I’m not so sure about that. As good as the movie is, as talented the cast, the movie Silence of the Lambs suffers in comparison to the book because so much of the book is informed by the internal dialogues of Starling and Lecter, and a lot of it just can’t make it to the screen because the characters themselves would be compromised by having them talk about it.
What kills the character of Lecter in the other books and films is exactly that - we learn too much about him (well, that and he becomes superhuman).
The same thing happened to Penrod. In writing his detective story, the antagonist becomes the protagonist from the manner in which he interacts with the love interest.
:dubious:
I much prefer novels to movies and TV shows. Though all three mediums have examples of greatness, the beauty of words, the freedom to fill in the blanks with my own imagination, the leisure to explore a character’s interior landscape that print allows makes it far more interesting to me than film or television.
Some stories are better told on film than in print, true enough. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK comes to mind. But I can’t think of a book I truly loved that was better as a movie, because the things I love best about books don’t translate into movies (any more than Indy’s weary and startling gunning down of the swordsman works well as a book). The best parts of Tolkien, to me, are the poems. Jackson was right to leave the elegy for Boromir out of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, but I still prefer the book’s renidition of that scene to the movies.
I get much more immersed in books than in movies. In movies–particularly your big-budget Hollywood blockbuster–I am much more aware of the tropes and conventions, pf the making of the sausage. Rare is the movie that doesn’t seem rushed to me, for instance; the time frame the story is alleged to take place in always seems to brief. With books it’s different.
I generally prefer books. Often my favorite part of the novel is the narrator’s voice, which is normally left out of movies. Usually I just watch movies for action scenes.