Movie before book? Or book, before movie?

[temporus]

Books are not movies; movies are not books.  This seems rather simple, almost obvious.  Yet the two forms are intertwined, because we are constantly making books into movies, and often adapting movies into books.  And because one form is different than the other, there are almost always going to be discussions, disagreements, flat out arguments even, over which is better: the book or the movie.  Typically, if the book came out first, there will be cadres of people decrying that the movie wasn't true to the book. 

But I return to my opening thesis: books are not movies are not books.  They aren't apples and oranges, not so different that the points of similarity are superficial.  More like apples and pears.  In many ways similar, yet still different to the palate.  When adapting from one form to the other, there have to be changes.  What you can do in a novel, you don't have the room to do in a movie.   What you can do with one amazing establishing shot can seem impossible to do in a novel.  Pictures aren't simply worth a thousand words, they can be worth an infinite number, or none at all.  I don't think five pages of description in a novel would ever give you the feeling you got the first time, sitting in the theatre, you felt in your gut when that star destroyer flies overhead in the opening to Star Wars: A New Hope.   This isn't to say a good author can't make you feel awe.  Of course they can.  But they have to approach it in different ways.

Which is why I don't mind when movies don't turn out to be perfect transliterations of books.  I don't want them to be mere copies; I expect them to be transformations.  I expect them to gather up the experience that occurs primarily in the mind's eye, a cerebral pursuit, and convert them into an audio visual experience that is representative of the original art, reflective of it, not a shadow of it. 

Which brings me to the question within the title, in a rather round-about way.  I have a quirk, one that has in the past proved a tad annoying to my wife (particularly when the Harry Potter books and movies were first coming out), but which in general I try to stand by.  When I know a movie is coming out, particularly one I intend to see but I have not yet read the work in question, I prefer to see the movie first.

Did I hear you gasp?  Yes, I said it.  I prefer to see the movie before reading the book.  It's a preference I flipped on completely.  I recall being a child, and reading the novel E.T. while in the theatre as the previews were running, even into the opening credits of the movie.  I remember having finished Jurassic Park not long before going out to see that movie in the theater, a veritable race against the clock to see if I could finish reading the book before the movie hit the local theaters.  Over the course of the years, I came to the conclusion that movies, being the shorter experience, worked better when I came to the fresh.  With little or no preconceptions.  When I come into a movie with no expectations, the chances for disappointment are substantially reduced.   With no expectations, I can judge whether the $10 and two hours was worth it solely on the merits of the piece of art in front of me.  The acting, direction, effects, costuming, camerawork, etc, etc.   It stands alone, and works because the people behind it made it work or fails because they didn't manage to pull it all together.  But it isn't being held up to a standard based upon a different experience.   One that I know full well will never be transferable to the silver screen.

Now, there's a price I pay for having this attitude, which is: sometimes the movie will affect me so that when I read, I will hear the voices of the actors, and the characters imagined will look like them too, instead of bringing with me my own "casting".  That can be mitigated with time, of course, if I wait a year or two, I might be able to enter the book a bit closer to tabula rasa.  But it's no guarantee.  And of course, if there's a gimmick, a twist or major surprise, well then I would have it spoiled.  Of course, my personal belief is that no story should only work, or only be enjoyable because of a twist ending or sudden surprise.  My opinion is that the mark of great stories is that even knowing the twists and turns, you feel yourself so drawn in by the work that you still jump, or laugh, or cry at all the right moments.  A second, or third reading, should provide enjoyment.

So, for those of you who bothered to slog through all that, tell me: which do you prefer to experience first?  The book?  Or the movie?

Comments

[nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com]

If I'm interested in both, I'll try to read the book first. I find if I read the book I'm still interested in seeing the movie, but if I see the movie first, my interest in reading the book dwindles.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It really depends, but sometimes, yep, movie first.

Movie first

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Avoided rereading LOTR before watching.

However Harry Potter, it's always been books first.

Re: Movie first

[temporus.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter almost got me in a lot of trouble. I refused to read the books first, and managed to watch the first three movies before going back and reading the books. It aggravated my wife, who didn't agree with my methods. By the fourth book, the long gap between movies, and the difficulties in avoiding spoilers became too much, and I just started reading the books.

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

I normally prefer to read the book first. Doesn't mean I always find the book better, though; I think I remember stating that (in my opinion) the movie version of John le Carre's The Tailor of Panama is better than the book, though this may have had something to do with the fact that le Carre himself was involved in writing the script of the movie adaptation.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

I don't consciously do either one first. That said, I invariably end up preferring one or the other.

It can be quite disappointing to read a book after the movie if a lot of changes were made. For example, John Hammond dies in the Jurassic Park novel (eaten by Compies as I recall), and I seem to remember a female reporter in Peter Benchley's 'Jaws', who isn't even in the film, though I read that thirty years ago and might be thinking of the wrong novel.

Sometimes the movie puts you off the book, even if you saw it after. I'd read 'The Lord of the Rings' more than twenty times prior to seeing the movies, but Peter Jackson did such an incredible job on them, he quite spoiled the books for me.

I quite enjoyed Raymond Khoury's 'The Last Templar' so I watched the movie version on the telly this weekend. It was so bad I gave up after only half an hour, but I'd read the book again.

I guess it comes down to how good the book is in the first place, and what kind of a job they make of the movie.

With regards to Harry Potter though, I enjoy both. The books have a lot more of the evil Dursley family in them, and though I think the last three could have used some major pruning, they're still great fun.

[blue-23.livejournal.com]

I'm managed to internalize that books and movies (or comic books and movies, or media X and media Y) are different. This comes as a reaction from having some friends who discard great movies because they don't hold true (enough) to the book.

I used to get down on movies that changed things around. My original "this isn't the book!" was Beastmaster, which is an SF novel and a fantasy movie. There were plenty of others.

But like writing a short story vs. a novel is different, writing for different media is VERY different. You've got things that work well in novels (internal dialogs as an example) that translate poorly in general. You've got things that work well in movies that you couldn't do easily or as well in a story.

Trying to keep true when it means introducing weaknesses and not taking advantage of strengths is silly. I can enjoy both, even when they differ.

That said, given the option I'd consume the original first. So I'd read a novel before a movie it's based on, but see a movie before a print adaptation of it.

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

I don't enjoy adaptations of movies, but I'm pretty agnostic going the other way, unless they've totally trashed the book.