I love both books and movies. I agree with the truism that great books don’t make good movies, and not simply because of the greater potential for un-met expectations, rather that books vs. movie is kinda apple vs. orange. That being said, I’ll report that I once read “The Graduate,” and was suprised at how much better was the movie; usually the opposite seems to be the case.
Your deep sea diving suit is ready, me brave lad.
Well, PCW, when I say I could use a couple of could ones, I really do mean drinks…
You say “cheesy” like that’s a BAD thing.
This is the basis for “Pitch Black”.
“Age is mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” -Leroy “Satchel” Paige
Any suggestions on what to see at the movie theatre tonight? I actually have (gasp!) a sitter, so Bons and I are going out! I’m looking for something funny-- I haven’t seen a movie in about 9 months, so suggest away!
Thanks,
Prairie Rose and Bons
If you’re not part of the solution you’re just scumming up the bottom of the beaker.
Chef Troy, you’ve saved the day.
Hmmm…I suppose it depends on what you’re reading/going to see. I mean, with things like Shakespearean plays, you always read the play before you see it performed.
With Jurassic Park, reading the book previous to seeing the movie seemed like a good idea.
Studi
When I grow up, I want to be the Minister of Silly Walks.
Have you ever gone to a movie based on a book you’ve already read, and said to yourself,“OHMYGHOD!, they actually did it right!”
Slythe,
Once. The Shawshank Redemption.
Slythe:
Twice. Shawshank, and The Green Mile.
You say “cheesy” like that’s a BAD thing.
Jeff, I once read a science-fiction/fantasy book called The Dark, or The Time of the Dark, or the Coming of the Dark, or something like that. The plot seemed quite similar to Pitch Black, at least from the trailers I’ve seen. I thought that book might have been the basis for the film.
I both read the book and saw the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and I have to say that I agree with Slithy, they really can’t be realistically compared to each other, given the differences in medium. I did like the book better, though.
(Breaking my just stated rule.)
I agree with Sealemon. Movies and books are different genres, with different abilities and different needs. Books are able to convey much more depth because they are a longer format, and have an easier time going into things like memories, personalities, mental impressions, descriptions of motivations, etc. Movies have difficulty touching on the things books can easily address because of the limitations of the format, as well as time constraints. Thus good books don’t get full coverage and good treatment, because a movie just can’t convey what a book can. Not to say movies are bad, they are just different.
Often, a movie takes a concept or idea but then blends it to fit the format. That’s not good or bad, just what has to happen.
Some people like movies better, others books. I’ve tried to get over the expectation of the movie and the book being the same. I think the last time that happened was when I read ET, a novelization of the movie direct from the screenplay.
I liked the movie “Starship Troopers”, despite the fact that is diverged from the book. Of course you must realize there is NO way to do justice to Heinlein on screen. The book is full of philosophy as much as any action. Plus there were some moderate adaptations to modernize it - PC it a bit. Not to fault Heinlein at all, but is writings are the product of an earlier time. It’s copyrighted in 1959. I love Heinlein. I reread the book after seeing the movie to refresh my memory. Yes it was different, but the movie wasn’t bad because of that. I was a little disappointed they chose not to use the mechanized armor, since that was part of the interesting detail of the book, but I adapted.
Actually, I was impressed by the treatment of “Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters”. I thought it was a pretty good adaptation, given the constraints of a movie.
If you want to talk about divergences between books and movies, pretty much any John Grisham movie comes to mind. Okay, I haven’t seen the latest ones, but “The Firm”, “The Pelican Brief”, and “The Client” come to mind. In each case the story is basically the same and plot follows along until 2/3 of the way through, the movie takes some detour from the book and goes in a different direction. In all of the above, both treatments work, but it makes the resolutions different, alterring the story.
One that the change did bother me was “Patriot Games”, because the difference in the endings between the novel and movie affected the moral of the story. In the movie, the terrorist is killed in an exciting fight on a speeding boat that crashes and explodes. It is played for the action adventure theme and visual gratification. But in the book, Jack Ryan doesn’t even get into a boat fight. They chase the terrorist through the foggy night, and catch him trying to escape. There is a brief moment where Ryan considers killing him anyway, but comes to grips with himself and doesn’t, and they arrest him. The change alters the whole character of the story.
Another book that fit the story well was “The Abyss”, but that was done on purpose, writing the screenplay and the novel simultaneously, just inserting some extra depth in the novel.
I don’t think that “Pitch Black” is based on Nightfall. Nightfall is Asimov’s story about a planet that never sees darkness because of multiple suns, and it deals with the reactions of the people and the breakdown in society because of a very rare eclipse. All of the problems are created by the people who do not understand what is happening. “Pitch Black” is a story about a planet with multiple suns, and a race of creatures that live underground. A group of space travelers crash on the planet at the inconvenient 22 yr cycle of the eclipse, that unleashes the hoards of monsters loose on the surface to devour everything, and they struggle to survive and escape. It is a completely different story with different elements and different plot, with only a passing similarity in the use of the one plot device of the perpetual daylight and eclipse. That does not make them the same, any more than NYPD Blue is the same as Cop Rock. Sure, they’re both about police stations, but that’s pretty much the only similarity. I don’t know about Lucretia’s reference, but it’s not based on Nightfall.
I have just one word…jonquils
Yours truly,
aha
I did once, just to experiment–no one was going to see anyway…
I loved Kotzwinkle’s E.T. novelization–wonderful to get into the minds of those characters in a book–based on the screenplay, no less, but with strengths the movie lacked.
Jonquils are okay, daffodils too, but I’ll probably always be an iris man.
I sometimes think I’d like to take a non-stagy movie (as opposed to movies that you can tell were stageplays first) and turn it into a stageplay. Say, Highlander as a musical with all the Queen songs–hoo-ha! Then I think about some more and realise it might lack what was special about the movie.
After seeing Costner’s “The Postman,” I met a guy who was a fan of the writer who wrote the novel that I guess inspired the movie. He was afraid to see the movie, ‘cos they’d have ruined it. I’ve not read the book, but I suspect the movie is so different it’s not really the same story. Pretty neat fick, tho’…