treat every omission as a loss. It’s frequently a short hand to not engage with an adaptation in good faith.
I can agree with this. I try to engage with films adapted from books I love in good faith, often because I would LOVE to see a great film version of books I enjoy. If someone managed to put a good version of The Bone Clocks or Gentlemen of the Road on screen, I would throw money at it.

But I can also agree that sometimes people are just salty about someone daring to touch a property they love. I mean, I get it. Because I do feel protective of some books that mean a lot to me. Just like I feel protective of certain films and I kind of suck in my breath when I hear someone is remaking/rebooting them.

Let me put it this way, you’ve either got to watch a terribly written movie or a terribly written book. Which are you choosing?
For the sake of my time, the movie. But I don't think it's fair to isolate the writing, because the writing is ALL of the book. More like, would I rather spend 90 minutes reading a badly written book or 90 minutes watching a badly made film? I guess I'd still pick the film just because watching something requires less effort than reading.



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For the sake of my time, the movie. But I don't think it's fair to isolate the writing, because the writing is ALL of the book. More like, would I rather spend 90 minutes reading a badly written book or 90 minutes watching a badly made film? I guess I'd still pick the film just because watching something requires less effort than reading.
I think it’s fair because film is a lot more than just it’s writing. Yes, this is why they’re different mediums but it’s also why I have a clear preference. There’s a lot more there to appreciate or find goodness. With a novel, it lives or dies by the prose.

I also think time is absolutely important to the discussion. Given the absolute wealth of media to consume, asking me to invest many hours is going to demand a higher level of quality for that investment. Besides, due to the aforementioned many other elements, I’m more likely to find something engaging in a poorly written film.



I think it’s fair because film is a lot more than just it’s writing. Yes, this is why they’re different mediums but it’s also why I have a clear preference. There’s a lot more there to appreciate or find goodness. With a novel, it lives or dies by the prose.

I also think time is absolutely important to the discussion. Given the absolute wealth of media to consume, asking me to invest many hours is going to demand a higher level of quality for that investment. Besides, due to the aforementioned many other elements, I’m more likely to find something engaging in a poorly written film.
Time commitment certainly justifies watching more films vs reading more books. I mean, I tend to watch about 300-400 movies a year, while I only read about 35-50 books per year.

Maybe this is the best way to put it: a bad movie is much more likely to be passable than a bad book, and certainly less of a loss time-wise. But the flip is also true--namely that an experience with a great book will almost always dwarf an experience with a great movie. And that might just be my particular wiring when it comes to "verbal" versus visual language. I mean, yesterday the character in my book described her mother's affection for her shifting to her new boyfriend, "like a train switching tracks", and it just hit the emotional core of that moment so well. I can certainly imagine such a revelation being shown and not told, but I'm not sure I'd find it as powerful.

And film having so many parts can also be a downside, because it means that there are multiple elements---a performance, a soundtrack, writing, the special effects--that can knock it down.