Book vs. Movie

This post can contain no original thoughts. I’m a reader—although I don’t read as much I’d like to—and of course I can make all the arguments of why the book will be better than the movie, of how much more detail and texture and exposition the reader gets, how possibly more actively involved reader is than watcher. Still, having loved a book, I can love its movie, in part because I love movies and in part because I have accepted that it’s not fair to compare two entirely different media (apples and oranges).

I remember the first time I felt betrayed by a movie. (Many of my friends have heard me rant about this one.) One of my favorite books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had been made into a movie, for some reason called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I was excited to see it. I went to see it. Had the abbreviation WTF been in my vocabulary at the time, it would have been useful to describe my reaction: WTF have they done to my book?

Since then, of course, I’ve grown up and realized that books are books and movies are movies. I’ve even revisited Willy Wonka and cut everyone some slack. Still, when Johnny Depp starred in an extremely faithful-to-the-book version, I couldn’t help but feel a bit redeemed. (And yet they did add a completely unnecessary backstory for Wonka—seems everyone has to tinker.)

Back in November, the week before Thanksgiving, I embarked on a project that will shock the more literary snobs among you: I decided I would reread all the Harry Potter books. After each book, I would watch the corresponding movie. (Seven books. Eight movies.) Given that I read all day for work and that my reading for pleasure tends to be limited to just before I fall asleep, I thought this project would take me half a year. I finished the last book last night. (Two movies to go!)

I’d read all the books before, and I’d seen all the movies. But I read the books as they came out, and I saw the movies as they came out. I’m lucky to remember something I’ve read from one day to the next, so by the time I was seeing a movie based on a book, I could no longer remember much about the book. It was practically a separate experience. And there’s something to be said for that.

I was never critical of the books or films. I went in just wanting to be entertained, and I was. The movies were beautiful. No one seemed afraid of the darkness of the story.

With this “project,” I wanted to look at adaptations. I wanted to see what decisions the filmmakers had made. In the first few films, the deletions of particular details made good sense. Assigning actions one character might have performed to another for simplicity usually worked well.

But with the fourth installment—and this is the point at which the page counts become very high—it felt as if filmmakers made a leap from shortcuts to shorthand. I began viewing scenes that I felt people could only fully comprehend if they had read the book, because the filmmakers didn’t have time to give you enough backstory. They seemed to assume that most viewers had read the book—and they were likely correct. Certain scenes in certain films must surely confuse nonreaders, I thought, for as far as I could tell, certain corresponding explanations lay only in the book. Of course, I can’t know if nonreaders were confused or not.

Ultimately, I was surprised by just how much more there is to the books. I shouldn’t have been. Of course there’s much more. They’re books.

I broke my Harry Potter stride only long enough to reread The Invention of Hugo Cabret right before I went to see Hugo. This gorgeous book had been one of my favorites; in fact, I had given it to several people. And as I was in a book-into-movie mode, and as it had been several years since I’d read the book, I decided to take a look.

The movie was gorgeous but was in fact sapped up. That whole station master subplot/backstory? Slapsticky and unnecessary. I understood why they dropped a certain character, merging his actions into two others, but I missed him. The saddest change for me is what they did to the Isabelle character. In the book, it is she, not Hugo, who can pick locks. It is she who sneaks them into the movies. Her character is strong, but the film diminishes her a bit. And so it goes.

Still, a lovely movie (and I didn’t even get a chance to see it in 3D).

No doubt many of the best films are ones that were born films, films never encumbered by the limits of a book and readers’ expectations.

Soon I will watch the last two Potter movies. But more exciting is the stack of twentyish books next to my bed, many of which I want so much to read that I don’t know which to grab first.