[Archive] Is The Book Always Better Than The Movie?

Welcome to an archived entry from PopBunker.net. We have not always been the pop culture heavyweight that we are now (lets laughter die out)…

So we thought it would be a good idea to share some of our excellent but relatively uncirculated material from around the time of Pop Bunker’s beginning.

Do you believe the book is always better than the movie? I don’t. I love both mediums, but I get a little sick of how many dismiss film incarnations of books without critically thinking about the meaning. Dismissing film does not make you seem smarter. Check out why below the fold…

With two anticipated autumn releases around the corner based off of widely acclaimed books ­ Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones from the Alice Sebold novel and the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road ­ one is likely to hear a dire warning regarding those films: The book is always better than the movie. Is that true? Is The Lovely Bones and The Road guaranteed mediocrity due
to the nature of adapting the film from a novel?

The eight word dismissive statement often comes with such emphatic authority that a film buff may instantly recall Gwyneth Paltrow in Dicken’s Great Expectations, Brian De Palma’s Bonfire of the Vanities, and fan­ assured countless terrible Stephen King adaptations. The claim inferred in these words is not only that a book is better constructed and delivered, but that a mere film could never deliver the same worthwhile experience as its written counterpart. The film fan might be instantly cowed by the obviously great mental capacity of his literature loving brothers and sisters and respond to the eight word aphorism with a sheepish grin and a shrug. But it is worth examining the claim. Does it hold up?

One thing that becomes fairly obvious when first examining the statement is that it is a prime candidate for being over-used due to its simplicity, generalization, and the unfortunate belief by some that literature is a more intellectual endeavor than film. As someone that has read between three and five thousand books and has watched between three and five thousand movies, I find the truth derived from comparing the two mediums simply boils down to taste from one moment to the next.

What about objectively? There is no way to make a true objective study of the subject, but there are a few interesting pieces of objective information once one begins to study literature inspired film.

The first fact that stands out comes after examining various Best Films of All­ Time lists. For our purposes we will use the easily accessed IMDb Top 250. It might surprise one who is a buttress for the book over movie belief that 23 of the top 51 movies on the IMDb 250 are based on novels or short stories. Before the thought even occurs that maybe these movies are genre fanboy films (varying opinion on The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, for instance), let’s list a few examples so we can move past that:

The Godfather
Shawshank Redeption
Shindler’s List
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Goodfellas
City Of God
Rear Window
Psycho
Silence Of The Lambs
Forrest Gump

Maybe the film fan is starting to gain a little confidence (where would The Godfather be if Mario Puzo was the only reference point?)? There are 14 more films in the top 51 that are equally impressive. A parallel point could be made to folks that rely on this suddenly hard to prove eight word statement who often point to awful Stephen King adaptations as proof that film cannot even adapt the epitome of wildly successful modern mass market fiction competently. What do you think?

The Shawshank Redeption
Stand By Me
The Green Mile
Misery

All four of those moves are in the IMDb 250 and does not even include The Shining (8.5) and The Mist (7.4).

Unremarkable or average books can often times make superior movies when compared to its literature counterpart. How many realize that Die Hard was based off a little know novel by Roderick Thorp called Nothing Lasts Forever? There are literally hundreds of movies that are average or good or bad where the written source is bad or average or terrible. Then there are many more that are simply good books and good movies. Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, for a random example, are both good books and movies. There are differences, sure, but each is translated for a different medium.

Film also has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes showing the weakness of a book. That effect is often confused with inferiority whereas it is actually the different presentation that allows one to assimilate the circumstances differently. One who believes that the films, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons are trite and contrived suddenly because the screenwriters dropped the ball are mistaken. The two films based off of Dan Brown’s massive sellers only accentuate the weakness of the written contrived plotting and sensationalistic triteness. Those that bemoan soulless Hollywood need to look no farther than Brown to find its literary equal. Michael Crichton and Thomas Harris are two others that composed empty work where Hollywood’s only fault was that there was an immense amount of money to be made. Twilight? Of course. Those movies are universally panned by non hardcore fans but, then again, have you read the books? I read the first one and Meyer makes J.K. Rowling seem whip-smart, subtle, and capable of believable dialog – all of which is the opposite when J.K. Rowling is compared to an average competent author.

For the most part great books have a better chance at making great movies. Our former confident lit snob might now rally around the purity of the written word and how evil Hollywood will butcher a masterwork to get it to appeal to the (inferred less intelligent) masses. There is some truth in that sometimes an adaption of a book to film requires compromise. Some were really upset, for example, that Tom Bombadil was hacked out of Fellowship Of The Ring obviously for greedy Hollywood reasons. The movie did have to have a marketable running time, but I am not sure if greediness or lack or artistic merit outweighs common sense. It was the most frivolous side story of the first entry and the movie did not suffer without it.

The greatest example of compromise and perhaps a main vein in the entire argument is Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange which was adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick. Those that have read the novel and seen the movie know that the ending of the two are divergent. One could even say that Kubrick changed the entire meaning of the work. And here is the epiphany that leads to the ultimate understanding of the argument:

The book was a better book. The movie was a better movie.

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