September 17, 2013 
mhoogland 
I watched Gatsby the other day. Excuse me, let me clarify. I tried to watch yet another disappointing movie adaptation, another beloved-book-turned-train-wreck-of-a-movie. And I’ve never once gushed over F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus like so many do. No, I went in with reasonable expectations. Expectations even Leonardo DiCaprio with all his talent and all his movie-star swag couldn’t help the movie live up to.
So cheers to good books that can’t be experienced any other way than through the written word. Gatsby was flawed from the start. People have tried to make the movie before…and all have failed. Some other good examples of poor movie adaptations:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy: The man’s a genius. Again, another flawed project from the start—it was near impossible for this movie to live up to the book. Nobody does McCarthy better than McCarthy.
Any one of the Harry Potter movies: I know a lot of people liked these movies, but as someone who read the books, I can tell you that they don’t compare. So much was missing. Great parts were inevitably left out, and I was inevitably let down.
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: This was truly the worst adaptation of a book I’ve ever seen. The whole film was one unfortunate event after another. Someone during my show time screamed out, “My eyes!” and ran crying from theater only twenty minutes in.
My question to you is: why? Why are the books always better? What does the written word evoke that motion pictures can’t? Is it simply the element of surprise or something more? Can you think of a movie that defies this unwritten rule and surpasses its source material?
The Shawshank Redemption was a far better movie than novella.
After reading this post, my first thought was, “Not necessarily true.” I’ve seen some excellent adaptations, among them, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Fight Club. Then it occurred to me that in each case, I’d seen the movie first, and then read the book, and was impressed in each case by how closely the movies followed what was written. The reading experience was pretty different, however, because instead of using the writer’s words and my imagination to “see” the world of the novel, I had already seen it and was just watching it again, in slow-mo, while reading. For books that I’ve read first, and then seen adapted, I’ve invariably been disappointed because of what gets left out, but also because what gets left in has to compete with my imagination’s version of events.
I think books are always better because we can insert our imaginations into the story, becoming co-creators with the material. Movies do most of this work for us, oftentimes with poor results. But occasionally, such as The English Patient, to great success!
I still think the 70’s version of Gatsby was about as good as you could shoot for; this being said, I’m completely mystified as to why Gatsby still turns up on high school reading lists, as it comes from a time which is almost completely lost to American memory. (It’s more readable than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but c’mon…) If you want to see an A-list adaptation of a book that only does minimal plot changes and really sparkles, two suggestions: Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting (1962 B&W, not the travesty remake) and of course Rosemary’s Baby. You can’t expect perfection in a film version of any book, but it’s always annoying how many Hollywood types don’t even try. Comes of having a lot of talent-free girlfriends and brothers in law who want to pretend they’re screenwriters, I suspect…
When I see movies based on books, I’m almost always disappointed, due to how much gets left out. Of course, that’s necessary, since including every detail of a book in the movie version would often result in 10-hour long movies. And no matter how much I love a book, I’m probably not interested in spending that much time watching a movie version of it.
Also, once I read a book, I have an image in my mind of how the characters and scenery look, and how the action plays out, and no movie is ever going to exactly match my imagination. So I’m always going to feel like the movie got it a little (or a lot) wrong. I’ve heard that a movie version of Ender’s Game is coming in November, and I’m planning on avoiding the movie (and advertising for it) as much as possible. Ender’s Game was my favorite book for many, many years, and I don’t want my imagination’s version of it to be replaced by the movie version.
That said, I’ve found that when I like a movie better than a book, it’s always when I saw the movie before reading the book. Then, the movie is the “original” version in my mind, and I end up feeling like the *book* got it wrong. Two examples of this are Slumdog Millionaire, which I enjoyed much more than the book Q & A by Vikas Swarup. And The Power of One movie, based on a book of the same name by Bryce Courtenay. I’m sure I would have enjoyed both books more if I’d read them before seeing the movies. And I probably would have been disappointed that the movies changed so much from the books. However, in both cases, part of what I loved about each movie was the soundtrack, so maybe I would have enjoyed them anyways…
Several explanations come to mind.
1. “Garbage in, garbage out”, as the I.T. folks used to say. If you start with junk (like “Gatsby”), what can you expect?
2. Some books lend themselves to cinematic adaptation because they are written like scripts. “Old Yeller” comes to mind. You can shoot that film with the book in one hand and no script at all.
3. Some very satisfying books don’t lend themselves to film adaptation because their primary virtue lies in character development or descriptive narration. If not a lot happens in the way of plot…it won’t be much of a movie.
4. Cinema is an art form unto itself, and too many people involved in it neither know that nor have the talent to maximize its potential. (Ex: “The Producers” (musical version). You can’t just turn on the camera and walk away!)
5. Many films come into being via the art of the deal. Famous book + solid actor + hot actress of the moment = deal. No one associated with getting it on film (excepting perhaps the actors) necessarily has any talent or artistry or respect for the material. The results are slap-dash at best.
No need to comment, Dave and Monica said everything I was going to say about our imagination vs. what a director envisions and how seeing a film first before reading a book makes a difference in our opinion of which we prefer.
My two films that I saw before reading the book and, therefore, enjoyed were: The Notebook and The Bridges of Madison County. Otherwise, the book is always better.
Then again, Steve is right about The Shawshank Redemption.