Movie Adaptations of books have been around since 1899. The first movie adaptation, Cinderella, was based on the Brothers Grimm story, and King John was based on Shakespeare’s works. Since then, there have been many adaptations. For example, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, and many more. As practically as it started, the debate arose about whether the movie or the book was better. Some argue that the book will forever be better than the movies, while others will say that the movies are better. Some of the book side argued about disliking the changes made in the film.
Mary Hollifield (10) said, “If they are done well, I would love them like the Hunger Games movies. Those were amazing. The Harry Potter books were good for movie adaptation. The books will always be better because you always have that inner monologue for the character. But it’s always fun to see your favorite story come to life on the big screen. Books that I would like to see adapted into a movie would be ‘They Both Die at the End’ and the prequel to it and ‘Girl in Pieces.'”
Leighanne Kuhn (Audio Video Technology and Film) had the opposite thought and thought the movies were better than the books and said, “I’ve seen many adaptations, and the one that comes to mind is Pride and Prejudice, and that movie has been made over and over, and my favorite version is the 2005 one. Of course, Pride and Prejudice wasn’t only remade but was also a modern modern-era of itself called Clueless in 1985. I’m a movie person; I find audio-visual spectacles much more entertaining than pages in a book. So yes, I do prefer the movie of the book usually.”
Brian Clements (Dramatic Writing for Film, Television, and Theatre and Honors 9th Literature) said, “Yes, I’ve seen Sherlock, Hunger Games, Pride and Prejudice. My favorite is a TV show, Station 11, that was done so well for adapting a text to this. Foundation is another good one. The two are different, sometimes for excellent and wrong reasons. Some things have to change from a book to a movie because there are other formats. I’ve got two hours to tell a story. If I listen to an audiobook, that could be 15 hours of reading. If it’s a movie, I’ve got two to two hours, so I have to shrink some things to make it work.
On top of that, a different median medium can do things that books can’t. I can’t narrate most films, so I need to transform all those narrations into visuals so others mean different forms. We have to change some things to adapt to modern-day times as we see things differently than we did back then. We see gender roles differently, we see race differently, we know the role of nations differently, so we adapt them to make it work for our contemporary culture.”
There are mixed emotions about whether the movies are better than the books or vice versa. There have been agreements from both sides, while arguments address a new insight into the statement. Movie adaptations will always be made in the future, and now we’re going more from books to movies and making video games to film with Five Nights at Freddy’s, Super Mario Bros, and in the making of Legend of Zelda. The debate will continue as there will never be a decisive answer, as everyone has different opinions and preferences.
