Some of my favorite books would inevitably be shallower as movies.
C’mon, aren’t you glad Ender’s Game isn’t being directed by Michael Bay, with music by John Williams… and that it isn’t Disney’s attempt to make an action hero out of Haley Joel Osment. Or that “young Anakin” kid.
Ditto for Dandelion Wine or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Coming soon… Robin Williams IS Richard Brautigan in “Trout Fishing in America”!
I began my lifelong love of books at age eight or so. The guys in the neighborhood, who were a couple of years older than I were reading ERB’s Martian series. I borrowed a couple of them, swearing that I would take good care of them. After the first book, I saved every nickle I could come up with to buy the Ballantine editions (at fifty cents each) so that I had them for my very own. I still have those paperbacks. They are rather tattered, as you would expect from fifty years of use.
It chills my blood to think that the world that I have envisioned so completely in my imagination is in the hands of people from Pixar and Disney.
I think people who insist movies are somehow inherently less than books just don’t see the right movies, or maybe they just don’t know how to watch them, don’t you?
Haven’t you noticed those scenes were the tilt of a head and the angle of the eyebrow covers 20 pages of text? I love those moments.
I would love to see Ender’s Game made into a six to eight part series, followed by Ender’s Shadow the next year. Not by US network - cable or BBC. Very subtle staging - lots of soft grey shadows against vaguely metallic walls, ALL about the lighting …
But Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? The mind boggles - how could one do that?
Because then I get to indulge in pretentious pseudo-intellectual snobbery, by bitching about how badly Hollywood screwed it up. And that’s even more fun than reading the book itself. 
As Ian Fleming wrote: Snobbery is the most egalitarian of vices. Everyone can find someone to whom they feel superior.
When I was in college, my friends and I were both bookworms and film buffs. We would often fantasize about how we would do a movie of our favorite books, who would be the perfect actor for a role, how we would stage a crucial scene, etc. When we would hear about a movie coming out, we would compare our daydreams to the actual Hollywood product. It gave us one more thing to gossip about.
This thread reminds me of the time someone asked a guy I knew if he’d ever read the bible. He answered “No, but I saw the movie.” (A movie by that name had been released a year or two earlier, mid 60’s.) Cracked me up.
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I generally don’t want to see a book I love made into a movie or tv show, because the movie will mess with my vision or interpretation of the work, and a visual medium can’t portray the internal mental states and intellectual processes of the characters well.
But there have been exceptions, when I have been pleasantly surprised. Colin Firth portrayed Mr. Darcy exceedingly well in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, for example.
Books that didn’t move me deeply, or that I don’t love, I don’t mind seeing.
Regarding LotR, I hated the violations of story, some of the cheesier effects (sorcery battle between Gandalf and Saruman, the way the Dead went through the battelfied) and characters, (Aragorn made weak and indecisive, Elrond made anti-Aragorn, the increase in Arwen’s part, Gimli turned into comic relief, etc, etc) But some of the visuals were perfect – the look of Hobbiton, Rivendell, and Rohan. I do enjoy having Viggo and Orlando visuals for Aragorn and Legolas, which almost makes up for how much I hate having Ian McKellan in my head as Gandalf.
I wish I’d said that.
And by the way, it’s not hard to think of movies that (probably) wouldn’t translate well to print.
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