This post originally appeared Oct. 13, 2010.
Come on, we’ve all experienced it. Loved the book, hated the movie. Or maybe the movie prompted us to read the book. Or maybe the movie blew us away with the spectacle we’d hoped for from the book.
I can think of three specific instances where I compared the story between the book and the movie.
1. Gone With The Wind. I saw the movie as a teenager and was swept away by the epic grandeur, Vivian Leigh’s high-strung beauty and Clark Gable’s iconic portrayal of Rhett Butler. At the age of 16, I braved reading the book (seriously, it’s a BIG book).
And I have not watched the movie version of Gone With The Wind since. Nor have I read the book again. Once was enough, thank you. It’s not that it wasn’t good, but I didn’t like Scarlett O’Hara very much in the book, and that now carries through when I see commercials for the movie. I can see why Margaret Mitchell never planned a sequel.
2. The Hunt for Red October. I saw this movie while living in Manhattan one summer during grad school. I imprinted Alec Baldwin as the character of Jack Ryan (and had a hard time accepting Harrison Ford in that role in future films), loved Sean Connery and Sam Neill as the Russian submariners, and left the movie theater that night with a million questions about what else was in the book that couldn’t fit within a two-hour movie.
I got the book from the library the next day. Devoured it. I then went back and checked out a half dozen of Tom Clancy’s other books. Became a huge fan. Still love this movie, but the book is definitely better.
3. The DaVinci Code. Everyone and their brother was reading this book, and when they announced the movie’s upcoming release, I figured I’d better find out what was going on. I prefer a little more character development, butDan Brown’s plot took hold with me, and once I hit about page 70, there was no putting the book down.
When I saw the movie, I thought it was fine. If I hadn’t read the book, I might have thought the movie was great. But this is another instance of a whole lot more going on in the book than they could squeeze into the movie.
How about you—are you a bookworm or a movie fan? Which movies did justice to the book? Which fell flat?