It’s never as good as the book…or is it just me?

Summer is the time to hit the movie theater because it’s hot as heck and well there’s never anything good on TV anyway right?

Studios, producers, actors, marketers, and toy manufacturers, everyone seems to make their bread and butter from the “summer blockbuster.” There are no original films out there anymore, most seem to be based on novels, comics, or even an English remake of a foreign film.

I’m one of those people that the big conglomerates love to hate though because I’m a voracious reader, which means I’ve generally read the book that the movie is based on and I’m also one of those who loves the book a lot more than the movie. Why is it that the books are generally better? The English teacher, journalist, and writer in me says it is because the written word allows for each reader to join with the author in imagining the situation and characters, creating an world within his/her mind’s eye that is greater than anything created on screen. The news producer in me says that movies are a visual medium and are great in that respect, but the transfer from book to screenplay/script is where things can fall apart. Essentially if the author of the original work is not involved the transfer from book to screen goes something like this: The book is published and people love it. A studio decides to make the book into a movie, if the author doesn’t want to be involved, a screenwriter is hired to adapt the novel to a screenplay. This means that person has to first read and then interpret the intentions of the original author. That screenplay is worked into a script for the actors/director and then filmed. There are a lot of middle men involved between the author and the audience at that point, the collaboration that seems so private and intimate between author and reader when it comes to the book is gone, you are now receiving a very different message.

A perfect case in point with the The Hunger Games series vs The Harry Potter series. For both sets (The Hunger Games has only debuted two movies out of the trilogy so far), the books were better than the films, however most Harry Potter movies came extremely close to providing the same amount of thrills and excitement as the books did. As for The Hunger Games movies, so far, the books have been better than the movies. There’s so much more action happening on the written page of Suzanne Collins’ novels than on the screen. Perhaps it is because Hollywood is spending too much time focusing on the post apocalyptic nuclear war aspect of it given the climate of today’s world? J.K. Rowling provided the model of how to protect your artistic purpose and ideas in your work, become intrinsically involved in the marketing and development of your literary work as it moves through to the big screen. Reports show that Suzanne Collins is following Rowling’s model of involvement, but for some reason, the Hunger Games movies are not speaking to me the way the books did. Perhaps the Harry Potter series was a one in a million sort of thing where they were able to translate as much of the action and excitement provided within the pages of J.K. Rowling’s series to the big screen.

My theory stands as the summer blockbuster movie season gets underway, it’s never as good as the book was. Your thoughts?