Better Than the Book

In the vast majority of instances, movies adaptions are not better than the books they are derived from. There can be many reasons to be attributed to this including better characterization, un-filmable settings, and a number of characters.



Movies are limited by time constraints since no one wants to sit in a theater will an empty cup and a full bladder for more than two hours, let alone four. This time must be used to establish characters, setting, story background, and furthering the plot. A book can usually stick in a couple page history on a minor character that is very cool, but will almost likely be cut from a movie. Any useful dialogue will be given to another character.

Dialogue is also moved around from character to character. Most notably, this is seen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frodo could be seen as the main character, and if Merry and Pippin, minor characters, are taking the spotlight, their dialogue from the book will be given to Frodo. This lets the audience feel that Frodo is not taking a backseat to the film.

No matter how filmable a book may be, it will not always be filmed in the way a reader envisioned it reading the book. Michael Crichton's books have been criticized for having a blockbuster like feel to his books, yet The Lost World was chopped up and spewed out into a pile of dinosaur dung as high as Jeff Goldblum. Major characters were cut, genders were switched, and relationships not found in the book were created.

There have been on rare occasions where the movie, or at least some aspects of the movie are better than the book. One of my favorite movies is The Count of Monte Cristo, and while some may hate it, especially after reading the book first, there was one aspect of the movie that I liked better. This had to deal with what happens between Edmond and his wife and son.

A more recent example is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. In the Ministry of Magic, just before Harry stuns Umbridge, he holds up his hand to show the scars that were inflicted two movies prior. Harry says "I must not tell lies," and stuns her. The movies can never do the Harry Potter series justice, that line in particular was better than the book.

And finally with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Hagrid says once in the book "I shouldn't have told you that." However, in the movie, there is three separate scenes in which he delivers that line when giving out too much information to the kids. Whether it was the way the actor delivered the line, or it has some characteristics of the Call-Back joke, it made Hagrid a more likable character.