Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?
I love movies. I love what can be done in a visual medium in seconds what can take pages of print to do. I want movies to entertain, to transport me to another time or place, and sometimes to be thought-provoking. I do like action movies: I like to see things blow up or crash into each other. I do prefer a plot to go along with it.
I do like seeing movies that have been adapted from books, as long as they have tried to stay faithful to the original. I do like to see "based on the book..." at the beginning of a movie, because it makes it more likely there will be a coherent plot. Books adapted from movies, on the other hand, are generally unreadable. I think "Star Wars" and the first Star Trek movie are the exceptions to this. What works on screen can seem wooden or fake on the page.
2 comments:
I like both mediums for what they are and I like them for their differences. Sausage and pepperoni are different, but they're both good pizza.
I don't expect a movie based on a book to be just like a book. Movies would be at least 6 hours long if they were.
But I must disagree with you about Star Trek: TMP making a good book. It wasn't a good movie (quite wooden IMHO) nor was it a good book. The Wrath of Khan and The Search For Spock on the other hand were great reads based off the movies. The source material was much richer.
ST: TMP was an adequate movie, and an adequate book. I guess I wasn't clear in the original post. Fortunately the movie was good enough to allow them to make Wrath of Khan, my favorite ST movie ever, and I agree the book version of that was pretty good. I don't remember reading Search for Spock, but I probably have the book around somewhere.
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