Books vs. Movies: The ultimate battle

What can be more scary to a book lover than a dog-eared page? The movie version of their most beloved book.

It's true. I hardly hear anyone who loves books as much as I that say they really prefer movie versions over the original novel. These bibliophiliacs dread the added scenes, the dropped details and the changed endings.

I agree with Willing Davidson in his article, "Great Book, Bad Movie," that movies ruin great books in two major ways. First, books are long, while movies are short. Within large novels, the author can include lengthy conversations, internal thoughts, differing tones and vivid details that spark the reader's imagination. For movies to achieve all that, they would have to be several hours long. Realistically, having extremely long films is not feasible because like me, many moviegoers get antsy after an hour and a half. Bookworms on the other hand, read for hours on end.

Movies' second error is that they substitute plot for character. This really isn't the movie's fault, though. As a moviegoer, we expect action. That is the beauty of the visual medium. However, most of the time, action overtakes the process of getting to know a character. In a book, you know every thought and feeling of the main character. You know their likes, their dislikes, their fears and their hopes. You get to be the character's best friend. In a movie, that character-reader relationship is lost.

On the other side, some people do think movies are better than books. Elisabeth Rappe argues in her discussion "Movies that are Better than the Books" that some movies are actually more enjoyable than the books. She says that The Sword and the Stone is better than the book The Once and Future King because it lacks cat torture and misogyny. For me, the movie could be better because of the book's language. I would probably understand the story line in the movie, whereas I might not quite understand the book's complex phrasing and old words.

So, I can see some reasons for making books into movies, but overall, I still think that books present complex topics better and also give bookworms close character-reader relationships that are unparelled by movies. Or in other words: books rule and movies drool!

**If you are interested in seeing a list of "based on the book" movies, here are two sites that list those movies by year: Mid-Continent Public Library and Based on a Book.