Books, and why we dislike the films!

A couple of days before I got to see the Half Blood Prince film, Maddie posted this as her status on Facebook : "Oh my gosh, the new Harry Potter was just AWESOME!" To be honest, Maddie's not the type of person who sits on the couch drinking coffee and reading Potter books. So, coming from somebody who was never really into fiction, I was not taking anything for granted.
Well, I was right.
The sixth movie wasn't AS bad as the fifth (in my opinion), but really, as a crazy in love Potter freak, I had a whole different thing imagined. Maybe Maddie had liked the different tone to the film, with the romance and "snogging." But it wasn't anything like I had hoped. What WAS that with Harry and Ginny? One second? Two? And there were so many other differences. What happened to Rufus Scrimgeour, Bill, Fleur or Dumbledore's funeral. I guess the crew was trying to be creative or something since they made up a whole new scene with Bellatrix Lestrange surrounding and burning up the Burrow. To tell you the truth, adapting the story from a book should not make that David Yates get carried away.

And that was just an example from the latest. There were so many other adaptations from our favourite stories that we did not approve of. We often find ourselves creating a whole new world when we read a book. Characters as we want them to look like. And then, we get all excited about the film, and then end up bashing it, as well as telling the world to read the book and see. The point of me writing this piece is just to bring up this universal problem. I'm not telling you NOT to watch the films. But just spreading the message which we all must have felt at one point.
A few months ago I watched the adaptation to Cornelia Funke's Inkheart. And then I ended up grumbling to my mother about how I had imagined Dustfinger. Brave and wild and not artificial and stupid-looking.
I just read what I've written and that just made me think. As much as we know we are not going to like the film when we've read the book, we end up watching it anyway. And then we start with the criticism.
I'm not blaming anybody around. I myself, along with billions of people in the world hate when this happens. When we let our personal world get ruined by going to the theatre.
Is there a solution to this problem?
My mother says, "Don't watch the movie at all. All solved." We're humans, Mom. How can we stop the temptation? Just thinking that the film adaptation of our favourite book being released just makes us want to run to the movies. We can't wait to see how one character looks out of the pages, and how the film crew manage to create magic on screen. Our hearts don't stop racing until our eyes satisfy them. And then our hearts don't like what our eyes show. Sigh.
My brother says, "Watch the movie first, and then get through to the pages. Then you'll be happy with the book, and never see the movie again." Okay, that was weird advice. So I tried watching the Namesake first and then got my hands on the paperback by Jhumpa Lahiri. Nice story. The details were real accurate, and made me feel part of the book. But you know what the problem was? I kept imagining the actors from the movie everytime I read about a character. Seriously, I was NOT HAPPY!

Big problem, big problem. This whole read-the-book-and-hate-the-movie problem is one strange issue. Figuratively speaking, it kills us. This issue is probably one of those immortal things that keep haunting us like mosquitoes and weird neighbors. I have no clue how to solve this problem. I don't know what to do.
Except not letting my future book get turned into a movie.

Don't read the book anywhere near the time the film is due out. I hadn't read the HP book in years (that's why I thought it was the last film when there are TWO MORE) and it wasn't fresh in my mind. That way I didn't make comparisons. But to tell the truth, I wasn't too crazy about Harry Potter. I don't know if it would work for any other :S
Sometimes it's the film that ruins it for me. Most of the time it's the girls half my age sighing over my fave character. That just totally kills it for me.

Hi, Whisper! Here I am like I promised. I haven't reviewed non-fiction in ages (and not actually very much at all to begin with), so it might be that I've gotten a bit rusty in this area.


First of all, let's take a look at the title you've got here. It's bound to draw people in with both "books" and "films" in it, as well as with sort of addressing the reader ("we") and making them feel like they can relate to the piece. This is all very nice, since titles are always important (especially in articles). However, I feel that the subject of the article doesn't quite emerge from the title, so you might want to clear that up a little. The other features in the title are fine.

Also, pay attention to consistency. At places, this article felt more like slightly rambling diary/blog entry, rather than an argumentative piece. Think of the core of the article, the thing you want to deliver, and what you want people to think about after reading, and stick to it. When written well, a good argumentative essay/article is like a manipulative advertisement. You want to convert people to your opinion, and if you're skilfully sneaky, the readers will do so without even realising it.

And that brings us to the new question: what is the core of this article? You start with describing the disappointment after watching a film made of a book, and you sign off with no final statement. Basically, like you said:

The point of me writing this piece is just to bring up this universal problem.

However, the problem is that since many people have already discovered this problem and probably have even stronger opinions about it, this article doesn't really give them anything new to think about. It just states what's been said and seen many times before, and since this can be considered a column like those published in magazines and papers, it should have the basic cornerstone in it. In Finland, where I'm from, we call that cornerstone a thesis. The thesis must be the first thing that comes to your mind when thinking what to write about; it's the soul of the whole piece.

Also, something else I thought about when reading this piece: starting with an example, Maddie in this case, is good and makes the piece more worldly and easy to relate to. However, when you brought Maddie up in another paragraph later on, it already felt old and out of place. My advice for this is that stick with Maddie in the beginning (and clear up that she's your friend), and then leave her be and find other arguments to carry the piece on.

It's very difficult to find a decent essay, because at least I tend to ramble a lot and I've also been told about not sticking to the subject. I'm still learning though, and this kind of essays are basically all we ever write in our Finnish classes, so I've done this a lot already. Practice makes better, so we had both better keep writing these.

Best of luck to you, and PM me with any questions.


Demeter
xxx

that's true, sometimesthe movies are not as good as the books, well that happens most of the time. And at least for me, it's very disappointing because it ruins my my vision of the character and the whole story. The plot is i weird and sometimes it has nothing to do with the actual plot. I've seen many movies in which the story is completely changed and it kills me. I think that sticking to my imagination is better than seeing the actual charcaters in a movie.

I've alway thought it silly to compare movies and books. To begin with, they're two completely different art forms. Comparing a film to a novel is like comparing a sculpture to a painting. Each has an entirely different set of characteristics and things to consider when creating them.

Novels, for the most part, have no real limit to how long they can be. Any amount of time can be spent describing scenery and characters and the timbre of their voices during dialogue. All sorts of minor subplots and other little things can be scattered throughout with no trouble at all, and people often like stories better this way.

In a movie, however, there is definitely a time limit. Most films are limited to two hours, three if the story really needs it. But that's about it. Otherwise the whole thing breaks down and the viewer loses interest, as they should. It is totally unreasonable to expect the screenwriter to include all the parts of the book, including those which have little or no effect on the main plot, which is what needs to be focused on in a film.

Characters will likely look different from how you picture them, as the likelihood of such a person existing in the first place and then be an actor who happened to show up for auditions is rather nonexistent (although some characters do get cast rather well). And perhaps scenes don't play out just like they did in the book. Film makers must make choices as to the execution of certain scenes for them to be more adaptable to the screen. What worked in a book might be dreadful when viewed through a camera lens.

My apologies. As you can see I have a strong opinion on this.

Anyway, to answer your all-important question, you must take each work separately. Do not think of the movie in the same terms as the book. View them as two totally separate pieces with certain similarities, but don't expect too much of those similarities. In the credits, they always write that the film was based on a novel written by so and so. Based on, not transcribed from.