Books > Movies

Is it just me or does it seem that once you've read a book, no movie could ever be comparable? Speaking from experience, I have found myself having much higher expectations after watching movies that have been developed based on novels. One example is the Twilight Saga. Before watching any of the movies, I read all four of the books by Stephenie Meyer: including Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. I understand there is difficulty in portraying mythological characters, such as vampires and werewolves, but I was extremely disappointed when I watched each of the five movies after reading the books. While trying to keep the movie suspenseful but also somewhat convincing, the director was also attempting to keep a similar plot to that of Meyer’s novels. It was unfortunate to see so many scenes from the books completely left out of the movies. This included parts that I felt were very significant when reading the novels. Even the best movie (based on reviews), Breaking Dawn Part 2, was not nearly as good as the book. Keeping in mind how hard it is to film the birth of a vampire baby, I thought that the book did a much better job at creating an image of what this experience was really like in Meyer’s mind.

I’m sure there are some exceptions, but every book I have ever read prior to watching the movie has been the better of the two. I think this is because it is impossible to enclose every detail of a book into a motion picture that will keep viewers attention while remaining a reasonable length of time. It is also difficult to try to reproduce a version of a plot that an author has already created. Everyone has different opinions and visualize things differently, so it is not easy to recreate exactly what an author could have been trying to say when he/she was writing the book. As well, it would be impractical to try to fit every single part of a one-thousand-paged book into approximately two hours of on-screen time.

Unfortunately, it seems as though reading is the best route to take if one is interested in getting all the details and internal feelings of a character. One thing a movie cannot do that a book can is demonstrate exactly what an individual is feeling or a personal description of an important experience. Breaking Dawn, the last book by Stephenie Meyer, is extremely effective in showing how the characters feel internally, as it switches back and forth between Bella and Jacob’s points of view. Though it takes much longer to read a book than to watch a two hour film, I think it is much more worthwhile for one to take the time to read the book as opposed to sitting and watching the movie.

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