The Books and the Movies

“The book was so much better!”

That’s what everyone says when they see a film adaptation of a book they’ve read. This statement suggests that the film was terrible, or just disappointing, because it didn’t follow the book. It’s a valid criticism of those movies. Sometimes movies leave out certain plot points that would explain what’s happening on screen. Maybe the movie doesn’t do a good job of explaining a character’s motivations. In a lot of cases, movies seem to use books and other source material as a kind of outline as they fill in the plot with their own details, essentially creating something way different from the original. Here’s the problem with judging the quality of a movie based on how closely they follow the source: You’re comparing apples to oranges. Books and movie are completely different forms of entertainment that should be judged based on their own merits.

Movies and books serve two completely different purposes. Where books are inherently imaginative, movies are meant to be visual spectacles, similar to stage plays. Movies are meant to show you the world they create. Books, on the other hand, invite readers to imagine the story told to them. Books are meant to be read whenever the reader wants. It becomes a form of relaxation that allows the reader to forget about everything going on. The book may describe the settings, but the reader is allowed to fill in the gaps. As a result, these books become a very personal thing for readers.

There’s a pretty obvious difference between books and movies. Books can be as long and descriptive as they want, while movies are constrained by certain time limits, at least when we’re talking about narrative movies. Authors don’t expect their readers to sit and read their 800-page book in one sitting. That would be impressive, but not required. With movies, you need to be able to tell a full story in one go. People don’t generally have the option to pause and take a break when they see a movie at the theater. Even though it was common in the early days of film for movies to be quite long with an intermission, they still couldn’t have the movie last all day. As a result, if a movie is adapting a book to the big screen, it needs to be able to condense the story to fit into a specific amount of time.

This is where the clash between books and movies comes into play. If you need to condense a big story into a 120-minute movie, some things will need to be skipped over. If you tried to portray every single detail as described in the book, the movie could be several hours long. Nobody would want to sit in the theater for that long. So, you pick out the most essential plot elements and find a way to combine everything together into a cohesive story. However, someone who has read the book might say taking out any part of the story makes everything come apart. This person might feel like the filmmakers don’t know anything about the source material and just put together a story wile using the title of the book.

Fair point. It’s not always easy to take very specific elements of a story and fit them all together cohesively. Not all book adaptations are good on their own, even without having read the book. So, why not just split the book into separate movies? Maybe the filmmakers could make sequels in order to portray everything that’s in the book. While that sounds like a good idea, it isn’t always successful. You might cover more plot elements, but the movie might drag on and become boring. In order to take a third of a book and turn it into a 2-hour long movie, the filmmaker likely will add things that drag out the runtime, but don’t necessarily add anything to the plot. Those elements could be taken out, and the story wouldn’t change. You’ll have an “accurate” portrayal of the book’s story, but the movie ends up being worse than the book for a different reason.

This conflict between books and movies seems to be why TV adaptations of books have become so much more popular in recent years, especially with the modern TV streaming landscape. With TV shows, you have much more room to breathe when it comes to portraying books on screen. The show is going to have several episodes and seasons, so there’s no rush to show just the important parts. Additionally, TV episodes are much shorter than movies in the theater. You can focus the story on a few smaller plot points that will lead into the next episode. The reason this is especially true in the modern era of television streaming, seasons are much smaller than traditional TV. Where traditional TV seasons were an average of 24 episodes long, it is much more common for seasons to have no more than 10 episodes. This feels like a sweet spot between telling the whole story without dragging things out.

While it’s all well and good that people have found a way to make better portrayals of different books, that doesn’t mean film adaptations are going away, nor should it. Even though movies and books serve different purposes, maybe they don’t need to be viewed as totally opposite from each other. Maybe a really good movie could inspire someone to read the original source material. After reading the book, that person will have a better understanding of the overall story. Now he has two great sources of entertainment to experience that story. He has a movie that portrays the characters and a book to tell everything that couldn’t be covered in the movie. Books and movies can be seen as two parts working as a complete unit rather than two separate parts fighting over which one is better.

I believe people look down on movie adaptations because of the very personal nature of books. They become attached to their favorite books. The books become something very special to them. When they hear that their favorite book is being adapted into a movie, it’s almost like this special thing is being taken away from them. This very personal source of joy is being taken away and shared with everyone. The imaginative world they created from reading the book is being portrayed on screen, taking away any and all mystery. I can understand that. However, not everybody necessarily enjoys reading books. Maybe they don’t have all that much free time to commit to reading a large novel. Maybe they struggle with reading small print and find it more laborious than relaxing. If the overall story stays the same between the book and the movie, then there shouldn’t be any problem if someone would rather just watch the 2-hour movie and be done.

The quality of a movie adaptation can, and should, be judged based on it’s own merits. If the story makes sense, it is easy to follow, and everything is explained well, then the movie is great and worth watching. However, if nothing is explained and I have to read the book for it to make sense, then it fails as both a movie and an adaptation. These two completely different sources of entertainment don’t have to be viewed as incompatible. They can use their own unique methods to tell the same story. Just because two tools serve different purposes doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t achieve the same goal.